Cheap Disk Brakes are indeed unsafe!

I always try to be as low budget as possible, so for the rear brake of my new MTB building project, I purchased the cheapest disk brake as possible.

I got this crap for about 3 dollar from Ebay:

The other brake seemed in better condition, so I decided to try it out.

Before I could mount it, this fell out of the brake:

My new roadbike

So I wanted to have a touring roadbike.

After several years of collection old bike parts, I finally built this one out of 6 used bikes. 

The whole drive train consists of mountain bike components. I simply didn't want to purchase expensive road bike components. In my country there are also some steep climbs, impossible for me to climb with a road bike gear ration. The crank has 22 teeth on the smallest and 48 on the biggest gear. 

I hate lights and reflectors, but I also want to do some 24 hour biking, so this bike is my first bike legal to ride on the street. ;) 

Bikes may use the full lane. - My favorite traffic sign has to be on my bike:

Bikes may use the full lane

The whole bike including lights is about 12 Kilogramm.

Mounting a rear MTB rack on a road bike

Today I finally got my road bike a rear rack.

The lightest rack I had was from an old Specialized mountain bike.
Since my frame has no mounts for the rack, I had to get creative:

First I got a steel plate, like every hardwarestore has:

I cut out the following parts. Drilled holes, bent and painted them.

The bigger plate is screwed to the rack.

Now I placed the two smaller plates between the quick release and the frame. I used the brake screw to connect the long bended plate to the frame.

 So thats my bike. Forgive me all the lights and reflectors, but this is the setup for a 24 hour ride.

Bicycle Handlebar Rack Modification

Since the URL of my blog is weldandbraze.blogspot.com, this project fits in perfectly:

It is a modification for my handlebar to hold a bike pannier on my full suspension bike:

At first let me tell you that it really works, and it's perfectly save and and the bike remains stable!
I have to tell you, because it seems bad to have such huge weight on your handlebar. I already did a two day tour in the western alps and had a lot of fun. With "fun" I mean I jumped, did drops, rode bumpy trails with huge speed.

So how did I build it?
At first I got myself a steel handlebar. That was easy, because I just needed to go to my basement and get one. My basement is full of bicycles and  parts because I steel bikes at night people gave them to me in order to get rid of them.

Next I cut some steel from a hardware store and brazed and welded them together in this way:

I did the welding in my local community bike workshop, where everyone can work on their bikes.
Because I am not a talented welder, I brazed the steel to the handlebar, in order not to damage it.

Now it is possible to mount an Ortlieb bike pannier or similar on my handlebar.

The whole handlebar modification weights about 1.1 kilo and will not break. I tried with the full force of my arms to bend it, and I remained stable.

Derailleur fix during a tour

I want to start my new blog with an article, which got a lot of attention in my other blog:

Pretty nice place to spent the night, isn't it?

This place is located in northern India, at the beginning of the Spiti Valley, so fairly in the middle of the Himalayas. The altitude is about 4300 meter.

I couldn't enjoy it so much, because I was busy:

A chainsuck twisted the derailleur into the spokes, and made me curse for while

So what to do? Could be worse, one of the few cars on this road is a daily bus, but bike touring trip would be over. So I decided trying to fix it, though I didn't  believed in it.

Let's do it:

Making the surface rough, using sandpaper and a pocket knife:

This was the best I could do:

Applying two components glue and fiberglass.

First time, I actually did this.

Those fibers were sticking everywhere.

Finally the second layer is finished

The finished work:

And on my bike:

Time to move on and enjoy this fantastic area. 

 Against my expectations, the derailleur lasted the whole remaining trip (5 days), and is still intact.