Refit handlebars / New Ergon handebar grips + bar ends / strip down Hope XC Rear hub

Wasn't going to do a lot today on the bike, still waiting for a few bits to arrive tomorrow so I can rebuild the crankset / put the old Middleburn chainrings back on the new Middleburn crank.  I ordered some blingy anodized red Middleburn chainring bolts to replace the rusting bolts that had been holding the rings onto the old Shimano Deore crank yesterday, so just waiting for that to arrive really.

Handlebars / Riser

In the end I decided to sort out the handlebars / riser bar - I'd mistakenly put the bar on the wrong way 'up'... in all the time I'd used the old Marin Nail Trail bike, I don't think I'd ever had the need to take the handlebar riser off the bike... anyway I decided to give the riser and stem a good wash before putting it back on the new bike, and in the process I'd put the riser back on upside down... oops!

Spot the difference:

Riser / handlebar upside down

And the right way up!

Looks a lot better actually in the second picture, must admit I didn't think about it at all until I noticed some 'patches' on the riser where the bar used to be sited in between the stem clamps which were the wrong way around.

Anyway, easily fixed, took off the gear shifters / brake levers, plus took off the old Specialized ergonomic grips that I'd had on and the bar ends, flipped the riser around, refixed it, then put back the gear/brake shifters/levers.

Ergon GC3 Ergonomic Grips

Also at the same time I added on the new Ergon GC3 bar grips which arrived yesterday:

Wonderful packaging...

... really ...

... and sooo recycleable! ...

... OK that's better ;)

The grips are ... well they're grips!  Not a lot to say about them really other than they're very comfortable and you'd especially notice how comfortable if you're moving from plain grips.  It's like putting on a comfy pair of gloves, they just feel 'right' somehow and you soon start to wonder why you ever put up with the old grips you had on.

They take a bit of adjusting to get it just right, but not that much really, maybe one ride out just to test them and see how they are.  Adjust them when you get back and you're done pretty much.

So, yes... they're grips, they do the job, what else is there to say!  Hah well if you're like me and fascinated as much by the engineering and thought that goes into something fairly 'obvious'... read on...

Ok so handlebar grips aren't exactly the most complicated of components to add to a bike, but I like all the little things that this German company Ergon have done to make life as simple as possible.  As with lots of things, German engineering* makes what is an ordinarily 'ok' product just that little bit better and more usable/functional/recyclable.

Very clever little 'assembly tool'...

For example they include a very simple little 'assembly tool' (see middle picture above) - really, it's just a piece of card(!)... but it actually made it more obvious to me that I hadn't slipped the grip on all the way as I should have done (I'd actually put the grips on BEFORE I realized they'd even included this little 'assembly tool'!!).







The engineering of the grips themselves is also very good and has a reliable sturdy feel to it.  The rubber material itself seems OK, although I must admit I'm not so sure about the 'end bars' that come with it.  I was torn between going with these slightly shorter endbars and the longer version that they do (the GP5 grips).  Anyway, not to worry, they should be OK and at a stretch there is always the option to just take off the 'integrated' endbars and replace them with a longer separate version at a later date (they pop off quite easily).

Also the packaging is interesting in it's own way - it's made from completely recyclable material, a really basic / seemingly obvious (you would think), but sturdy paper pulp like material that's been recycled from discarded newspaper or similar.  The box is actually quite solid and you could probably jump on it and (nearly!) not damage it, yet if you left it out in the rain it would probably disintegrate within a few hours, it's that kind of pulpy material. ;)  Bleh anyway going on... I just find the German 'aesthete' quite interesting / inspiring.

Hope XC rear hub servicing

Anyway... back to the bike... after refitting the handlebars I decided to strip down the Hope XC rear hub and the old Shimano 9 speed M770(?) cassette (XT I think it was?).  Not a straightforward job at all to be true but it needed doing so I just got on with it.

The internals were reassuringly black and gunky - I always use a purply/red Silkolene grease on the bottom bracket, and this grease was nothing like purply/red, more like jet black... so yes, definitely needed servicing!  I think I'd been hoodwinked into thinking it was fine by the fact I'd recently cleaned the cassette, wheel and outside of the hub to within an inch of their lives... but this was not the case and it definitely needed a good clean internally.

