GT update

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Mark Skulls

So there isn’t a bike I’ve had recently that I haven’t added town bars and a front rack to.

New parts are… Cheap XLC ergo town bars.

Salsa stem.

Sram X5 shifter.

Stripped TF 1″ fork.

14bike co barends.

CNCed tecktro levers (nicer and cheaper than pauls?).

Rotor cranks and suntour ring.

Handlebar mount beer cozie from Mannies Lowrider shop in Venice Beach.

Mods on this build are lowrider mount front light and rear mudguard light cable run through heatshrink down the gear cable and up the mudguard stay. Fiddly!

Even more tokyo!

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Mark Skulls

Today was the best.

We went to 3 awesome shops and ate the best vegan food of the trip.

We started at Sexon super peace to check out brand new cheribum lowpros and ridiculous njs bikes with loads of mods.

Great brake mods. Amazing frames but everything was super expensive.

Next we went to a shop I was really excited about. CPW skate shop where they build F@$! crazy bikes and are generally rad.

The dude on the left runs the shop and was super nice guy. The shop is small but full of rad nos skate and bmx bits, cool boards and t-shirts.

Down the road a bit is ABOVE bike shop. I was really excited about this one too but it blew me away!

The shop is big and jammed with beautiful displays of pimp parts and amazing custom bikes.

They have there own paint booth with a in house painter “swamp” doing custom spray and pin striping.

After a amazing vegan feast I saw some cool polo bikes outside.

Camouflage

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Mark Skulls

Working on some urban rat bike disguise techniques. New beater bike check coming soon…

Pimping my beater

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Mark Skulls

What the hells wrong with me….

Tall rat bike in Brighton

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Mark Skulls

I forgot how bad your bike can rust when you live by the sea. I don’t miss servicing waiheke ferry commuter bikes.

EX SBC BIKE THRASHED BY COURIER

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Mark Skulls

NJC’s old bike came in the shop the other day, good to see it had been beaten to shit by a courier, massive dent in non drive down tube as well I forgot to take a pic of.
pre thrashing…

SKULL STASH MODZ

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Mark Skulls

I been thinking about hiding things inside my bikes lately.
Here’s one I did yesterday.
First thing …. take that top cap off and knock your star nut all the way down to the bottom of your steerer tube.

Then get yourself a little kit like this…. Nitto handlebar bag, sks sub 60 pump (light ass skinny pump that fits in head tube) patches, glue, sand paper, rubber band

Then jam that sucker in there

Now find some kinda cap or cork or something you wanna hide that shit with. Dunno what mines from but it fits perfect.

Now I couldnt fit tyre levers in but with a longer steerer or shorter pump you might. Thats why that 3mm allen is in there so I can get into my seat tube!

So the tyre levers are in my seatpost with a 1″ carbon expander plug holding them in. Next I cut up and old 15mm spanner to make it fit in the seat tube (27.2)

So the spanner can be used with the short little 8/6mm allen to get into the seatpost and are wrapped in a bag jammed into the post using the expander plug.

I looked into a couple of other ideas too like….

Tube folded in thirds in a bag in the seat tube

valve forced into the carbon expander plug for extraction (not the same TPI)
But I was a bit worried about that tube getting stuck.