Pedro Liska's Blog

Still snowing and next week will be rainy. Why?! I just want to bike!

Since about a year ago, I noticed that the headset of my bike (Specialized FSR xc Pro 2007) was a little loose. So I took it apart, cleaned it, and adjusted it. I found some great instructions on how to make the adjustment in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headset_(bicycle_part)#Threadless_headsets .

I always thought the cap bolt was there just for looks: to hold the cap that covers the ugly tube’s hole. But it actually plays a critical role when tightening your headset: it is the one that controls how tight you want everything to be before you tighten the stem bolts (the stem is the one that holds the steering bar) .

Here are some pics. I first took it al apart and cleaned each part:

 

I then applied new grease to the ball bearings and cups and assembled it (note that the BBs on the third pic have no grease, I noticed this as I took the pic and added some):

                     

I went biking on Saturday to the trails near home and I realized that the trails have been ready for quite a while. I could have started biking on them about 3 weeks ago!

The weather was perfect and the trails were mostly dry. I still found some mud spots, mostly because there are snow patches that are melting. But I think it’s safe to say that the lower altitude trails are ready.

Sadly, it will be raining most of next week so I might not be able to go but after that, I’ll be biking.

I tried my new bike shoes and pedals, they worked great. I have the pedals on the loosest setting, allowing the shoes to unclip easily. I did not fall once because of failure to unclip. I like how I can now use more muscles to pedal. Instead of only pedaling down, I now pedal from front to back and down and up. I tried also pedaling from back to front but it feels like that puts too much pressure on my knees and I don’t like that.

Since I did a trail that I had done many times, I noticed that my endurance sucks right now. It will take about a month to get back to where I was last year I think.

I’ve been using my Specialized FSR XC Pro for 1.5 years now and the user manual says you should do some easy maintenance things every ride,  tare apart half of the front shock (“remove the lowers”) every 50 hours of riding, and service it in full (tare it apart entirely) every 100 hours of riding.

I’ve been pretty good with the “every ride” maintenance. But I estimate that I’ve ridden a minimum of 500 hours this year alone. So I thought it was time to do the other harder maintenances. Since I enjoy fixing my bike, I decided to do this myself.

It took me a good amount of time to find which service manual to use. All of the Rock Shox manuals have a big year in front so I thought I had to figure out what year my shock was; and the shock does not have any info on it, only its model. But it turns out that it really does not matter. My shock is a “Reba” model and the instructions were the same (actually some of the pictures were exactly the same) in the 2005-2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 service manuals.

I used the 2005-2006 service manual because it was made for only 3 models of shock (reba included of course) as opposed to the others that were bigger because they were good for like 20 different models.

Here are some pics of the disassembled shock:

 

Once it is torn apart, you can really understand how the shock works. It is very cool and interesting.

I need to go back to the bike shop before I put it together though. I got the wrong suspension oils, my Reba shock needs 5wt for the top of the motion control damper leg and 15wt for the bushings, seals, bottom motion control damper leg, and the top and bottom of the air spring leg.

I really did not have to tare the shock apart entirely though. The “top” of the legs (which are protected from the dust by the bottom legs) were in excellent shape. But the “bottoms” were really nasty, there was a lot of dirt inside that. But all the seals and bushings looked ok.

I think I’ll take the bottoms off every year and get to the tops only every two years.

Once I assemble the bike, I’ll service the rear shock and then bleed my rear break. Good times =)

I went biking today and it was 45 degrees F (7 deg C). It was about the same temperature as 2 weeks ago when I went to the bobsled and roller coaster. This time I went to the Draper trails that are close to home.

Biking in 45F is really not too bad but I did notice that I’m more susceptible to the cold than my biking friends. It could be because I’m from Guatemala where it’s always 65 to 85 F.

The worst happens when I’m breathing heavily and my lungs get so cold they start to hurt. That is why today I walked up the really steep hills and that made things alright.

The other thing that gets to me more than others is that my ears get cold and they begin hurting inside. That is why I carry earmuffs from now on. I did not need to wear them today though.

But overall biking rocked like always =)

The weather was nice this weekend so Cody, Shawn, and I were able to squeeze in an awesome bike ride on Saturday.

We did the roller coaster and the bobsled. My two favorite trails. On the roller coaster I got to 37.3 miles/hr on one of the down ups! http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=102623185404002894496.00044dda2ac662918ceb9&ll=40.755905,-111.810822&spn=0.014775,0.026178&t=h&z=16 

That is definitely the fastest I’ve gone on dirt single-track. When I was at the bottom of the down and starting to go up, my rear suspension was maxing out on really small bumps! I love it how you feel those G’s on you.

And when we got to the bobsled, Cody pulled off the Jump where I got the 6×4 inch scrape on my leg about 2 months ago.

 

I’m still a bit psyched out about the accident so I decided not to do the jump until next year and after a couple of good rides. It had been more than a week since the last time I rode my bike.

In short, I had an amazing time! I uploaded 21 pics to facebook for you guys to see. You can view them even if you don’t have a facebook account by clicking here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=174987&l=871ed&id=879910713 . I added detailed descriptions at the bottom of some pics.

Carol and I camped on Hal Campground; right next to the Colorado River. The plan was to sleep there Friday and Saturday night but the first night was too cold and we decided to drive back Saturday night after my long ride.

On Friday I did the famous Slick Rock Trail and on Saturday I did the Porcupine Rim trail. Even though the Porcupine Rim trail was really bumpy it had some really fast single track parts that I loved and made me like it more than the Slick Rock trail in which you cannot really get tons of speed. But don’t get me wrong, both trials were awesome! On the Slick Rock Trail, you ride almost all the time on the red Moab limestone, which provides a sandpaper grip on your bike tires, very cool.

I broke a spoke on my bike last Saturday as I flew off some sweet jumps with Cody. When I was fixing that yesterday I realized that my breaks were squeaking because the pads were completely worn out! Luckily the disk was not damaged. I just finished fixing my bike up and it is ready for some world class mountain biking at the slick rock and porcupine rim trails at moab tomorrow and Saturday.

My left knee. Why me??!! I love to bike! If it gets worse I’ll go with a specialist. I know a general doctor would not know what is up.

I have increased my cadence (pedal faster in an easier gear) to relieve the pressure placed on the knee. Hopefully that does the trick.

I’m sure it’s hurting because I’ve been biking too much now that winter is coming.

Fall officially started today, it rained on and off all weekend and today.

Even though I enjoy the colors of fall, overall I prefer summer. Needless to say, I prefer it because I can bike whenever I want. I now have to keep one eye on the weather and in about a month it will be hard to squeeze a bike ride between the rain and the cold.