Mountain bike talk.
This wasn’t today. This was a couple weeks ago on the first day of the TRans NZ. first day was a brutal 37km and about 1450vm of climbing and descending at Craigieburn.
I was hearing lotsa crick cracking coming from my hub or somewhere but being out in Castle hill there was no mechanics or shops until we got to Queenstown in 2 days and without pulling the whole thing down on trail I couldn’t identify exactly where the sound was coming from.
shifting sucked too.
So I finish the day, roll back into the garage of my lodge, pull the cassette off and find…..drum roll. This.
This hope Freehub is meant to have bearings in there. But the bearings are not there. They weren’t on the floor below the bike, they definitely weren’t on the trail. They have just teleported into who the fuck knows where. Bearings are hard right? They don’t just grind up into dust.
So the next day was gonna be another big day. Maybe 1000vm. Again. No shop around. So I put the cassette back on and it’s wobbling all over the place. Nope. Not gonna work. So pull the cassette off again and we decide to (by this stage I had about half a dozen amateur mechanics, beers in hand standing around offering opinions.
Zip ties. We jammed the perimeter of the bearing shell with vertically inserted zip ties and this shored up the whole deal. Cassette back on
And believe it or not without an outer hub bearing it got me through another day. Albeit with horrible shifting and a bit more noise.
So we get back to the lodge that morning and jump on a mini bus for the 7 hour bus ride to QT. I’m madly on the phone to every bike shop trying to get a Hope PRO4 Xd freehub. Hope pro 5? No problem. Not compatible though. Pro4, sorry. No have. We can build you a new wheel for a $1000 though! Yeahnah.
Problem was we were arriving after closing time. 7 pm. One shop said they’d stay open and fix a few bikes. The rest said nah man. Can’t be bothered. Well I get there and they had no bearing for it. One of the most common bearing sizes and they no have.
well that was Fcuked. So I speak to Megan the organiser and she’s got one last Hail Mary.
A dude from Bikaholic is going come to the shop at 8pm and open up for me. So I start riding to the shop think maybe if he can’t fix it I can make it through the rest of the race? Who knows. I got through that day and I sure as hell didn’t want to hire a whole bike to steel a wheel from from for the next 4 days. $$$$
Well 500m from the shop the entire freehub seizes. I had to scoot the rest of the way like a balance bike. QT IIS a hilly fucking place! As promised Ryan the legend is at the shop waiting and rips the free hub off, and it literally explodes into pieces. No fixing it. It’s completely and utterly rooted.
Aaaaaaaand no Xd free hubs to replace it. He said sorry man. I think your fucked.
So I remember seeing an HG freehub in his used parts drawer a few minutes earlier. So we chucked it on and a new xt cassette and away I went. Back in action. Finished up at 10.30pm, missed dinner and briefing and the next day i dropped in some hazy ales as a thankyou for the legendary service at Bikeaholic. As he also sorted a couple of other small issues*
I went from 10-51 to 11-46 so the earing sucked and it cost me a first place spot
But got me rolling
The ones here with a good memory might also remember that two zip ties held my brake pads in on the final stage Trouty at the Trans TAS a couple years ago.
Moral of the story. ALWAYS carry zip ties.
*other small issue. A guy on the shuttle trail was worried about his fender getting damaged. Removed it by taking off the bleed nipples that attached it and the knob didn’t put them back in. So half way there someone noticed that all the bikes from his to the back of the trailer are covered in oil. You guessed it. His fucking fork oil. Well all the affected bikes were carefully pulled off without spinning the wheels or rotors and cleaned with rotor cleaner. Problem sorted. For me I had to jump on the bike straight away and get my bike fixed. I didn’t see any oil on my rotor but sure enough there was and it fucked my front pads and cost me a new set and a full clean.
Shit happens.
