Asked a good friend who is more up to date on gear, for a suggestion since the Giant is a no go. His suggestion:

Wipes keyboard off and calls Van Dessel..

 

Can you post a larger image? I almost have enough RAM to open that.


Van Desels look great, thought about the blue/purple Super-X? It doesn't have through-axles but it has SRAM 11 hydro.

 

I have a 15' Specialized Crave Comp, it's a 29" mountain bike. I've put about 400 miles on it so far. Only mods so far are tubeless conversion. It's good fun, and good exercise.

 

I'm going to be super jelly over your Van Dessel. ****, I bought the wrong bike and can't remedy that until my student loan is kaput. By the time I get a better CX/gravel ride I will have through-axles, hydro Ultegra, White hubs and ****, and maybe finish with the cat-4 bros.

 

CX bros,
I have a touch of toe-overlap and crashed pretty big because of it last night, luckily with no injuries. How big of a problem is this?

 

Pretty sure all CX bikes have really short front/centers and steep head angles, so basically you have big overlap if the bike 'fits' you. Not sure why they do that, but you probably shouldn't be pedaling when cornering hard enough to hit your toe on the wheel.

Also corner with your outside foot straight down and lean the bike more than the body. Like this:

 

Just get 130mm cranks, then you can really spin those hills/staircases.

 

Just an adjustment every rider makes. Most rigid bikes have toe overlap. Without thinking about it, you should just instinctively drop your outside pedal when you get past a certain steering angle. Practice it unclipped at low speed, alternately overlapping and dropping the outside pedal to get a feel for it.

In cross, focus entirely on reserving enough power at any given point to clear the obstacles and flow through the turns the way you want to. It's like momentum driving. Smooth is fast when it comes to cross. Push too hard and you quickly start to get ahead of yourself, make mistakes and increase the chances of getting hurt. If there is a barrier, turn or other obstacle that requires a burst of full power to clear, back off before it to catch your breath just enough to make it smoothly.

While it might feel like you're not pushing hard enough, your fastest laps will come when you are staying smooth and evenly distributing effort over the entire lap with a little reserve across the S/F.

 

There is always a 180* switch-back on the side of a levee on Wednesday night, hence the low speed and pedaling. I'll figure it out.

 

Come on, dude. Who hasn't figured that out in 9,000 miles of pedaling? We're talking super low-speed **** here.

 

Cut off your toes.

 

go faster? kidding.


I didn't know if you knew to lean the bike over more. yeah the pedal positioning should be pretty obvious.

 

 

Has anyone ever leaned really far and pedaled and caught the pedal on the ground then highsided? As a kid it happened to everyone I think.





As an adult catching the pedal on the occasional root or rock is still a once a year at least occurrence for me on an MTB.

 

No, but a dude inside me pedal struck and went down, clipping my back wheel and I lived to tell about it.

 

Pretty much this. "pedal timing" is huge on CX bikes because of the geometry and how they are designed. Kind of like how you dont just mash your pedals through technical sections on a MTB, but instead time your strokes perfectly with the terrain.

btw hustler not saying you don't have pedal timing. Just pointing this out, cause it was a big lesson learned on CX bikes for me.

 

Maybe it's time we all admitted what needs to be done .............

 

I read somewhere those old radials ran total loss. The only oil that wouldn't fry was castor bean oil. So you made sure not to be standing in line with the heads when they fired up on the flight line less you get burned with 300° castor bean oil as it flung off the heads.

Shoot through the prop, you betcha. Remember to pump the oil so the motor doesn't seize. Guys who flew those things had to be nuts.

 

When I was just down in Idaho I wanted to buy some Klotz for my 2 stroke dirt bikes. The castor is supposed to smell wonderful and protect the best but it's the deposits that have made me leary along with availability and cost.
Nature sometimes puts out the best product.

I had to look up "total loss radial". So the exhaust valve just vented to atmosphere? Crazy

 

OMFG, cut 2 GP4Ks in one week!!!!