A few weeks ago I purchased a new rack for my Chiners.  My old rack hung my bikes by the frame and I got really tired of using straps and such to secure the bikes.  I use my wife's 2004 Honda CR-V to haul my bike to the trail so I decided I wanted to stick with a spare tire rack if possible.  My old bike rack worked well mounting to the spare tire, it was easy to install and remove, didn't touch the paint on the car, was light weight, and was inexpensive.

I looked at several platform style racks but they all required my to install a trailer hitch on the car which to me was additional expense and would only be used to hold the bike rack as I've never needed a hitch on the CR-V for anything in the 10 years we've owned it.

Low and behold, Saris just came out with a relatively inexpensive ($189+free shipping) platform rack that mounts to my spare tire.  Here is a link to the Saris website:  http://www.saris.com/product/freedom-spare-tire.  So I ordered one to find out how I would like it.  Well, it works great and holds two bike securely.  Loading and unloading a bike is a snap, just three ratcheting straps.  Installing and removing the rack also only takes about 2 minutes.  The Saris Freedom rack is also available in hitch mount as well but for me this worked just as well and I didn't need to install a hitch. 

So far the rack is working great.  Boom the rack is on, bike is on and I'm hitting the trail!



P.S.  - It's made in the USA .

Back when I built my IP-057, here is what I did to dial in my Rockshox Reba RLT Dual Air.  I'm sure this method would work with most Rockshox forks so I thought I'd post up as I've heard many people do not take the time to dial in their fork.

1) Air pressure - Using the o-ring, I checked my sag and found that even though the air pressure was right for my weight, there was too much sag so I added some air with my shock pump, matching pressures in both the positive and negative air chambers).

2) Rebound - I set the rebound to about 20% from the fastest setting. Some sections of the trails I ride are pretty fast (20+ mph), there are lots of small rocks and roots on the trails so a faster rebound setting seemed like it should work well.

3) Compression - just a few clicks from fully open. I wanted to use most of the fork travel.

4) Flood gate setting - This is a little tricky and it seems to have more affect than I anticipated, even when the fork is not totally locked out. I set this about 25% from fully open.

The above settings made a very noticeable difference, fork was much smoother and took away much of the harshness I was feeling on the trail. I hope this feedback helps others get their forks setup for a better ride.

So the other day I had loaded my bike on the rack on our Honda CR-V, something I've done a hundred times.  However, this time I learned something.  Do not put your carbon wheel near your exhaust pipe and get stuck in traffic on a hot day.  Never had an issue before, but this time I caused myself a problem.  A combination of a carbon wheel, a hot day, and sitting in traffic was just right to cause damage to my front wheel, even though it was at least 12 inches away from the exhaust pipe.

I ended up going home instead of riding that day because of a pop up thunderstorm, and as it turns out I'm glad I didn't ride, the wheel is a bit warped and I would not trust the damage I caused would not cause a catastrophic failure of the wheel.

Lesson learned, even though the wheels was more than a foot away from the exhaust pipe, carbon wheels do not like any heat.  I have since changed how the bike sits when loaded on my bike rack.  Contacted Peter at XMIplay the same day I damaged the wheel and ordered a replacement rim.

Of course I have pictures, what would my story be without pictures?

Not good...


Replacement rim arrives:


Now for a front wheel rebuild, I will probably do it myself but I may also check and see what the LBS charges:

Here is what appears to be an IP-057 XT Build with Stans Arch EX wheels for $1395 near me.  Smokin' deal on a Chiner if you ask me.

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/bik/4466819479.html

After posting a reply on MTBR just a short while ago, I was thinking that we could start a thread for those people that want a nice Chiner but don't want to, or don't have the technical expertise to build a bike themselves.  If we have enough forum members scattered around the country, there might be someone who would pay another person who lives nearby, to build the bike for them.

I know if someone were willing to pay me for my time, I could very easily do the assembly.

Today I played around a bit with a new iOS app named BikeBrain.  It's free in the Appstore but there are a few features that are disabled in the free version.

I don't have a bar mount for my iPhone, and I doubt I ever will, but I do carry my iPhone with me when I ride.  I don't care for iPhone bar mounts because putting a phone on your bars is just too much for me.  I like my small Planet Bike Protege 9 just fine.

The app is cool in a few way though, first it gives you some pretty cool screens if you did choose to mount the phone on your bars.  Here are some screen shots:



Here is a screen shot from my ride today:



I'm not sure the GPS is as accurate as a calibrated bike computer, the GPS only polls so many times a minute and I doubt it accounts for wheel travel during elevation changes.  Today's ride was 10mi on my bike computer but only 8.8mi on BikeBrain.  The app has the ability to link up to bluetooth sensors to get wheel rotation, heart rate, etc.  So maybe if I had a BT wheel sensor of some sort it would be more accurate.  The app does store previous rides so you can see and compare your ride stats.

I'm not a huge technogeek but I thought the app was pretty cool.  The only real drawback I saw was during my 2 hrs of using BikeBrain my battery level dropped by as much as 50%, so you need your phone to be well charged prior to riding.

I"m not a tree hugger, but as a Mechanical Engineer I think the car is extremely interesting.  A friend at work bought one and since what we do at work is design batteries and chargers, everyone is looking at it.  Currently GA offers a $5,000 rebate on top of the $7,500 rebate from the Federal Govt.  He leased his Leaf for 24 months @ $360/month, no money down, 12,000 mi/yr..  The leasing company gets the $7,500 but he gets the $5,000 rebate.  So is cost would be $8,640 -$5000 = $3,650 or about $151/month.  He figures he'll save about $100/month not buying gas so the offset cost is $50 month.  Where can you find a new car for $50/month!!!

At the end of the lease he can turn it in and walk away.  Pretty fun to drive an electric car that cheap.

For my IP-056, I purchased a DT Swiss Wheelset with DT Swiss 240 hubs. The wheels were take-offs from a high end Rock Mountain element.  The XR1450 wheel set is super light but the rims are not as strong as I would like given my weight and trails conditions.  I have bent a rear rim and had to replace it.  I may replace the rims in the future with carbon hoops but for now they are working well enough but the hubs have been great, definitely would recommend them.

By far DT Swiss have been my favorite set of hubs that I've owned and here is why:
1) Tool-free serviceability.
2) Available in straight-pull spoke configuration.  The J-bend in a spoke is a weak point, I like straight pull spokes as they are generally stronger.
3)  XD freehub compatibility for SRAM XX1 11-speed cassette.
4)  Excellent durability.
5)  IMO, the star ratchet is far superior to any pawl type rear hub.
6)  The bearings are extremely high quality compared to my new set of BiTex hubs that I got with my XMIplay Carbon wheels.  With the same effort, when I spin a wheel with the bike on the work stand, the DT Swiss wheels spin up to 6X longer than the wheels with BiTex hubs, it's like the hubs have nearly zero friction.

If I were to build another set of wheels, I'd do XMIplay Carbon Hoops along with DT Swiss 350 hubs (much cheaper than the 240s hubs) and not much difference.  Another hub alternative is SRAM XO hubs, I believe they are very similar to the DT Swiss 240 or 350 hubs.