Tuning Jolly

I've decided it's time to ride a two-wheeler more often. For the last ten years I've mostly been riding a trike from ICE (Inspired Cycle Engineering); my model (Explorer NT)  isn't offered any more. While the trike has its good points, it is slower than a two-wheeler, and I'm sitting low enough that it's hard to look over the corn. Joan has to wait for me to get to the top of hills, and she hates to wait. Or slow down.

My long-time bike was a 1984 Cannondale, yes, almost 30 years old. Much of the equipment on it, while still functional, was obsolescent and tricky to replace. In May I bought a new bicycle from a local Trek store, a Surly Long Haul Trucker, or LHT.  (Surly is the brand name). This post is about the modifications I've made to the stock Surly.

Here's a picture of the LHT, named Jolly, soon after I picked him up. He looks good, but several things needed tweaking to suit me.

Gearing
The LHT stock gearing has a top end that's absurdly high for me; how often will I want to pedal at 30mph? If I'm at 30mph, I'm zooming downhill. I found a custom cassette -- the nine gears on the back -- online at Harris Cyclery. This gives me a top end more like 24mph at comfortable pedaling rates. I purchased the cassette and took it along with me when I picked up Jolly, and the Trek store put it on for me. Issue #1 solved. (For you gear geeks, the small cog is now 13 teeth instead of 11 teeth.)

Pedals
 The bike comes without pedals, because the manufacturer expects riders to have definite ideas about what kind of pedal/shoe system they want. I felt retro and wanted toe-clip compatible pedals, not click-in pedals such as are on the trike. I had the Trek shop where I purchased Jolly put on the best "regular" pedals they had in stock, which was $20 wasted. I immediately replaced them with the Shimano 105 pedals (vintage 1987) that had been on the Cannondale. That was issue #2 solved.

Seat Post
The next problem to come up was the seat post. To avoid having the seat tip up or slide under stress it was necessary to crank down much too hard on the fastening bolt. As you can see in this picture of the stock seat post,

the two-piece bracket that holds the seat by its rails sits on a curved but smooth surface. Here's a closeup. 

The matching channel in the seat bracket is smooth as a baby's bottom too.

Therefore, the only gripping surface involved in the whole shebang is the small piece held by the bolt.

Everything else is just smooth metal on smooth metal, and any sudden pressure, such as hitting a pothole or thumping your behind back down onto the saddle, will tend to shift things. This is in contrast to the classic Laprade design, where the bracket has a convex bottom, grooved, which nestles into a concave bucket on the seatpost, also grooved. Here's a picture from the Web.

My first two rides on Jolly convinced me that the seat post had to be replaced. My closest bike shop, a local, two-store outfit called Bicycle One, had a $20 Laprade style seat post on their web page. I inquired by email whether it was in stock, and it wasn't. But the good news was that they had a Cannondale seat post that had been taken off a new bike (perhaps the purchaser wanted to upgrade) that I could have for $20. Aluminum alloy, and wrapped in carbon fiber for that snazzy look. It also had an advanced two-bolt seat post mechanism. Looking online, I could see that I was getting a $50 part for $20. Sweet. Here's a photo of the business end.

There is one bolt in front (left in the photo) and one in back, giving almost infinite adjustment of the seat angle. Best of all, the design of the mechanism doesn't depend on grips or grooves to keep things in place: the bolts do that.

Handlebar Bag
Next I needed to search for a handlebar bag. My old handlebar bag wouldn't fit on the new, thicker handlebar stem. Did I mention obsolescence? And the old panniers don't fit on the new rack. After some Internet shopping I settled on an Ortlieb bag. It has a novel attachment mechanism: wires. The plastic-coated wire threads in and out of the bag mount and over and under your stem, impossible to describe and barely possible to show in a photo:

Here is the front of the bag mount. The hex head nut on the left is how you tighten all the slack out of the wire.

It holds a just-right amount of stuff ... not too much, not too little.

There is a map flap (purchased separately).

It can unfold into 10" x 10", but this covers up the handlebars and the bike computer!

Brake Shoes
The final piece of tweaking was the brakes. The trike had spoiled me by having disc brakes that did an excellent job of stopping. I felt that on a two-wheeler I didn't need the extra expense or special hubs required for disc brakes; however, the brakes on Jolly seemed soft on the first two rides (better on the second after I adjusted them, but still not the best for a panic stop).

Web research quickly led me to the Kool Stop "salmon-colored" brake pads. I ended up ordering the dual compound brake pads. Here are the stock and the Kool Stop pads, off the bike.

Jolly has cantilever brakes:

From the top, it looks like this.

Aligning the new pads is a bit of work because you're busy in multiple dimensions. The pads must be properly positioned so that they are not higher or lower than the wheel rim, the pad surface must be parallel to the rim surface (not tipped up or down), the pad must follow the curvature of the rim and not dip below or above the rim, and then there's the matter of toe-in: to reduce or eliminate brake squeal, it's often recommended to have the front of the brake a bit closer to the rim than the back. You have to adjust all these things at once and then lock them in by tightening the outer bolt cap with a hex wrench, which tends to rotate the pad if you aren't gripping it firmly. It took me a while! But the new pads are working well. Here's a daylight picture:

Also, a photo of the new handlebar bag in context.

And an overall look at Jolly with his new bling. (The pig is optional.)