Sheffield Cycle Boost

What does it do
"The bike doctor will give your bike a full safety check. We will fix any minor repairs on the spot for free and if we find anything more serious we'll give you a prescription to take to your local bike shop."

When
Saturday 9.30am-1pm
25th May
29th June
27th July
7th September

Just drop in no appointment needed, while-you-wait or collect later if its busy.
email: fix@sheffieldcycleboost.org if you need more details.

Job description

Workshop support, cleaning parts for repair. Warehouse, picking and packing for mail order, unpacking deliveries and keeping stock up to date on our computerised stock system. General cleaning and tidying duties inside and out. Interest in bicycles an advantage but not essential.

About us
Just Riding Along is a small business based in Oughtibridge, just outside Sheffield, which builds bicycle wheels and sells spare parts online and through our shop. We have a high level of commitment to quality control and attention to detail, to supply our customers with the high level of service they expect. You will need to be prepared to work hard and to a high standard with care and accuracy.

Hours & pay

Working Monday - Friday, 25-35 hours per week during opening hours, with pay to suit age. This is a permanent position for the right person.

How to apply

Interested? E-mail jon@justridingalong.com or write to us with your CV and covering letter.

Field Cycles at Bespoked Bristol

We are back and finally recovered and tidied up after Bespoked Bristol last weekend. As well as our own stand we built wheels for some frame builders and built wheels for the live build demonstration.

The show was packed, especially on Saturday with around 4000 visitors attending, and 2000 on the Sunday. Jon joined up with Klaus from Sapim for the live wheel build demonstration on Sunday morning, it was surprisingly nerve-wracking with people watching but it went well and we ended up with a pair of wheels for the live build bike (a lucky raffle winner won a bike to be built during the show).

Most of the time we were too busy to take photos but managed to grab a few at the end:

We built wheels for these frame builders:

DMO frameworks - titanium bike packer
Shimano Alfine 8-speed hub laced to NoTubes ZTR Crest 29er rim
Chris King ISO disk hubs laced to NoTubes ZTR Arch 29er rims

Field Cycles
American Classic disk 130 & 225 hubs laced to NoTubes Crest 29er rims
Hope Pro3 Mono hubs black laced to H Plus Son Archetype grey rims

Rusby Cycles
Hope Pro3 Mono hubs gunsmoke laced to H Plus Son Archetype black rims

Slate Cycles
Hope Pro3 Mono hubs laced to H Plus Son Archetype rims, all black

Single-speed parts, White Industries freewheel and Surly cogs and singulator

Singlespeed mountain bike hubs come in three varieties, cassette-style where the freewheel mechanism is built into the hub, screw-on freewheel where it’s built into a sprocket which screws on to the hub, and fixed, where the sprocket attaches directly to the hub - there is no freewheel and you have to keep pedalling as long as the bike is moving.

We’ve found that the cassette type hubs need a lot more looking after than screw-on freewheels, so for the ultimate in low maintenance reliability we recommend a good quality screw-on hub such as Paul Components with a White Industries ENO freewheel. The ENOs come in 16-22T versions, last for many years and are fully rebuildable if a part wears out.

For the ultimate in low maintenance the fixed option should also save you some brake pads as you can control your speed to some extent with your legs. Unfortunately riding fixed offroad is pretty tricky and is only for a diehard few.

Surly Singulator      £39.99
Surly Cog cassette fit     £22.49
Surly Cog screw-on     £22.49
White Industries ENO freewheel     £69.00

Surly Clown Shoe rims on Hope Fatsno hubs

It's hard to look at these wheels without smiling, they are so utterly crazy but they are going to be used in a very serious race where I don't think grinning and clowning around get you anywhere. Aidan Harding contacted us for sponsorship for some wheels for his new Singular fatbike, the Puffin, to be used in the 2014 Iditarod Invitational. Note the 1 year testing period. None of the usual "can you get me the wheels for the race this Sunday" business.

It's hard to get a sense of scale for these wheels from the photos so here are a few factoids:
Rims are 26" diameter (559mm), although with the 4.7" Big Fat Larry or the 4.8" Bud and Lou tyres they measure up at 2 inches bigger diameter than a normal 29er tyre. (782mm against a 29er at 736mm). They are 100mm wide, that's 4 times the width of a normal mountain bike rim. The rims weigh in at 960g each, which sounds a lot but they are so big they actually feel quite light when you pick them up. Recommended tyre pressures are something like 6-10psi (1/2 to 3/4 bar). When you inflate the tyres, the rim tapes bulge through the holes and look cool. You can get different coloured rim tapes for this reason. Lacing the wheels was straightforward enough and the rims are nice and round out of the box. Truing them pushed our wheel stands to the limits, both for the hub width and rim width.

If you're not familiar with the Iditarod, the full distance is 1100 miles across Alaska in February and March - there is a "short" 300 mile race too - but Aidan holds the singlespeed record for the 1100 miles of 17 days, 9 hours, 15 minutes for the southern route. That's only 3 hours behind the geared bike record. I don't think gears count for much in that kind of snow. Aiden also holds another record, the only article I've read from start to finish in Privateer (about the Grenzsteintrophy).

