Turning a bike into a slightly different bike: Part Four: The Finale: WTF Is Bar Tape
It's been a long, epic journey. I've met two or three people along the way. I've learned many skills, such as how not to wrap bar tape, and how to stab a fender with a knife until it fits.
And now.
I have a bicycle that's a somewhat different bicycle than it was when I got it.
Front brake is working beautifully. More on that wording in a moment.
Clearance over the fender is poor, so a canti is being used instead of a v-brake. With some extra work I could probably move the fender down, but eh whatever.
"But wait," you say, "doesn't braking power sort of suck when you use a v-brake lever with a cantilever brake, due to the mismatch in mechanical advantage?"
Yes. Yes it does. You want a really hard stop with this thing, you've got to grip the lever
quite hard.
It's still basically functional as a brake, though, working roughly as well as a vintage single-pivot caliper. I figure if I have to stop
really hard, the front brake is going to be 80% of what matters regardless. Oh well. If I get really annoyed with it at some point, I can always lower the fender and chuck a v-brake on. Assuming this (or one of my bikes with vintage single-pivot calipers) doesn't kill me first.
I equipped the bike with Not SPD™ pedals.
Anyway, about that bar tape.
If you've been wondering "can HTupolev be trusted to wrap bar tape?"
Here's your answer.
And that's basically it. A 1984 Specialized Stumpjumper converted from mountain bike to... well, I'm not sure really. Gravel bike? Whatever.
Handling is sort of weird. It's very nimble in the center of the turning range, but doesn't want to corner sharply at speed.
It's a very smooth ride. Haven't taken it off-road, but I rolled over some nasty beat-up pavement that can rattle me pretty badly on my road bikes, and it felt about as plushy as on my hardtail. Yay 2" tires.
I still need to do serious maintenance in the realm of the rear wheel hub, it's "usable" but sort of high-friction and crappy. But I won't bother posting about that unless the process winds up fascinating for some reason.