Woodchippers

I love Woodchippers!

Installing Woodchippers and TRP Mini-Vs

The "dirt-drop" style handlebars from Salsa are my favorite handlebars by far. I selected them when I build my MonsterCross bike a couple of years ago and fell in love with the shape. Their shallow drop means I spend more time in the drops and the outward flare creates a super-wide base for climbing in the drops. They have a very wide flat-bar section and the angle of the brake levers seems a natural fit for my hands.

I'd been riding a number of ancient WTB Dirt Drops of varing shape and width. These were all swap-meet or e-bay finds. Until the wood chipper I had never found shape I liked as much as those old WTBs.

Over the last two years I've converted nearly all of my drop-bar bikes to Woodchippers. The only bike still running "regular" drop bars was my Ibis Hakkallugi cross bike. I didn't want to change anything on that bike during cross season but now with the SF Spring Classic looming I was ready to make the change. I also wanted to replace the front Cantilever brakes with my favorite TRP CX-9 Mini V-brakes.

For a heavy-er rider like me, front brakes are always a bit of an issue These are a great front brake upgrade for many cantilevers equipped cyclocross bikes.

My Haka', like many cyclocross bikes, uses a cable hanger that mounts to the steerer tube near the stem. For a tall guy like me this means the cable is almost 12 inches long - stretching from the stem to the fork. You can see the cable hanger (sans-cable) in the picture.

The front of the Haka' is really stiff, but it only takes a little fork flex to cause "shudder" under heavy braking. When the fork flexes, the distance from cable-hanger to cantilever stud changes which changes brake pressure.

The TRP Mini-Vs don't need a hanger so the shudder is completely eliminated. Like Woodchippers, I've installed them on the front of all my cross/road bikes.

The picture also shows (half of) my current favorite tire setup. That front tire is a (now discontinued) Schwalbe Marathon Extreme 700x42 and the rear is a Clement MSO 700x40. These are about the biggest tires that fit a Haka and my AlphaQ fork. This set up works perfectly for mixed-conditions spring riding. The agressive tread of the Schwalbe works everywhere and is a good match for the MSO in the rear. I started using the Schwalbe in the front to deal with mud. The Clement is great tire everywhere but mud. After a couple of terrifying muddy descents, the Schwalbe offers great mud performance. When things dry out, I tend to go back to the lighter, smoother rolling MSO at both ends.