Vallie Components - bicycle part and accessory design

My hubs just arrived. I ran down the 8 flights of stairs to meet the delivery person. As i was opening the box I practically couldn't breathe. Incredible. Super Rat did a great job with these. I'm just assembling them now on my kitchen counter. It turns out I can just use an extra set of bearings and some washers to press them together. No mallet or vise needed! Once assembled they've got some heft to them, but they spin SO SMOOTHLY. I'm going to lace up a wheel and get riding STAT!

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Super Rat keeps sending me teaser shots of my stuff. Here's one of my cogs, before going off for oxide coating:

I'm actually going to be testing out a couple of different tooth profiles to see what what works best. This is the straight tooth configuration. There's also an ANSI chain roller spec. round tooth one on the way. I figure the icy landscape of Montreal will be a perfect testing grounds for these parts.

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Somewhere along the way, I've become a weight weenie.

I took my trusty Seshin BMX out yesterday for a workout at the Brooklyn Banks. My bike is built to 2005 spec, with 14mm 48H wheels, heavy forks, and mostly overbuilt parts. I did that intentionally at the time, knowing I would be crashing the bike repeatedly. I wanted it to hold up to my hack riding.

Now I'm feeling like the bike could stand to lose some weight here and there. I ride with a little more grace than I did back then, and I am not doing any massive drops to flat. I weighed it yesterday and it came to 28.2lbs. That's not terrible, but its still pretty high up there when compared to today's street machines. Even some completes weigh in less than my bike.

Thinking about it a little more, I wanted to know just how much difference some new parts would make. So I devised a little spreadsheet

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I'm going to be setting up the REAL valliecomponents.com site pretty soon.
Its done in Joomla, so I'll be porting this blog over there, as its a much more powerful content management system.

In other news I've got all the stainless hardware I'll need, as well as spokes and a rim for the new wheels. I'm currently waiting for the UPS guy to bring my bearings.. and to hear from Super Rat on when my prototypes ship.

I've also been inspired to figure out how to look at 3D modeling from a frame builder's perspective. An email from a local builder here got me thinking..



This is going to be a very exciting year (..not to say that 2008 wasn't).
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