Benni Bonenni

Friday, 19 March 2010

Phil Wood R.I.P.

Hub-Maker Phil Wood Passes Away

Phil Wood, the man responsible for sealed hubs and bottom brackets, died this week on his farm in Baxter, Iowa. He was 84.

He started the Phil Wood Company in 1971 as primarily a hub maker, though he offered other components. He sold the business to Peter Enright and a group of investors in 1991.

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Tuesday, 27 October 2009

parlee custom track

This Track Bike was built as a side project off hours and on the weekends at work, (Parlee Cycles). It is a bit of a prototype or proof of concept, but was also a personal project which i spent a lot of time on. There are no plans right now to produce or sell a carbon track bike, so for now its one of a kind and unique. We typically make road frames and this is the first time a track bike has come out of the shop. It took a while but mostly thats because the drops had to be made from scratch and the lugs laid up special and carved.

The frame is carbon tubes with hand laid carbon lugs. The lugs have been carved with a 3 pointed design i thought pretty unique, (ive only ever seen two pointed lugs). The bridge is also a one off and carved to match the lugs. The rear drops were prototyped on the bike and are also solid carbon bolted to a Ti plug in the seat stay. With paint and a clamp the frame weighs 1 kilo, its a custom sized 53. The only metal in the frame is the Ti seatstay plugs and Ti BB shell, everything else is composite and handmade.

The fork is a Reynolds Ouzo Pro that I stripped and laid up an extra layer onto it. The top layer is uni directional to give it some extra stiffness and to make it match the uni tubes. I also laid up over the brake hole, covering both sides and fairing it in. The wheels are level hubs, which are very cool, the cogs bolt on instead of using a lock ring, plus they look great. They are laced to Velocity Aerohead rims. As with the frame i built the wheels myself. A Sugino 75 crankset with a salsa ring drives the bike. The front end is a Chris King headset and Deda track stem and bars. I sit on on a Fizik Arione bolted to an alpha Q post, (it just matches the rest of the bike so well). Apologies for the SPDs, the bike looks much hotter with old school shimano 600 chrome cages, but rides much nicer clipless.

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