WC Cyclocross 2004 picks

"Kurgan Gringioni" wrote in message ...
"jerry" wrote in message
om...

The french have some future with Gadret, Lefebvre and Mourey. I also
count on Pospisil, Dlask and Jezek for a top-10 place.

Replying here, but comment is to thread -

Number one, Gucci does not make a steel hanger for that bike. JP is
not in a position to have some hangers made up on a vertical mill,
please. That is a dumbass thing to suggest. Same as welding on
gussets? How are you going to weld on a gusset to an aluminum der.
hanger? He has been bitching about it, but beyond having custom parts
machined on a CNC or something (ever actually LOOKED at a bolt on der.
hanger before?) his hands are tied.



Dumbass -


You are ignorant.

Don't need a CNC - any old hand operated mill will do. I have a 1958
Bridgeport, it's worth maybe $2000, less than the cost of a bike.

Any bike builder has one of those - that's what they miter the tubes with.

I dont think I am that ignorant.

Machining a dropout/hanger is not equivalent to mitering tubes, or
else the frame builders would be making their own hangers, wouldn't
they? How many hours do you think would go into making a bolt on
hanger by hand? And how much does a machine shop charge by the hour?
And how much do you make for a living riding your bike?

The hangers that are on all my AL frames, and his, are break away
styles that bolt on. Its a fairly complex shape where it bolts to the
dropout, it dovetails with the dropout shape. Also the der. tension
adjustment tab would not be that simple to locate and form by hand.

NO, I am no machinist, but I did try to have one MADE by a machine
shop locally for an older GT MTB, and that part would have been pretty
impractical to make manually, according to the machinists, and they
wanted to laser the profile and then machine in the features. It
would have been a very expensive piece.

I believe that direct experience, and the fact that, BTW I do 3D CAD
design/engineering (solidworks, inventor, etc) for a living, moves me
slightly above IGNORANT.

You also have to put the whole thing in the context of the situation.
They were fine for the first part of the season. It sounds like the
bend during the race, maybe leading to a chain suck that rips them
off, or they just bend badly. He is not crashing them off. He is not
some rich masters racer who owns ONE cross bike and races 10 times a
season.

You break a couple. OK, thats why they are replacable. You start
e-mailing you bike sponsor for a new batch. Then you continue to
race/ride those bikes. You break one. Now you are yelling, at the
bike sponsor, ok he only speaks italian, thats just a small
complication. They are shipping you some, but its coming from Italy,
from the factory, to Belgium. You try going to a bike shop to have
some steel ones ordered. You wait a week. The first batch is close
but they dont fit. You order a second batch, you wait another week.
Meanwhile you are still riding the three replacements. In races. In
Belgium. In World Cups. You are shipping the bikes to the US and back
twice. Now you thing about looking for a machine shop who will not
charge you more then the frame is worth to make some, etc.

All this in basicaly 14 weeks. And 30 international races. Plus I
think he rides during the week once in a while. And its not like he
doesn't have anything else to do all week besides chase derailleur
hangers.

Bottom line, its a ****ty part. It sounds like Gucci does not use
steel ones on any of its bikes. I would hope they improve it based on
this, but that does not help JP any this season.

Richard would have been all over it, no question. You pick up the
phone, you get the boss. Thats great, but that is also why people
like Richard are not sponsoring US freaking Postal. Eventually you
have move on to a bigger program.

Anyway, none of this has **** to do with whether there are any
prospects for US Cyclocross.

Ignorant J

JP has found his level, it's between about 15th and 25th (on a good
day) when all the top crossers are there. I highly doubt he's going
to have a big jump in ability all of a sudden and be riding at the
front of big races.

JP has 10 top tens out of 30 UCI events this season. In Belgium. Where
I think a bunch of good cross racers live. He has 10 finishes between
11-20th.

Last year he had 3 top tens. I think that is a big jump.

If you were in Belgium, watching the actual races, you would also see
that he is usually at the front, in the lead group, riding "above" his
level. That in itself is a HUGE step from chasing guys all race, and
ending up maybe in about the same position in the end. He is RACING
this year.

I see no reason why his current trajectory should not/could not
continue next season. That would put him into the top ten on any
given weekend.

