IP-256SL Build: Three times the fun.

[Vipassana]

OK, I took an hour and made some replacement axle nuts.  I made these much larger to fill the cavity on the drop out unlike the original nut.  This will allow us to advance the set screw and lock the nut into place.  So it won't drop out when the axle is removed.

I didn't feel like tooling the mill up for wrench flats of a flat for the set screw.  Maybe Monday.  This works great for now.

M12x1.75 if anyone is wondering.  Apparently the 12x142 standard has 3 different thread pitches, but the iPlay axles are coarse thread M12x1.75.

[Sitar_Ned]

Man.. That looks better than the nut that came with my axle. Nice and flush. Nice work.

[Carbon_Dude]

Nice work!  IMO, the nut would look even better if it were flush to the hanger and had a black nickel coating.

[Vipassana]

Yeah, it needs to be black. I didn't make it flush though because then the threaded portion of the axle would stock out past the nut. I suppose I could shorten the axle as well...

[Carbon_Dude]

Now that you say the axle threads out to the end, the thickness if fine.  I like to have as much thread engagement as originally designed.  It looks good silver as well.  What material did you use?  301 SS or something else?

I'm now thinking I would like to have one for each of my bikes, what would you charge to make a few of those?

[Vipassana]

Now that you say the axle threads out to the end, the thickness if fine.  I like to have as much thread engagement as originally designed.  It looks good silver as well.  What material did you use?  301 SS or something else?

I'm now thinking I would like to have one for each of my bikes, what would you charge to make a few of those?

I used high grade aluminum.  It's nice and light.  304 or similar SS would certainly work, but its heavy (relatively!) and a bit harder to machine quickly.

The money for the part isn't the issue, but more the time on the machines to knock a few out.  I'd really only be looking for postage and gas money.  Let me see if I can get on the machines this week and make a few.   

[Vipassana]

I put some street miles on the bike on Friday; 46 miles in total to and from work.  A good portion of the ride is on the streets with traffic, but there are a few miles riding along the canals.  There was a neat sunset on the way home.  Overall, the bike was a joy to ride and is nearly as snappy as my road bike. (not saying much as my "road" bike is actually a converted cyclocross bike  that weighs in at 24lbs).  I was able to ride comfortably at 16-19 mph the whole way. 

[Vipassana]

I took some time on Saturday to prep the bike for her first off-road voyage by applying paint protection in all the common impact areas.  I used some 8-10 mil thick racers tape in a 2" width.  Same stuff as "helicopter tape" or 3M films.  It can be applied wet or dry.  I cut it with scissors and an exacto-knife, using round things in the garage for the radius corners.

Downtube.  I went from here all the way under the BB.  I cut out a section for the bottom access door.


Inside the chainstays.  The film is highly flexible so this was very easy.


The XX1/X01 cogset gets the chain VERY close to this frame in the smallest cog.  In this gear, the chain is less than 2mm from the frame.  The chain doesn't touch, but I could see it bouncing into the frame on a rough shift or dirt getting squeezed between the frame and the chain.  So I protected it here too.


Inside the seatstays.  I didn't get this one applied quite straight enough.


The tape isn't noticeable from more than a foot.  Except that it makes my matte paint glossy!  Still, you can't really see it.



I also did the area around the front chainring (in case a chain drops), the crank arms (between the SRAM film and the pedal), and the chainstays (where my feet rub or chain slaps). 

Lastly, I used some old road bike grip-tape to wrap the chainstay for added protection.

[Vipassana]

Now for the exciting news: my first trail ride with this bike!

On Sunday I traveled out to SanTan Mountain Park to meet my coworkers for a ride (they were on their new Chinese carbon bikes as well).  We met up at about 6:30 AM and the place was swimming with hikers all trying to beat the heat.  We started at 85° and ended at about 102°.  All totaled, I did about 30 miles.

My impressions are below.  Let me preface this with the following: This is my first hardtail in a decade.  This is also my first carbon anything.  So many of my impressions are probably due to this being a completely different animal than my last bike and not necessarily due to the fact that it is a Chinese carbon bike. 

CLIMBING:  This bike climbs like a goat!  Its actually the most noticeable thing about the bike that I observed on this ride.  I was making great time on hills that were burdensome before.  I'm certain some of this was due to new bike adrenaline and increased fitness (I've been training on the spin bikes and road bike a lot in the past month), but much of it was also due to a properly fitted hardtail with minimal weight.  I was able to negotiate all hills I encountered with the exception of one which I had to hop off for a technical reason (lost traction near the top and spun out in some gravel).  The 32T 42/10T XX1/X01 gearing was just fine.  I wasn't looking for any higher or lower gears.

The short chainstays and the shorter ETT length (compared to my Giant) put me in a sweet spot to stand and power up hills.  Besides the one spin out, it was sold and planted.  And I was running pretty high pressure at ~25-27 psi.  I think I will try 23-24 psi on the next ride.  There are a few seated, ultra tight climbing switchbacks and I was able to power up them with ease.  On the Giant, the long wheelbase would always swing me out wide and I'd run out of trail.

I was also really trying to power some of these climbs to see how much the bike would flex.  Well, it doesn't.  Any flex seems to be the tire on the rim.  Besides that, the frame is stiff as hell and resists pedaling forces.  The wheels seem the same.  WAY, WAY, WAY stiffer (in terms of pedaling forces) than my Giant FS.  I mean not even comparable really.

COMFORT/RIDE QUALITY:  This is a fairly rocky trail and I will admit, the hardtail beat me up a bit.  I have a lot of work to do to improve the lines I pick and to judge when to stand over an obstacle.  My FS Anthem is more "comfortable", but also far more unwieldy than this bike.  When I tried to focus on my lines and put together a smooth ride, I found the comfort level to be much improved.  I suspect that on longer rides, as I get fatigued, I will get sloppy on my lines and standing technique and will get beat up more than on the FS.  But the lack of "bobbing" and "bouncing" while pedaling on flats and climbs offset it, at least on this day.  After 30 miles I wasn't dying to get off, and my back wasn't killing me. 