Keep up with Aidan on his own website http://www.aidanharding.com/

buy Surly Clown shoe rims or contact us for custom wheel builds (Snow bike parts are not in our online builders yet ! )

Industry Nine road hubs

New products are coming in the door almost faster than we can get them on the website, here's a quick look at the Industry Nine road hubs, build photos coming soon for these straight pull hubs.
buy front > buy rear >

Pacenti SL23 rim

Our first batch of the new Pacenti SL23 road rims arrived today, and we are impressed. Certainly in terms of features it has a combination which outperforms most other rims. 456g weight, 26mm depth, 24mm width, tubeless-ready profile, flawless finish as well as all the usual "should haves" - machined braking surface, clean well finished spoke holes and rim wear indicators - not to mention reasonably tasteful graphics.

Of course the proof will be in the pudding and we'll be getting some built up soon.

buy the Pacenti SL23 rim here > build custom wheel builds online or call for advice.

Enigma Workshop, photo Phil Taylor

Bespoked Bristol returns on 12th - 14th April 2013. Over 70 leading independent makers from the UK, Italy, France, USA, Germany and Japan will be coming to Brunel’s Old Station to showcase some of the most beautiful and desirable cycles on earth.

Probably the best exhibition we attend, actually the only exhibition we attend!
This will be our third year at Bespoked Bristol and should speak for itself so if you're interested in new and shiny parts, handmade and crafted frames and components and of course beautifully built wheels from ourselves then we'll see you there !

more from Bespoked Bristol themselves on their website >

"Just took the wheels on a test run. love them! Very smooth and feel fast...Will tell all my friends what a great job you've done".

Ceramic bearings in the Chris King R45 hubs complete this no-compromises wheelset, and the customer was kind enough to send us a photo of them fitted to his bike (with some very nice Campag Super Record components).

The first ride report was brief but to the point,
"Just took the wheels on a test run. love them! Very smooth and feel fast...Will tell all my friends what a great job you've done",
just what we'd hope for with wheels like this.

The Enve 3.4 SES (Smart Enve System) rims come as a front and pair with differing characteristics. The front has a rim depth of 35mm, while the rear is 45mm, and the widths vary too; a deep 26mm wide for the front, and 24mm for the rear. In this tubular incarnation they weigh in at 340g front, 380g rear.

Take a look at our custom online road wheel builders if you'd like to spec some similar wheels, or contact us for some advice.

Sram XX1 is trickling out to a few lucky riders and we are regularly asked what hubs are compatible, or indeed which are upgradeable at a later date if you decide to splash out, or wait until Sram 11-speed trickles down to cheaper groupsets.

The good news is that as far as we know, pretty much every rear cassette hub will be upgradeable with a freehub body change and a drive-side spacer - so no need for new wheels, unless you want to of course. As of mid-December 2012 when I wrote this, XD-driver (the official name for the freehubs) conversion kits are available now or in the near future for these hubs:

American Classic Disk 225 (available now)
Hope Pro 2 Evo (available now)
DT Swiss 240 and 350 (available now)
Industry Nine (available now)
Stan's NoTubes ZTR 3.30 hubs (end of March 2013)

At the time of writing, the latest unofficial word from Chris King is that they may make one in future but are too busy at the moment.

We don't yet have them all listed on the website so if you need a wheel with an XD driver, or a conversion kit, please contact us and we'll get you one.

The first thing to notice about Industry Nine wheelsets is the bright colours and anodised aluminium spokes but there's a lot more to them than that. 120 engagement points in the hubs, unbelievable stiffness from the thick (but light) spokes, interchangeability between all the usual axle types...

The wheels come in a few formats; Mountain bike wheels come with XC or Enduro hub options (details below), and 3 different spoke thicknesses. They are available in 26", 650b and 29er sizes, and with Shimano/Sram 9/10 speed or Sram XD (for XX1 11-speed) freehubs. Front hubs to fit the Cannondale Lefty forks are also available. Then there's a singlespeed rear hub too...basically there's an I9 hub to fit virtually any bike. Expected prices for standard colours (red, black, silver) is around £780 per pair of wheels, custom colours are extra (probably £60 - £80 per pair).

I had a pair (the orange ones in the photos below) and loved riding them. The stiffness of the aluminium spokes and the Stan's Flow rims was like no other wheels I've ridden. They are strong too; I never broke a spoke or had the wheel go out of true even after a load of races and the Megavalanche.

Then there are the "classic" hubs; same internals as the wheelsets but with conventional flanges for normal J-bend steel spokes.

Finally the road hubs, these weren't available back when we first built Industry Nine wheels so we're still working out the options, but the hubs look every bit as good as the MTB hubs and come in at just 86g front, 240g rear with a 39(!) tooth drive ring and 3 pawls for low drag - road hubs just don't need the fast take-up of the MTB hubs.