He also just turned 27 in September. Why couldn't he be a World Cup
winner or Worlds/World Cup podium finisher when he is at his physical
peak, say 30? Three seasons from now? I do not think it is
unrealistic at all. Look at Tyler Hamilton's progression, for
example.

My point was that we have riders of equivalent talent in the US as
they do in Belgium. But, you cannot make the jump from the best US
rider at your age, to a top international rider without spending the
time in Europe. By that reasoning, if we start setting kids up over
there, like we started to this year, we should have every reason to
expect that the future can and will be bright.

J

JP has 10 top tens out of 30 UCI events this season. In Belgium. Where
I think a bunch of good cross racers live. He has 10 finishes between
11-20th.

Last year he had 3 top tens. I think that is a big jump.

His UCI ranking doesn't seem to reflect this!

If you were in Belgium, watching the actual races, you would also see
that he is usually at the front, in the lead group, riding "above" his
level. That in itself is a HUGE step from chasing guys all race, and
ending up maybe in about the same position in the end. He is RACING
this year.

Well, I watch all I can and read the coverage. Page seems to be able
to make the initial selection when a lot of other riders do, not when
it's a small selection.


I see no reason why his current trajectory should not/could not
continue next season. That would put him into the top ten on any
given weekend.

I hope you're right, I'm not trying to bash Page just being realistic.

He also just turned 27 in September. Why couldn't he be a World Cup
winner or Worlds/World Cup podium finisher when he is at his physical
peak, say 30? Three seasons from now? I do not think it is
unrealistic at all. Look at Tyler Hamilton's progression, for
example.

Tyler's result were great the last couple of years but he showed that
potential when riding on Postal, he just didn't have the freedom.

"jerry" wrote in message
m...

NO, I am no machinist, but I did try to have one MADE by a machine
shop locally for an older GT MTB, and that part would have been pretty
impractical to make manually, according to the machinists, and they
wanted to laser the profile and then machine in the features. It
would have been a very expensive piece.

I believe that direct experience, and the fact that, BTW I do 3D CAD
design/engineering (solidworks, inventor, etc) for a living, moves me
slightly above IGNORANT.





Dumbass -


You are ignorant.

It's a simple piece. Any half-assed machinist could do it.

I could do it and I am very half-assed. You're not talking to the right machine
shop.

"Howard Kveck" wrote in message
...

The shop I work at has a few Mori Seiki VMCs and some smaller ones by
Fanuc, and we have a couple of horizontals, too. We also have a few CNC
lathes.





Mori Seiki - high zoot.


I'm gonna be taking a Haas VMC class soon, just for learning how to better make
prototype stuff. Am a crappy machinist, but just finished a piece that a real
machinist like yourself might find interesting. It mostly involved tube
bending - we had to make some custom tooling for it.


Too bad you don't live in SoCal - I'd like to pick your brain.

In article ,
"Kurgan Gringioni" wrote:

"Howard Kveck" wrote in message
...

The shop I work at has a few Mori Seiki VMCs and some smaller ones by
Fanuc, and we have a couple of horizontals, too. We also have a few CNC
lathes.

Mori Seiki - high zoot.

They rather nicely prove the theory of "you get what you pay for" in
machines.

I'm gonna be taking a Haas VMC class soon, just for learning how to better
make prototype stuff. Am a crappy machinist, but just finished a piece that
a real machinist like yourself might find interesting. It mostly involved
tube bending - we had to make some custom tooling for it.

The classes that are available now are ---so--- much better than when I
took 'em when I was starting out. The stuff that we were being shown in
class had exactly nothing to do with what we did at work. With the
availability of reasonably priced CAD/CAM software and CNC machines that
are not too expensive (and still have a lot of cool features), the cost of
setting up a shop to do proto work is so much more within the reach of
everyday people. (Obviously, some of those machines are not well suited to
24-7 operation...)

Too bad you don't live in SoCal - I'd like to pick your brain.

Granted, it isn't the same as holding a part in your paw (which makes
for much easier visualization of what the intended outcome is to be), but
I'm not hard to get hold of...

--
tanx,
Howard

"I'm not lying, I'm writing fiction with my lips!"
Homer Simpson

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

In article ,
(jerry) wrote:

The hangers that are on all my AL frames, and his, are break away
styles that bolt on. Its a fairly complex shape where it bolts to the
dropout, it dovetails with the dropout shape. Also the der. tension
adjustment tab would not be that simple to locate and form by hand.

