With last night’s evening trail loop, I’ve finally decided that there
have been enough trouble-free rides on the Poprad that I can risk
jinxing it by reporting it.
It’s
been stuck in a recursive loop of crank failures and warranty returns.
But, the folks at Ritchey have been easy to deal with, and I had the
luxury of being patient on this one. Clearly, the new forging is
correct. I like the new inletting, too. That’s it on the left
before I installed it.
The events have, of course, led me to a certain dislike of splined
bottom bracket systems. If this last go around wasn’t able to have
fixed things, I was heading back to square-taper land. As it is, the
new BB, which I had purchased somewhere in the trouble-shooting phase,
has an odd design feature - no lock ring. You just crank the thing down
and it’s supposed to stick in place. It has not given me the
utmost confidence, and I think it had a bout of creaking which seems to
have subsided. (Either that or the Joan Jett concert nipped away at my
hearing…)
Other than that, I had swapped out the Avid 6’s for the old LX canti’s which were stock on the M2.
Between the four brake arms, I was able to put together a decent
pair. The Avids had been squawkers, which I thought was my setup,
then the pads, then my setup of the new pads, then simply a result of
the front end of the Poprad. But, folks on the iBob list
had been report they were noisy buggers, and the mostly-quiet setup I
arrived at wasn’t terribly and had a ridiculous amount of toe-in. The
LX’s started with a good vocal presence, but have now been tuned to
silence. Plus, they stop the bicycle.
It’s ridicously cool right now for the first week in July, and despite
wearing my thickest wool s/s jersey last evening, I was cold as I
climbed home into a headwind. The orchid thermometer showed that it
barely crested into the 70’s on the back porch. I’ll probably be
bitching about the heat in a couple weeks.