My lovely silver 66cm Quickbeam had been sitting pretty much unused since last October when I took delivery of my new 62cm Hunqapillar. There was nothing wrong with it, but somehow it gets hard to get off a new bike.
But it wasn't right. I still loved the QB. I just needed a good excuse. It finally came to me. The QB had ended up being set up with a Platrack up front which often sported a big Wald. It was great for shopping and hauling stuff around, but I was getting the feeling that my QB might want to run a wee bit lighter. After all a Hunq can carry pretty much anything you can throw at it so why have to two bikes set up more or less the same wa? I'm a January birthday boy and after purchasing the Hunq I had a decent amount of rebate due so I decided a cockpit change was in order for the QB. I'd fallen in love with Albatross bars so I decided I'd move from Moustache bars to Albas on the QB as well. I'm not giving up on the Moustache bars, they'll be going to Hilo to replace the drops on the RB-1 I keep there. I'm not a big drop fan so it'll mean I'll probably ride more when I'm in Hilo. This was also a good time to replace the cables and housing on my QB. I ordered new Albas, a new Tallux 13cm stem (big guy, 66cm QB, big stem - it's perfect), new Shimano brake levers, and cabling to boot. I also ordered a set of Portuguese cork grips. That meant I had to mix up a batch of shellac. I use so little of the stuff that buying a pint isn't really a deal as most of goes to waste after a couple of years. I find mixing up a couple of ounces at a time from flakes a better deal - besides it's fun. The rebuild itself was almost very smooth. I always forget my bikes are big enough I need extra long cables to reach the rear of the bike - I had to run out and get a tandem cable once I realized this. I also needed to replace my front barrel adjuster - but luckily I figured this all out in time such that I only had to make one trip to the LBS. Everything went pretty well after that. I had no trouble and in a couple of hours (lots of breaks) I had a brand new bike - sort of. :-) I did have to wait for the shellac to mix so I rode for one day with some cheap rubber grips I had laying around. Worked fine, ugly though. Then disaster struck. When putting on one of the cork grips I managed to break the darn thing. Luckily it was pretty clean break and I didn't lose any material. I was bemoaning the fact that I'd have to order another set when I realized that once they were on my bike both ends of the break would push together and be pretty much unnoticeable. Beausage of different sort I guess. Ultimately it turns out you can tell if you look at it up close but I can't feel any difference and a little imperfection never really bothers me so until they wear out completely I'm good. I did a few good coats of shellac, let it dry and voila...time to ride. Yesterday I went out for 20 mile jaunt after work and stopped to take some not so great photos with my camera phone. I'll have to get out with a decent camera at some point, but some aren't too bad at smaller sizes. There are also a couple of shots of the bike with the ugly rubber grips, though at larger sizes you can they blur a bit. All in all I'm thrilled. Now I have a Hunq that can carry anything and a relatively lighter Quickbeam. Good stuff. Here's a few shots of the whole deal... http://www.flickr.com/photos/mgps-bob/sets/72157632587418243/ Aloha, Bob -- Robert Harrison Honolulu, HI [email protected] statrix.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
