We get it. Our Vintage Wise Vehicle (VwV) | Bike Edition design is big & on the edge of possibilities. You gotta put something out there for people to criticize or love and then jump into reality & test everything else out there to prove yourself wrong, fail, learn, and adapt. At the end of this journey, we EXPECT that our product design will be different than we originally imagined. Isn't that the fun part?
So we jumped in and started with what we got - no over-engineering, no over-spending and getting off the couch so to speak as fast as possible — we were lucky though that with Greg’s background as an ex-racer and cycling advocate, we started with seasoned yet high quality gear, but needing a few upgrades for this unique setup.
What We Started With:
Luckily Greg had 2 Bikes to start riding now - a 1990s Custom Ibis Mojo Steelframe Mountain Bike and a Bianchi Sempre Pro Carbon-T Frame.
We've been stopped and asked about the IBIS multiple times, so it's worth highlighting a few things about it.
In case you don't know the Ibis story... Scot Nicol was not only one of the first mountain bikers in northern, but did some cool things others didn't think about.
Moron tubing! This custom drawn oversized tubing helped make the Mojo one of the first "modern" steel hardtail frames. And with the name Ibis poked fun at Ritchey Logic and Columbus Genius.
Breezer dropouts! Light, incredibly strong and helped stiffen up the rear triangle.
28.6 seat post! Fat tubes meant a fat seat post. Not always the easiest size to find!
An actual head badge! A little showy perhaps for a mountain bike, but still cool.
Made in Sebastopol! Where it all started. Ibis moved to Santa Rosa a few years later and then went of business before coming back to life in 2005 as a designer of carbon frames made overseas.
Paint! Ibis probably had the best paint of that era, led by the famous Erika
Hand job! Iconic, silly fun.
Highlighted Custom Bike Specs:
One-of-a-kind Rigid Fork made specifically for this bike by Sam Whittingham of Naked Bicycles during an era when craft was still rare & battling against the big Trek giants https://www.bikeradar.com/features/interview-sam-whittingham
Chris King 1992 GRIPNUT™ HEADSET https://chrisking.com/pages/headsets-bbs-hubs-oh-my-1990-1999
Ibis Ancotech Titanium handlebars 25.4 bar clamp https://www.ibiscycles.com/our-story/history/10-ancotech
Mavic SUP ceramic anodized coated rims https://www.bikeradar.com/features/tech/ceramic-rims-explained
"Mavic is perhaps the biggest name to have dabbled in ceramic coating its wheel rims. Its ceramic rims were popular in the 1990s for MTB use and it latterly produced an upgraded Ceramic2 version, which was less prone to delamination of the ceramic coating from the alloy rim."
"Mavic’s Michel Lethenet says the wheel builder used a plasma gun to project the layer onto the rim walls of its M231 ceramic rim. This protected the braking surface against abrasion, increasing the lifespan of the rim, particularly for off-road use."
Benefit: "acts as a heat barrier, leading to more consistent braking"
Chris King Hubs
Unfortunately, we didn't already have a Bike Trailer, so we picked up a Burley Coho XC from our friends Taylor and JD at Sports Basement Berkeley. We picked this out of all the others because it had enough space for 2 dogs, was rated to handle 70 lbs and designed for off-road terrain.
If you want the full specs, there are others on YouTube that have done a great job with a teardown like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhaTGMdB9cA.
Based on our test runs so far, it's clear this analog setup is not going to work as many of our r/bikepacking friends on Reddit would be quick to point out. It's heavy as heck, the Burley trailer is already creaking and threading after about 100 miles which means there's no way this thing will make it across the Great Divide, and to be honest as is, it's really not conducive to carry anything else. Not to mention, although the Ibis is beautiful and is perfect for the person it was built for, it is nowhere near the right fit for me, a female that's taller, thinner-structured, and completely different bio-mechanics. We'll post more about this later. The point is, we need a better setup if we're going to make it through our cross california practice trips, let alone the Great Divide...
Stay tuned for our next post, where we share our custom VwV Bike Edition Proto 0 in the works!
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