I really can speak to the damping qualities of the carbon as compared to an aluminum or steel hardtail though as its been years since I've seriously ridden either.  I can say that the carbon frame seems loader.  Pebble strikes and such amplify throughout the frame.  It's loud, but not alarming or anything.  It's really just a strange... "hollow" feeling/sound.  It doesn't feel "solid" like a metal frame, but I don't mean that in a negative way.  It feels like plastic and I can see why riding a carbon bike might make some die-hards nervous as it sounds breakable.

The free coaster hub buzzes like angry bees on fast downhills.  Very cool. 

Overall, the bike is highly maneuverable compared to the Giant.  I had zero issues getting it to go where I pointed it regardless of speed or traction.  I am likely not as fast on the downhills yet.  Perhaps I'll get more bold and feel out the bike a bit more.  But I bet I'm damn close to where I used to be.




I'm hoping that with increased fitness and a more efficient climbing bike, I can make some good gains on the climbs.  I may loose some time on the downhills, but I don't think those are what win races anyway (at least not the type I do).  A climb is a long event in most rides.  It might take you 20+ minutes.  If you can improve your time by 10%, then you're saving a lot more time overall than if you improve our downhill time by 10% on a 2 minute descent.  My strategy is to go a little harder on the climbs and use the descent to recover.  I hope this bike will support that strategy.



I encountered three problems with the bike:

1) The brake line inside the downtube was LOUD.  Thwack! over every bump. And the whole carbon frame acted as an amplifier. :unamused:  I fixed this last night with about $0.10 worth of foam pushed into the down tube.  It pins the brake line against the tube so that it can't hop around.  Dead silent now even if I drop the bike from two feet in the air.

2) The headset loosened up some and was creaking from time to time.  Last night I disassembled it and greased the contact points between the headset bearings and the frame/steerer tube.  It seems silent now so we'll have to see how it does with trail abuse this week.

3) My seat post dropped about 0.5" over the course of the ride.  Not enough that it impacted my riding, but it felt a bit "off".  I will apply some more gritty carbon paste and retighten it and keep an eye on it.

Pictures:








I miss the comfort of the Giant Anthem over the rocky areas, but the efficiency of this bike is worth it.  It will be nice to have both for whatever type of riding I'm feeling like.  My wife seems to have forgotten about my promise to sell the Giant to build the Chiner.
 

[Vipassana]

And for those curious, here is the foam inside the downtube to stop the cable noise.  The foam is that stuff used to cover outdoor pipes.  I trimmed it a bit to fit.  There are two ~2.5" long pieces in the downtube.  One at the water bottle cage mounts and one at the top near the headset.  I positioned the missing section to be where the shifter cable is to prevent any interference and then pushed them into place with a small dowel.  They are reasonably snug in there and work well so far.




Here is the headset after disassembly after the ride.  The top bearing had some signs of movement in the headset (brown marks on the bearing indicate movement/hot-spotting.  There was also a bunch of carbon/paint/clear coat flakes/dust.  I cleaned both races very well and applied a thin layer of silicon grease made for car suspension.  So far it seems quiet, but only trail testing will let us know for sure.

[Sussed.]

I put some street miles on the bike on Friday; 46 miles in total to and from work.  A good portion of the ride is on the streets with traffic, but there are a few miles riding along the canals.  There was a neat sunset on the way home.  Overall, the bike was a joy to ride and is nearly as snappy as my road bike. (not saying much as my "road" bike is actually a converted cyclocross bike  that weighs in at 24lbs).  I was able to ride comfortably at 16-19 mph the whole way. 

Great work Vips !  Love the shadow photo.

Think its only right to get your mates builds photos up here too !   

[Carbon_Dude]

Shadow pic really is eye catching.  Thanks for taking the time to post all those pictures as well as all the write up and ride review.  Overall I think most of what you posted is also true for the IP-057, the ride quality, the maneuverability, and the stiffness are all things that I immediately noticed I liked over my previous AL hardtail.

Looks like all you guys are happy with your Chiners.

[Vipassana]

It's good to get the feedback from you guys with previous hardtail experience.  Like I said, it's hard for me to know what is a result if the carbon as a material and what is the result of the hardtail frame as a chassis.  I'm beginning to think much of it can be attributed to the shear stiffness of the carbon material on the 057 or 256.  I would really like to ride two materials back to back.  I have found Chinese/Taiwanese aluminum hardtails on eBay for $200-300.  They look nice, but are at least one pound heavier and didn't seem to have BB30 or tapered head tubes. Though I didn't search long.  But that's a really cheap experiment!

I have been delinquent on pictures of my buddies' bikes. They have removed the bikes from my garage so it's hard to get pictures now. I'll work on it though.

Lastly, as promised, Peter delivered my rigid fork today.  It's light. It is almost exactly 1000g lighter than the SID I have which translates to 2.2lbs lighter when installed.  I will wait to install it until after my races coming up in September.  I have a race picked out in December that I think I'll try it on.  It's a 12 hour team race doing laps on my favorite 15 mile loop out here.  I know the trail like the back of my hand and it's pretty smooth for 85% of it. 

[Carbon_Dude]

Nice fork Vipassana!  No trails close to me that I would ride a rigid fork but if I built a bike for commuting it would be a good way to go, it so light get still provides good ride quality.

Vipassana, what state you in?  Looks like some of your pictures are from out West.

[Vipassana]

Arizona.  Burn and bred.