A sizing chart for the diSSent KD was released some time ago.

Understandably, there were a number of questions posed concerning the method and application of these dimensions.

Thus a proportions graphic has been completed.

It should be noted that this is the testers SECOND season on the diSSent KD.
While the EXACT measurements are not available, suffice to say our tester was most certainly smaller this time last year.

I despise PROJECT: Fe.ii.

This isn’t news.
PROJECT: Fe.ii is unnecessary, redundant, unnecessarily redundant and (worst of most) costly.

Today, while I was reluctantly cleaning the smell of bitches from head office, I repeatedly relocated a box marked URGENT.
Over here, over there.  Here, there and back.
I stared at it, several times, long and hard.
This prolonged and intentional focus only serving to burn it’s hideous rectangular shape directly onto my minds eye.

URGENT URGENT URGENT FUCKING FUCK URGENT.

It was clearly marked Attention: Peter Keiller and From: Reynolds.
Dated: July 2011.

URGENT.

Frustrated by it’s repeated intrusion.  Both in my spaces and as a reminder of much personal shame.
Enough.
I was now 10% more intent on eliminating it, once and for all.

Without a further thought I lunged for a knife and repeatedly plunged it towards it’s corrugated core.

The straps snapped like snapping straps and the weak cardboard walls slowly crumpled under the might of my furious dull blade.
Rattling, clattering and wheezing filled the office, until suddenly, the box gave way, spewing forth it’s commonwealth contents with one final huzzah!

Proto-type tubing.
Obviously.

Even more obviously important, my cleaning initiative had completely failed.
The office was clearly worse off.

If there is a half-full, as I’ve been told to locate more oft, I was excited by this brief (albeit violent) move towards Fe.ii fruition.

I hastily made weights, took measures and snapped photos.

Progress.
At this rate, anything but nothing, it certainly wouldn’t be long before these Reynolds tubes would indeed become something else all together.
That is vision.

Misfit Psycles diSSent (Fe.ii)

As is hindsightedly indicated in the above pictorial, the world is a moderately more better place for that that I am not planning on welding the tubes together personally.

Hopes for the future of PROJECT: Fe.ii?
I’d put actual production (greater than the first 2 prototypes) odds at 25%.
One, even moderate, hiccup in proto-welding will seal it’s fate.

Dead or not, the sad fact is that the (combined) idiocy of (past) diSSent (Fe)production and (recent) diSSent (Fe.ii) design have been the single solitary most worst financial investment (aka a major motherfucking blunder) in the storied history of Misfit Psycles.

It can’t be THAT bad?
Suffice to say, it dwarfs the NUMMERS inventory crush AND Team DICKY Line, several fold.

More to follow.

Understatement of the week.
Initial tests have proven themselves, less than stellar.

One good thing about being a belt pessimist (that is prior to even starting the GATES CARBON DRIVE project), disappointment is contained.
I won’t say that there is a smugness that follows affirmation of my doubts.

Any feelings towards this alternate system have been dissipated by the shooting pains and grotesque swellings it has caused.

What a fucking crock of shit.

More expensive.  More complex.  More finicky.  More prone to error.

Sexy.

Pointless.

Slick.

Useless.

Under load the belt walks off the rear cog…eventually leaving the rider pedalling air.
Belt line – PERFECT.
Installation – ACCORDING TO SPECS.
That leaves factors of TENSION and (FRAME) STIFFNESS to be determined.

Slipping, dislodging or otherwise ungaging a belt is no less uncomfortable than breaking a chain.
Given the promise of awesome.  Entirely less acceptable.

As walking is difficult, stairs unpossible and my attitude towards that giant heap a steaming shit – biased.
I shall wait the week before returning to the Gates in an attempt to correct whatever might be the issue(s).

Items being considered:

Slider/Slot design issue -
There is NOT enough throw to achieve proper tension with the 22t cog selected.

Slider/Slot design issue -
The slider plate and three bolt configuration do not offer adequate stiffness under (climbing) load.

Belt/Drive issue -
The belts and cogs provided by SPOT were in fact the OLD design and not CENTER TRACK.

Belt/Drive issue -
It’s a fucking stupid design all-together.

Installation issue -
I am more stupider then the stupid belt.

Nothing is being ruled out.

For now, fuck this and two thumbs up my ass.

*disclaimer – if you work in the manufacturing/engineering/design field, this won’t be new to you, but maybe you’ll enjoy the pictures.*

I personally find it hard to believe that I was still in school barely over a year ago. While time has flown, it seems like eons ago that I was prepping for exams and completing assignments. While in school, when I had something to design, the process went something like this:

The project would be assigned – you would work through the design phases of concept, material selection, form, the required calculations, and bang out a report or some drawings. Sometimes you would do a really good job, and sometimes you would do a crappy job. Either way, you knew when the due date was, and that date signified the end of the project. It was a simple system, and a happy one. Happier if you got an A+ than a D-, but there was some security in being done with it.

What I didn’t truly learn until finishing school, however, was that completing the design was really a relatively insignificant part of the journey from concept to production. In school, you could spec the components, spec the machining processes and sequences, and the parts would magically rain from the sky and your design would turn into a product immediately. Not so any longer. Metric fasteners used in the cycling industry fly in the face of the imperial products used in the auto industry that dominates the North American markets. High end alloys are difficult to find and expensive. People don’t return phone calls, change their minds, and sit on emails for weeks. In the end, it feels a bit open-ended and uncertain, like some sort of real-life board game. If it were, it would look like this, and it would surely be a bestseller:

Print this out, steal some dice and a few player pieces from your old Monopoly set that nobody plays any more, and join in on the fun!