So, I got the Hope 'block' / freehub body stripped down - I seemed to have more trouble than usual taking the drive side spacer off... it's usually annoyingly fiddly and prone to damaging the lovely anodized red finish, but this time it was even worse... lack of light (bloody winter) didn't help!

Took all the springs/pawls out (well practiced now in making sure the springs don't fly out all over the shop!) and gave them all a good degrease/wash down.  I think it's fair to say the pawls and springs are probably on their way out, and the bearings and freehub body itself aren't that far off needing replacement as well.

I had a quick look at prices and it looks like £42 for a new freehub body on CRC, which isn't too bad at all really given that it will last a good 5-10,000 miles (based on the current one anyway - which is a lot more than can be said for those crappy American Classic freehub bodies which seem to be made of cheese and only last a couple of thousand miles if you're very lucky AND service it every few months... don't get me started on that, bloody money sink those are... meh).

Have to say though - after bigging up German engineering - Hope Tech do some really incredibly beautiful engineering right here in the UK**.  Their design for their Hope hub products is so incredibly simple and purely functional, no 'frills' in terms of badly engineered/built componentry... yet at the same time they manage to make the hubs looks so pretty.


So, anyway, yes more money to be spent there by the looks of it, though I'll probably just re-assemble the current bits and carry on using it for another 3-6 months or so.

Cassettes - service or replace...?

Always a debate every time you change a component in the drive train: whether to replace the whole lot - chain+cassette+chainrings(+jockey wheels if you're very unlucky), or just try and replace an individual part and hope it runs in smoothly with the old parts.  Invariably if you go for the latter option, you just end up having to buy each of the parts one by one anyway as you find that, no, in fact the new chain you bought doesn't work with the old chainrings... and, actually, no, that cassette will need changing as well now because the chain doesn't run right on it!

To try and avoid that, I had hoped to re-use the full drive train from the old Marin bike on this new Surly bike.  However, unfortunately for one reason or another that can't happen (main issue was that the chain length of the old chain was too short for the longer chainstays on the Surly frame so I had to get a new chain... but now I've got the problem above where the cassette and chainrings also need changing!).

So... it looks like I'll be putting on the new SRAM PG990 cassette that arrived yesterday.  Which is a real shame because the old drivetrain was quite serviceable / only had a few thousand miles on it (plus the Middleburn rings were very expensive so I'd hoped - still do hope - to re-use those on this new bike).

This new cassette looks damned pimpy though with the red anodized carrier... I don't know whether to put it on the bike or leave it on the desk next to me here just to stare at for hours on end... :p  In my defence, it was VERY cheap - £40 reduced from £90 or something like that... not sure why exactly, perhaps they're stopping selling them now or have a few left to get rid of before ending the line on CRC? .... Ok who am I kidding, the only reason I got it was because the red fit in with the rest of the red/black/white colour scheme hehe...:

SRAM PG990 9spd 11-34t cassette, pimpy red. :p
Ok, it's upside down.  But it looks far cooler that way... :p
Also an optical illusion?! Looks like it's bulging out in the middle bizarrely?!

The design of this SRAM cassette is quite good though I think: the bottom 6 sprockets are all pinned onto a single solid aluminium(?) carrier / billet (the red bit you can see above in the image), which should mean there's less chance that the sprockets will eat into the freehub block/body.

This is a major flaw / issue / annoyance with most cassettes where you have each sprocket attached to the freehub body individually: with that type of cassette, all the weight of the rider's downstroke transfers into pressure on a single sprocket (ie the gear they're currently in), which in turn means there's more chance the sprocket will 'dig' into the freehub body causing it to get scuffed up and fail quicker / make it harder to remove the cassette later for servicing because of all the nicks on the freehub body.

Compare that to this kind of cassette where a number of sprockets (6 in this case) are pinned to a single block / carrier - the pressure is distributed more evenly across a number of sprockets / across the width of the freehub body.  As a result, in theory the freehub body should last longer and not become deformed as easily.

Well... that's what I think anyway...  but enough of that techy stuff already!

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* - other notable German bike items I can think of where great engineering design make things better are Abus (locks), Ortlieb (panniers) and SKS (mudguards).

** - and whilst I'm on the subject of good UK engineering, USE do great seatposts and Middleburn do great cranks!