It's been more than 3 months since the last post - Christmas, snow, snow, snow, and other excuses come to mind. Ah, whatever. As the snow clears here in SE PA I thought I'd toss out this update on the SE.
The bike is a 1x9 as you'll recall. It still is, but I added the new
Shimano 12-36 cassette in the back. This bike is not a weight weenie special so who cares about the extra grams. I snatched it off eBay for cheap before people started really looking for 'em, which later pushed the price up close to retail.
The big reason this didn't go on when I first built the bike was that I thought the hub was aluminum (per
SE's vague description). Upon assembling the bike it was obvious the hub was steel and would tolerate a "
carrierless" cassette but I didn't have the patience to wait for a 12-36 (they were still being made of
unobtanium) so I initially assembled the bike with a conventional 11-34.
The 36 tooth 1st gear cog provides some nice assistance on the steeps. The X.9 rear derailleur shifts up and down from the 36t without complaint. And I'll never miss the 11t cog on most of the trails around here!
While the rear wheel was off, I also yanked the stock solid axle out and replaced it with a Wheels Manufacturing skewer axle. As I had suspected, the stock axle was not perfectly straight so it made me feel even better about removing it and tossing it in the metal recycle bucket. Good riddance!
My concern with switching to a quick release on this bike is a fear of the axle sliding under braking and pedaling forces. Conventional wisdom in the mountain bike world says to use
Shimano XT skewers as they have good clamping force. So as you can see they're on there. Now I didn't get many miles on this set-up due to snow, but I'm anxious to see how well this works. If I notice some sliding, there are two options: bolt-on Halo skewers (hex wrench required) and/or adding a tug to the non-drive side (of course the tug will only help in one direction). Stay tuned.
Though I liked the
Velo seat that came with the SE, I didn't like the seat on the old Trek 820 sitting on our trainer (a
Spesh roadie seat). So the
Velo seat went onto the trainer, and a new
WTB Pure V went onto the SE. Well, truth is this came off the
Cobia rigid and a new seat when onto that bike, but you get the idea. The Pure is new to this ride. I have every confidence it'll be sweet.
And I couldn't resist this... what better way to tell your buddies you're on steel?
The 36 tooth 1st gear cog provides some nice assistance on the steeps. The X.9 rear derailleur shifts up and down from the 36t without complaint. And I'll never miss the 11t cog on most of the trails around here!
While the rear wheel was off, I also yanked the stock solid axle out and replaced it with a Wheels Manufacturing skewer axle. As I had suspected, the stock axle was not perfectly straight so it made me feel even better about removing it and tossing it in the metal recycle bucket. Good riddance!
My concern with switching to a quick release on this bike is a fear of the axle sliding under braking and pedaling forces. Conventional wisdom in the mountain bike world says to use Shimano XT skewers as they have good clamping force. So as you can see they're on there. Now I didn't get many miles on this set-up due to snow, but I'm anxious to see how well this works. If I notice some sliding, there are two options: bolt-on Halo skewers (hex wrench required) and/or adding a tug to the non-drive side (of course the tug will only help in one direction). Stay tuned.
Though I liked the Velo seat that came with the SE, I didn't like the seat on the old Trek 820 sitting on our trainer (a Spesh roadie seat). So the Velo seat went onto the trainer, and a new WTB Pure V went onto the SE. Well, truth is this came off the Cobia rigid and a new seat when onto that bike, but you get the idea. The Pure is new to this ride. I have every confidence it'll be sweet.
And I couldn't resist this... what better way to tell your buddies you're on steel?
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