If you have been in the shop sometime in the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed a new face behind the counter. Well, it’s time to officially announce our new mechanic Rawny Semba. We’re calling him the new guy, and while Rawny is a new addition to the shop, he has been around the block as a bicycle mechanic.

Rawny comes to us straight from a second consecutive National  Championship-winning season as a mechanic for the Cannondale- Cyclocrossworld.com team.

Rawny giving Steven Hyde’s bike a pre-ride check. Photo from @cdalecxworld on instagram

We’re pretty excited to welcome Rawny to our team, and our customers should be excited too! It takes great mechanical ability and a meticulous attention to detail to work as a pro mechanic for the most successful cyclocross racing team in the United States. If you come to the shop this spring and summer, you can have a mechanic who has worked on and maintained  Steven Hyde, Katy Keough, Curtis White, and Emma White’s bikes for the past two seasons. Whether you are a dedicated commuter, local amateur racer, or you are trying to win an elite national championship, you can bring your bike into the shop with confidence.

Rawny and Ben working for Sram Neutral Race Support in 2014 re-enacting a pro rider shooting the gap between a cone and our tent leg at a Tour of America’s Dairyland race.

2018 is going to be a great year for Tailwind Cycles, and we look forward to meeting and exceeding all of your mechanical needs. Rawny will be hitting the road again with the team in the fall, so be sure to catch him at the shop before then.

Washing bikes- it’s what a pro mechanic does!

We had the opportunity to build up an awesome bike this week! We started with the Van Dessel Motivus Maximus frame, which is their carbon road racing frame. It’s no secret at the shop we are big fans of Sram and Zipp componentry, and so is our customer, so we went all out on a custom build for this bike with Sram Red Etap HRD, Quarq power meter cranks, Zipp bar-stem-seatpost, and Zipp 303NSW wheels.

The Motivis Maximus frameset is impressive in it’s versatility to ride in different conditions while still maintaining the frame geometry which will make this a fast and tight-handling race bike. While the major trend in road bikes currently is to go in the all-road direction, stretching out the frame to accommodate really big tires, the Motivus finds the sweet spot between tire clearance and quick handling.

Our customer spec’d the bike with Zipp Tangente 700x28mm  tires which on the 19mm internal width Zipp rims measured exactly 28mm with a caliper. The rim’s are designed to be aerodynamically optimized for tires in the 25-28mm range, and we were really happy how the Tangente tires mounted up tubeless on the Zipp 303NSW rims. The bike still has clearance left over to fit a 700-30mm tire if you would like. While not as extreme as a gravel or all-road bike, that amount of tire clearance is impressive on a road racing frame with 405mm chainstays and a 74-degree seat tube. This bike will be able to hold a tight line through a corner right next to the most popular road racing frames while at the same time letting you run bigger tires than most if you want to ride some nasty pavement, cobbled roads, or find yourself off the road entirely doing some light gravel or dirt riding.

The Sram Red EtapHRD shifting system is amazing. We have been confidently building bikes and using the Etap system since the 2015 road racing season, before Etap was officially launched by Sram. It’s so simple and clean to set up the shifting system without cables or wires, and after setting up and maintaining Etap bikes in harsh racing environments we have no doubts about the system’s reliability.  The hydraulic disc brakes allow for great modulation and tons of stopping power on the 160mm front and 140mm rear rotor. We opted for a WiFli rear derailleur with an 11-28 XG1190 cassette and Sram Red Dzero Quarq cranks with 52/36 chainrings. This gives our customer a great range right now, while leaving the option to add a wider range cassette in the future. The rider has plans to race and ride the bike in some pretty crazy places, so we made sure to keep that in mind while putting together the build kit.

The last detail on the bike which got us excited is the brake/wheel/frame integration. Being a semi-aero carbon road frame it really makes sense to use the flat-mount caliper system to get the brake caliper tucked in tight between the stays. Not only does this look really clean, it is also a more aerodynamic and lighter way to mount the caliper. Small details like the Centerline rounded brake rotors and Mavic Speed Release through axle system make a statement about this bike’s race-readiness. This is the first bike we have built up using the Speed Release system, and we have to admit it is pretty neat. We wanted to keep the bike relevant to innovations in the near future for racing. The idea behind the Speed Release system is unlike regular through axles in that the axle has a collett which keeps it with the hub when you remove the wheel. The fork and rear dropout have one side open, unlike regular through axle dropouts. This allows for very fast wheel changes in a racing situation, and there is a good chance neutral race support programs will adopt this technology as disk brakes become more common in road racing. Mavic has kept the standard open so other companies can make compatible wheels for this reason. Even aside from race applications, the Speed Release axles are really nice to work with and make taking the wheels on and off the bike a breeze. The levers have a built-in torque setting, so you just tighten them until they click, then keep turning them clockwise until the lever is in the desired position.

We can’t wait to see what this bike and it’s owner get up to in 2018. We’ll try to get a review once the bike has some miles on it. In the meantime, check out the bike builder on Van Dessel’s website to get some ideas for your next build, and let us know if you have any questions. Unlike most bike manufacturers, each Van Dessel model can be ordered from the factory in a myriad of different component options as a stock build, or we can go all-out like this build and customize whatever components you would like.

We try to keep a varied selection of bikes in stock at our shop. For one reason or another a customer may want to buy a bike from an online dealer though. That’s ok. One of the main advantages to buying one of the bikes we stock in the shop is we include a comprehensive assembly procedure with each bike we sell at no additional cost. But, even if you don’t buy a bike from us, we feel you have the right to a well assembled, safe ride which won’t immediately cause you problems. This is why we offer our basic bicycle assembly from a box for $80. This is an assembly of a standard bicycle from a shipping box with the front wheel, handlebars, saddle,front brake, and pedals removed for shipping. We can also do a full custom assembly if the bicycle frame and all parts are shipped separately for an additional charge.