As promised, Keith, er, Rowan, from Reynolds has come back with some news. I’d say he’s the messenger bearing good news:

Tubes! Bent! Really! Not crinkled and shitty, but really bent, all smoothly and what not.

Top Tube:

This sample is for the new XXS-sized frame.

Chainstay:

Now that we’ve got some tangible results, this project should pick up steam like a giant pumpkin rolling down a forested hill.

Last week was meant to be a big announcement, that the our tubes were to be shipped from Columbus. Custom-drawn, niobium-doped, HSLA-sexytime. However, “pepperonium” (as Peter insisted on calling it), took a turn for the wurst.

Apparently thin-walled steel is significantly harder to bend than cured pork.

But let’s take a step backwards, to get the full breadth of this saga. Since Interbike, I’d been working with our rep from Columbus (of Italy). I don’t have a picture of him, so let’s just substitute in a famous Italian cycling figure, Mario Cipollini.

Up until this point, I’d been told by various tubing suppliers that bending high-strength, thin-walled tubes was a difficult process. However, during our Interbike meeting, Mario assured us that with a liberal application of hair product and steely gazes, the tubes would bend to his will – like any of the hundreds of women he had seduced during his illustrious career. I was uncertain that any man’s loins could exceed the yield strength of 4130, let alone the alloy we wished to work with, but I thanked him and hurriedly exited the booth before he could try to give me a demonstration.

As the months passed, specifications were tweaked, emails were passed, and so forth. The top tube, with our signature Misfit bend, was the tube that recieved the most scrutiny. I was a bit surprised by the bend radius they selected, as it seemed contrary to my calculations – but I figured, Mario is an expert, so we’ll do it his way. More specifications were tweaked, until finally we were ready to sign off on a tubeset that ended up being much more customized than we’d originally planned. I thought this was pretty cool.  Money was wired, and we waited. A few more emails were sent expressing apology for delays, until finally, an email from the customer service rep. I don’t have her picture either, so lets say that she is the pretty girl in the picture with Mario. You pick which one.

The news was bad. Apparently they hadn’t actually tried to bend our tubes in advance, and now they weren’t having any luck. I’m not sure if they’d run out of hair gel, or the club was too loud for him to deliver his pick-up lines; but the tubes were wrinkling, crackling, and generally looking like they’d decided to dance in a tight circle, avoiding Mario’s overzealous seduction techniques. I wrote back with a list of suggestions on how they could try to resolve the issue – adjustments to the bend radius, the wall thickness, the manufacturing sequence…but no reply was received. Apparently, Mario’s slogan is “when life gives you lemons – just say ‘fuck the lemons,’ and bail.” The Columbus-Misfit synergy seemed to be dead in the water.

Thankfully, this hadn’t been the only contact made in the steel game during Interbike. We also had a very good meeting with the rep from Reynolds UK. I don’t have a photo of him either, so again, let’s sub in a famous British cycling figure, Rowan Atkinson.

We had a lengthy discussion about Reynolds’ history, other projects they have worked on (bicycles, race cars, Mr. Bean), and their manufacturing capabilities. He also showed us a tube that was already successfully bent very nearly to our exact specifications. He then concluded with a performance of his “With Friends Like These…” skit, and I was practically sold. After this meeting, it would seem like the choice was obvious. And yet, Peter and I agreed that Columbus would be the way to go. It could have been the Italian charm, it could have been the chance to have relatively unique custom tubing (with custom alloy spec)…or it could have the price. Probably the price.

Anyway,  fast forward to now. I’ve been in touch with Rowan, and he was willing to work with us once again, so long as I agreed to buy a Black Adder DVD box set. He has already scheduled test bends of our tubes, and we’ll know by next week what Reynolds specification our tubes will be. How very efficient. How very British.

Despite the feeling one would presumably get from reading this blog, my life as the Misfit Engineer is not all glamour and glitz, yachts and pouring Cris on bikini-clad hotties.

Sadly not.

In fact, it isn’t about trips to Taiwan, FEA sims, or even somewhat vintage-yet-handy devices like a shadowgraph. Au contraire, sometimes you just have to get back to basics.

Now that the form and stress analysis of the belt-drive-dropout is nearly complete, it was time to confirm the fit of the system into the ALC frame. The good folks at YESS created the rear triangle using their own bend specs, so I had to do some reverse engineering to produce a drawing for future revisions, and in this case, to check clearances.

Enter the pencil, and the calipers:

Next up, the ruler:

I find something strangely enjoyable about hand sketches and calculations done on paper…I think I’m going to start using my slide rule more often.

Things have been quiet here, despite that movement has been in the forward direction on numerous projects. It is much like an extended toilet session after a night spent eating too many burgers – you know you’re doing good work, things are moving along, yet there isn’t anything to show for it. But, relief is coming soon.

If that imagery hasn’t turned you away by now – Lepper’s post and mine belt-drive-dropout have received concept approval and have moved into simulation-based analysis and refinement. With any luck, these will be available in the quite-near future. Look for these on the next run of the ALC, along with some front-end mods to be discussed later on.

Further, the steel frame creeps ever closer to prototype readiness. While I’m sure most everyone has figured out where we’re getting the tubes due to poorly concealed leaks, I’m holding onto  the official announcement until I see a tracking number.  In the mean time, I’ve provided some hot spy shots of other top-secret frame components which I feel comfortable confirming, to keep you on the edge of your seats.

Line guides

Brake Mounts

Downright riveting.