Velospace Super Users

If you haven't heard of velospace, its a popular social networking site for bicycle (mostly fixed-gear) enthusiasts (your bikes myspace page). Velospace should not be confused with FixedGearGallery or Crappy old 10 speed gallery. The difference between them is somewhat significant and usually boils down to build quality.

Most fixedgeargallery submissions look something like this:

Whereas velospace is a place where you see bikes like this


Anyways, I thought I'd make a list of my favorite velospace users, dudes who have huge collections of wild bikes.

Ceya, a dude from NYC with a lot of track bikes with huge saddle-handlebar drop. I remember there being more bikes on his page at one point but velospace servers are notoriously bad at keeping/organizing/storing photos.

Ceya's Gianni Motta:


Hrrundel, a guy with more C-record equipped track bikes than an Italian velodrome in the 80's.
Some of Hrrundels bikes:





campafreak, a serious collector specializing in East German bikes from the 80's; campafreak.com
Some of campafreak's bikes:





kdh747, a guy from Japan with some crazy bikes; owner of PedalMafia.
Pretty much defines Tokyo tarckx bike style






dustin, a guy who owns a used camera store and tarcks out lots of old pursuit & time trial frames. Also, the owner of a gold plated Cinelli.
Some of Dustin's bikes:





Insomnia, another serious collector, specializing in late 80's/early 90's time trial bikes.
Some of Insomnia's bikes:





Finally, as an added bonus for making it this far, The failest BMC evar

Cinelli Zebra Stripe Toe Clips

Spotted these unusual zebra striped Cinelli toe clips up on eBay the other day. Pretty low starting bid considering some people pay $65 for new ones without stripes.

The same seller also has some C-record triple bearing pedals up for grabs. I'd be all over this setup for my Mercian if I wasn't already running C-record 1st gen pedals/clips.

Italian NJS Parts

I like Italian parts, especially old Campy ones. I also find it really interesting that at one point Campagnolo, the top manufacturer of high end racing equipment in the 80's, thought it would be lucrative to market their parts to Keirin racers in Japan, which was a pretty niche market compared to European road racing. I guess at some point they tried and their gruppo was rejected, partially because of a pro-japanese bias and partially because of incorrect design, so they changed some things and were accepted in 1987*.
Heres the 1991 Campagnolo Record Pista Gruppo with a smaller image of the Keirin group. Theres a couple noticeable differences. NJS hubs can only be high flange and 36 hole, so 36h Sheriff Stars were the natural choice. The other main difference is the seatpost, Campagnolo swapped the 1-bolt bladed post for an NJS style 2-bolt.

Another subtle difference would be in the threading. Campy NJS bottom brackets are English threaded, as the NJS only approved English threaded bottom brackets.

The headset is English threaded as well, but with the weird NJS 27.0mm crown race diameter. These NJS Campy headsets look more like the super record ones than the later chunky C-record ones, probably due to ball bearing diameter restrictions?
I also find it fascinating that Cinelli made stems and bars that were approved by NJS, given that the old Cinelli handlebars have been known to de-sleeve. The NJS Cinelli stem looks like a 2A track stem and the bars look just like regular 67-59 Pista bars. Maybe there was some design change to please the NJS.

But finally, the holy grail of Italian NJS rarity has surfaced. I was browsing velospace when I spotted this NJS stamped Cinelli Unicanitor saddle.


This has got the be one of the rarest track bike parts available, an ass raging unpadded Unicanitor saddle with Keirin-width rails. Don't know why you would ever want to ride this, but its collectors value is certainly through the roof.

Note: I took a few photos from this flickr set, which is worth a look if you want to see more photos of NJS stamped Campagnolo track parts.

Toe Strap Lacing

I saw this picture on an ebay auction I was watching the other day and started wondering what the "right way," if there was one, to thread toe straps through a cage pedal was.
There is of course the traditional/intuitive method of threading the straps through all 4 slots.

Then theres the "twist" method people often use with single straps to keep them from slipping.

Heres how the great Mikashima (MKS) Pedal Manufacturing Corporation says to thread their α Keirin straps, which looks like the opposite of the threading in the first picture.

Theres many other ways of doing this. Heres how Mork threads his Kashimax dual sprint straps on his MKS Royal Nuevo Pedals.

And heres how I thread my Toshi double straps on my C-Record track pedals. This is mostly out of necessity, Toshi straps are way thicker than the slot in the pedals, I actually had to file down some of the suede to fit the strap in the slot. Luckily C-Record pedals have removable rear cages like MKS Royal and Custom Nuevos. If you've had trouble putting double straps on Sylvan pedals, the reason is most Keirin double straps are meant for pedals with removable cages.