A Pinoy Biker’s Philippine Rural Adventures

One of the consequences of last week’s downhill ride almost mishap is my decision to upgrade my 6-inch disk brake rotor to an 8-inch one. I figured that increasing the size would alleviate the problem of overheating during downhills. But being not so well off financially at this time (we are now rounding off the summer season, which means school is about to start, which means tuition fees for my three kids), I decided to try it with one only, either the front or the rear.

So off I went to Cartimar the next day, Sunday, May 12, to look for a suitable and affordable replacement. I found what I was looking for and it cost me 1,700 for the rotor and adaptor. There was another brand available but would cost me more. In another store somewhere along Libertad street, I bought a bashguard for 400 bucks. It was actually for Shimano cranks and I have Truvativ 5D, so the store owner didn’t want to sell it to me saying that it might not fit. I asked to see a Truvativ crank just to see if it would fit. It did and so I got it.

I have a regular bike mechanic who maintains my bike. But at this time, my younger brother, who is also a bike enthusiast and who used to bike commute everyday, was staying with me. We were actually together when I bought those bike parts. So we decided to do the replacement job ourselves.

The first decision to be made was whether to put the new rotor at the front or at the rear wheel. I have read in some bike forums that it is better to have stronger brake at the front since more braking power is applied there. On level ground, my front brake is strong enough to let me stop but the rear isn’t so with this in mind, I decided to put the new 8-inch rotor at the rear.

I thought we would not have any problems until I tried to fit the new rotor bolts. Instead of the normal “allen or hex” type, the heads of the bolts were of the “torx” type. Meanwhile, my brother was trying to fit the Shimano bashguard to the Truvativ cranks. The problem there was that we thought that it would be a simple procedure: just bolt the bashguard to the crank in place of the biggest chainring and that’s it. Were we mistaken. Of course you couldn’t just bolt it to the crank because it is made of plastic and it would crack under pressure if bolted tightly. And besides if the biggest chainring is removed, the bolt couldn’t not be tightened properly; washers have to be placed between the second chainring and the bolt itself so it could be tightened. My first solution was, since we will not be using the biggest chainring anymore, to cut the chainring ring and just get the part of it that would act as the washer. I thought it was the right solution until we tried to fit the parts together. We needed 4 small bolts and nuts that would go through the chainrings and hold the bashguard against it. Because of that and since we had to bring the rear wheel to a bike shop, we went off using my motorbike.

Once back from the bike shop with the bolts tightened and with four small bolts and nuts, my brother and I tried to fit the bashguard into the crank. That’s when I realized my mistake. I shouldn’t have cut the biggest chainring. What I should have done was to just grind the ring to the size of the bashguard. This way, it would act as a restraint for the chain, preventing it from being sucked in when you shift to the non-existent biggest chainring. As it is, you cannot shift suddenly from the smallest ring to the next since it would invariably be sucked in. You have to wait until the chain is securely around the second ring before you can release the shifter fully in the second marker. Downshifting presents to problem at all. It is in the upshift where the problem is encountered. We decided to deal with this problem later.

Next, we fitted the adapter for the caliper to the rear part. It’s a non-complicated procedure so it was finished in a jiffy. After placing the wheel and making some minor adjustment to the caliper and the tension of the cable, which had to be replaced later, I road tested it. Not perfect, but okay.

The true road test was scheduled the next Saturday, May 19. The destination: Licao Licao - Nabutas trail.