Some of the bolt-on style hangers I've seen are relatively
straightforward shapes and could be done fairly easily on a manual mill.
But if the shapes around where it hooks in by the stays are more complex,
that would certainly make it a harder stunt to do on a manual. Still
do-able, though it might take a bit of work with a grinder to fine tune the
shape.

NO, I am no machinist, but I did try to have one MADE by a machine
shop locally for an older GT MTB, and that part would have been pretty
impractical to make manually, according to the machinists, and they
wanted to laser the profile and then machine in the features. It
would have been a very expensive piece.

Laser!!!! Oh my... Well, I know that there are frequently a multitude of
procedures for extracting a part from the stock, but some are much more
efficient than others. Sometimes it's very worthwhile to shop a project
like this one around a bit, Jerry. You might find a guy who's just
interested in doing it for the fun or challenge of it. Or a guy who would
be willing to do it as a side project after regular work (which might or
might not make the time factor bad). I can tell you that there's a lot of
machine shops out where I am that are not working many hours and might
welcome a small, quicky job like that.

--
tanx,
Howard

"I'm not lying, I'm writing fiction with my lips!"
Homer Simpson

remove YOUR SHOES to reply, ok?

(Wayne) wrote in message . com...
JP has 10 top tens out of 30 UCI events this season. In Belgium. Where
I think a bunch of good cross racers live. He has 10 finishes between
11-20th.

Last year he had 3 top tens. I think that is a big jump.

His UCI ranking doesn't seem to reflect this!


His ranking doesn't reflect this cause he did not do any UCI races in
the US this year (except nats), where last year he had three or four
podiums in Cat 2-3 races in october, to the tune of maybe 75 points or
so.

So, while he wishes he were top 25 right now, he has done well to
replace the US points he got last year with all euro points this year.
Also, a fine point, but he always seems to end up _just_ out of the
points, so a small improvement will result in points being scored.
Not many, true, but 5 points times 10 races is 25% more points then he
has right now.

This season has been a disappointment for him in alot of ways, as he
has just been knocking on the door all year. Kinda weird.

UCI points are crap, as evidenced by Jackson, Gully, and Wells all
being ahead of him right now, and Ryan is right behind him. Not that
they are not good riders, but, seriously....compare their programs.
This is the reason the euros are squawking so loudly about the US Cat
3 races. Its taking $$ out of their pockets.

J

BTW - WC 2004 Picks:

1. Mario
2. Wellens
3. Vervecken
4. Groenendaal
5. Nijs
.....
15. JP
32. Jackson
39. Andy

(richard sachs) wrote in message . com...
doesn't gucci use the same hanger and material as is found in all the
frames gettin' dirty over there?

e-RICHIE

He got advice from Mario on this, all the guys on Ridleys and Empellas
run steel hangers.

They dont fit. Of course.

I quizzed them some more last night, and the consesus is that the
hangers are good for about 2 weeks of hard riding, then they are
sufficiently weakened that bumpy hard riding/shifting can suck them
into the spokes.

He now has a batch of new ones that he is putting on only for the
races. Pretty much all he can do at this point.

Coincedently, he went to several machine shops recently and they all
said he did not want to pay to have those made, it would be too much.
So he did try that route. Same thing I was told by two shops here.

J (still ignorant I guess)

uh. i'm speechless!!!!
e-RICHIE



"jerry" wrote in message
m...
(richard sachs) wrote in message
. com...
doesn't gucci use the same hanger and material as is found in all the
frames gettin' dirty over there?

e-RICHIE

He got advice from Mario on this, all the guys on Ridleys and Empellas
run steel hangers.

They dont fit. Of course.

I quizzed them some more last night, and the consesus is that the
hangers are good for about 2 weeks of hard riding, then they are
sufficiently weakened that bumpy hard riding/shifting can suck them
into the spokes.

He now has a batch of new ones that he is putting on only for the
races. Pretty much all he can do at this point.

Coincedently, he went to several machine shops recently and they all
said he did not want to pay to have those made, it would be too much.
So he did try that route. Same thing I was told by two shops here.

J (still ignorant I guess)