San Juan Trail… We started at the bottom of the valley
Dan & I headed out to San Juan this past Saturday for some riding. Dan was on his new Niner SIR9. I was on my Voodoo Canzo 29. The ride was cool, but not cold for the most part.
Our version of San Juan on Saturday was a 12 mile out and back. 6 miles up, followed by 6 miles back down. The ride was pretty good but we did encounter a couple of mechanicals issues with my bike that had me tentative on the ride back to the car.
Dan really likes his SIR9. I swung a leg on it and the engagement is sick and the steel is smooooooth
After the first set of switchbacks, I was noticing that whenever I coasted, my rear hub was not spinning very smoothly. After I would coast, I would begin turning the cranks again and I found that I would have to spin the crank almost a full turn before the chain would engage the hub again. Being on the bike and not able to really see whats going on, I first thought that it might be a derailleur issue, then guessed the chain. Little would I know that it was a hub problem.
About a 1/4 mile away from the turn around point, my rear tire burped out all its air. Weird as I had just aired it up to my preferred tire pressure before leaving the car. As I was pulling the wheel off the tire, whaddya know, the hub and the alloy cassette barrel (Hope’s terminology) separated. That doesn’t seem right.
On the right, my cassette on the alloy cassette barrel. The inner most circle is a broken spindle which is supposed to remain with the hub, not come off like this
Dan and I quickly finish tubing the tire and proceed to fit the wheel back in place between the dropouts. Surprisingly, the wheel held all the way back down to the car! In fact, the hub was even coasting in the correct manner, it was quite amazing. I did avoid any jumps and took it easy for the most part though.
The Voodoo got me back down to the car in one piece with a rear hub issue and all
My local bike shop got a chance to look at the hub today and called me to let me know that the axle broke. Hope calls it a spindle. $13 shipped. Not too shabby. I’ll be back on the Voodoo by week’s end.
