Commuter Cuddle Puddle – June. 28, 2024
For this week’s Tid-Bit we are admiring the Campfire crew’s commuter cuddle corner. If you’ve been in the shop, you are sure to have witnessed the ugly corner of dirty, well ridden commuters in the corner of the shop. This pile is a stark contrast to the many shiny new and freshly tuned up bikes adorning the showroom and workstands. These are the trusty steeds that get your favorite campfire employees to work and back everyday.
Crust Bombora Build Completed! – June. 21, 2024
Last week I showed this bike and all of its parts. This week I reveal to you the completed bike! I must say this bike is quite easy on the eyes and rides like dream. I can’t wait to see this bike on the road. Getting to put a dream build together is always such a treat!
Summer Time Rides – June. 14, 2024
It’s not often we get to work on Crust bikes but it’s always a treat when we do. Here’s a sweet custom wheel-up build for a customer. Our customer wanted all of the fun colors and picked out an amazing color selection from Hope. I’m stoked to get this bike together and rolling. I just might have to post a picture with wheels built and everything installed next week.
Summer Time Rides – June. 7, 2024
Summer riding in Tucson means early morning rides or late night rides if you wish to escape the heat. I’ve recently been reminiscing on the full blood moon mtb ride that our friend Chris planned two years ago. We expected a bright full moon and the surrounding area well lit. To our surprise, this full moon also happened to be during a lunar eclipse. The moon hid in the Earth’s shadow as we rode in the darkness. We all had a great time dodging the grasshopper mice and hunting for scorpions with black lights on the 50 year trail. Here’s a picture of Toby flying through the darkness!
Shiny Wheel Build – May. 31, 2024
Our pizza-slingin’ customer Tommy is gearing up for an Alaskan tour on his trusty Surly Disc Trucker. After a couple long tours his OEM rims were shot and he needed something fresh. After some back and forth we decided to build him up some of the shiniest wheels in all the land. With Velo Orange Voyager 36H rims and some matching polished Velo Orange hubs this wheel set is stylin’ and ready for what ever Alaska will throw at him.
Custom paint job and build – May. 24, 2024
This week I want to highlight one of our customer’s fresh 2016 Salsa Spearfish. Logan, a local high school mountain bike racer, wanted to refinish and rebuild his Spearfish to get ready for the race season. Bored of the bland colors on the field, Logan took it upon himself to bring a pop of color to the trail. Taking some exciting and bold colorful inspiration from the 80’s and 90’s, he painted his bike with contrasting and bright yellow, pink, blue and silver. Logan painted and built his bike himself, Campfire can’t take any credit for this build, but when a bike comes in this beautiful it’s well worth a highlight.
TimberJackHackSaw – May. 17, 2024
Toby and his freshly trimmed head of hair, saw vigorously through a damaged Timberjack frame. One of the many things Toby is an expert at is thoroughly inspecting frames for frame damage. With this well used Salsa Timberjack, Toby found a small hairline fracture in the bike’s seat tube that would surely cause some issues down the line. Salsa warranty-replaced the frame and tasked Toby with sawing straight through the top tube to destroy the frame for good. No matter how many times we destroy frames it always hurts just a little.
Fork Seal Love – May. 10, 2024
This weeks tidbit is a friendly reminder to take care of the part of your mountain bike that is with you through the ups and downs, loves you unconditionally through the roughest of times and knows how to be supportive through those big hits. That’s right I’m talking about your suspension fork! Fork maintenance and service are often a daunting thought and over-looked until it’s too late. So, wipe those seals after dusty ride to keep your stanchions fresh and clean. If it’s been a while since your last service, some fresh oil and seals really breathe new life into your forks performance.
Mt. Lemmon Season – May. 3, 2024
The warmer temperatures during the Tucson summer always push the outdoor seeking locals out of town in search for more favorable weather. With Mount Lemmon being the closest, most accessible cool weather location, many of us flock to the top of the mountain riding the same short, rocky and rooty mountain biking trails over and over again. The views and trails never cease to amaze.
Ratio Conversion – Apr. 26, 2024
After 4 years wrenching and seeing just about every repair, very little in the bike world excites me as much as shifter ratio conversations. Ratio Technology, a UK biased company, has taken it upon themselves to create aftermarket 11-13 speed ratio conversions for many drop-bar levers on the market. These allow riders to run mullet drivetrains, road shifters in the front and mountain derailleurs in the rear. I’ve had the privilege of installing these converters on a few of our awesome customer’s bikes and the process is always exciting. I’m currently using one of their spools to convert my old Sram Apex 10 speed shifter to an 11 speed shifter for my upcoming monstercross build!
26inch Brunch – Apr. 19, 2024
This last weekend Tucson’s new 26in Brunch club sprung into action on our first adventure of many to come. The only sanctioned satellite of Saint Louis’ 26in Brunch, this Tucson chapter, created and maintained by Tucson’s favorite Chris Koty and Zoe Erb, is a once a month, all people and all bikes welcome (26in preferred) under-biking adventure ride from town with an elaborate BYOB (bring your own brunch) stop. Meeting up the second Sunday morning of the month. This last Sunday we rode around the foothills of Tucson and stopped at the DeGrazia Gallery in The Sun Museum for brunch a a touch of Tucson culture. We had homemade blueberry waffles, eggs, hash browns, pastries, fruit, coffee and sausages. After brunch, with full stomachs we gleefully descended one of Tucson’s classic mountain biking trails into town. If anyone wants to join this event there’s an Instagram (@26inchTucson) with more details.
Feeding Ghosts – Apr. 12, 2024
It’s rare to see all 4 campfire mechanics work on a bike together. This carbon road bike had a stuck Seat-post and the customer had just flown into town to do some training. To yank this seat post out we had Ellie stabilizing the table, Toby pulling the seat-post and David and I twisting the frame to gain momentum. After many minutes of hard tugging, twisting, laughing and swearing the seat post popped out and we celebrated our victory
Breakfast by Berm – Apr. 5, 2024
For this months Breakfast by Bike, we took the party to the Lost Barrio bike park. We had our handcrafted Toby pancakes with a side of Shred. There’s no better start to the morning than berms, coffee, friends, kickers, pancakes, bikes, pump tracks and eggs with hot sauce.