This is an example of a bike which was bought from Amazon earlier this year. The customer made an attempt to assemble it themselves before deciding it would be better to bring it into the shop and let a professional take care of it. The bike had a few issues which would have made it difficult for even an above-average home mechanic to assemble it into a safe and good riding bike.

The first thing you can’t help but notice is the wonky cockpit. The brake levers had been installed very low on the drop bars.The customer tried to compensate for this by tilting the bars up at a crazy angle to try to get a comfortable grip on the controls. As you can see, this makes the bike look really funny, and the bars and levers weren’t designed to be used at such an extreme angle so this isn’t a great setup ergonomically. Also, the rear brake cable is wrapped around the steerer tube the wrong way, the front wheel is on backwards, and the handlebar tape was wrapped from top to bottom. The bar tape isn’t a huge deal, but if it were left like that, it would start to peel off prematurely. Since we wanted to get the brake levers adjusted on the bars in a good position, we just removed the bar tape and re-wrapped them from the correct direction.

A small but important detail missed on the customers assembly was proper routing of the front brake cable. The cable should be routed through the slotted washer in the cable clamp, not right underneath the bolt head. I have seen improper cable installations like this result in the bolt head cutting the strands of cable and eventually leading to the brake cable completely failing. Not something you want to happen on a bike ridden in the streets in heavy, urban traffic.

The bike was shipped with the rear derailleur attached. The box got smooshed in on one side, which resulted in the derailleur hanger being slightly bent. Without the proper tool and know how to fix it, the bike would be rideable but would never shift quite right. So we got out our alignment gauge, straightened it out,  and got the shifting perfectly adjusted.

Most people don’t have waterproof grease in their home or apartment. Often times when these bikes get assembled at home, the seatpost and pedals are installed without any grease. Once again, this isn’t a safety issue, but it can cause big, expensive problems in the future when the bike needs the seat height adjusted or the pedals replaced. Also, without a pedal wrench, the customer wasn’t able to fully install the pedals. If the bike were ridden like this, the pedals would likely rip out of the cranks, stripping the threads and requiring an expensive repair to remedy.

All stem bolts are properly torqued during professional assembly. This is a vital safety detail.

And here we are all finished. The saddle is adjusted to a good angle, and the height is adjusted for the rider. The handlebars have been re-wrapped, and the levers have been placed so they are comfortable to use from either the hoods or the drops. The bike is well adjusted and mechanically sound. It is ready to be confidently ridden on the Chicago streets without having to worry about loose parts, brake failure, or shifting issues.

You can have your new bike delivered directly to our shop to be professionally assembled and delivered. You can also have it delivered to your home and have us come out with our mobile van to assemble it for you. Just book an appointment using the Booxi button in the Service page of this website.

Photo by Gavin Gould

This past Sunday was the Illinois State Cyclocross Championship at Montrose Harbor in Chicago. While it’s a day of celebration as we crown our new state champions, there is also a hint of sadness as we realize our beloved series has come to an end for the year. We would like to give a sincere thank you to everyone who participated in our ‘Cross Cup Package this year, and also to the Chicago Cyclocross community as a whole. Our series really is one of the best in the country.

Giving a bike some last minute adjustments before the women’s P1-2 race

We want to thank everyone who took part in our CX season service package. It was great getting out there every week and helping our riders achieve the results they were after. Whether that was finishing near the top of the field in the category 1+2 races, or going after their Crossresults.com nemesis in the lower categories and pushing themselves  for improved results. We were happy to provide freshly serviced bikes each and every week so our riders could concentrate on the task at hand and not have to worry about their equipment.

We washed a ton of bikes this season. Having a clean and well-lubed machine is the first step in making sure your equipment works flawlessly throughout a season of racing. Every week, each rider’s bike got washed in our indoor bike wash, then lubed with Morgan Blue chain lube, and checked over to make sure it was ready for action in the next race.

We had a good number of customers take advantage of our tubular gluing and custom wheelbuilding services before and during the season. Great wheels and tires are particularly important in cyclocross racing. We offered a 20% discount on tubular tire installation for the CX Cup package, and will be doing that again for the 2018 season. We will be tweaking a few minor details of the package, but for next year we will mostly build on the success of the 2017 season.

World Champ Wout Van Aert taking a breather after the UCI World Cup race in Waterloo, Wi

We started out early in the season by adding the Trek Cup weekend of amateur and UCI World Cup races to the service package. It was great to see our local riders race on the same course as the best pro riders in the world. We are planning to get out to more big races in 2018, including USA Cyclocross Nationals in Louisville. 

                                                                                           Photo taken from Blackstone Bikes

Our favorite moment of the day from Montrose came in the last race, when 17 year old Maxwell Montegano won the 4/5 race. Maxwell races for Blackstone Bikes, which if you aren’t familiar, is a community bike shop and youth education program on the south side of Chicago. It’s great to see these kids out at the races, and a big congratulations to Maxwell for coming out on top in a huge field of over 100 riders on a tough, sandy course. While not officially part of the Chicago Cross Cup, we highly recommend heading down on Dec 17th to Douglas Park for Afterglow: A Cyclocross Race . Afterglow is put on by the Chicago Cuttin’ Crew race team as a benefit for Blackstone Bikes and West Town Bikes, two great youth bike programs in Chicago. We will be there with the van in an unofficial capacity to help out racers and spectate.

So, let’s say you have an older bike you really like, but the bottom bracket has gone bad and the BB shell is a hellscape of rust, ruined threads from a bad previous installation, and maybe even an insect graveyard:
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