The shop – Myth Cycles

November 13, 2018

A New Partnership: Bedrock Bags

I’m very excited to announce that Myth has officially partnered up with Bedrock Bags! I’ve actually known Andrew and Joey for years, and watched their company grow from a tiny startup to an industry-leading manufacturer of sewn bikepacking bags. The best part is that they’re another Durango company, based just across town from us. It just made a lot of sense to offer their excellent products with our bikes.

There’s complete info about our partnership at the new Bedrock Bags page. Please feel free to send me any and all questions, and start thinking about adding a frame bag to your Myth!

November 9, 2018November 9, 2018

A few important updates

You may notice that a few things have changed on the website. Here’s a summary. If you have any questions about any of this, please let me know.

Price changes

*Gasp!* Price changes! Don’t worry, they’re not bad:

Stealth dropper routing: Across the board, none of the frames include stealth dropper routing in the base frame price anymore. For some to include it and some not was confusing people, including myself.

Wyvern: Base price is now 1299.00, instead of 1199.00, BUT the slider/rocker dropout upgrade is now only 100.00. So the base price has gone up, but if you wanted sliding dropouts, it’s the same.

Chimera: Base price is now 1299.00, down from 1399.00. The base price no longer includes stealth dropper routing, which makes more sense anyway. But it’s still an option for 100.00

Ok, that’s it for pricing, whew.

Wyvern & Chimera Geometry

I’ve updated the geometry on the XL Wyvern and Chimera to have a 145mm head tube. Every single person who’s on a bike that size needs a longer head tube, so we’re making it longer. Everything else is the same.

Talos Chainstays

We are doing away with the elevated chainstay originally specced on the Talos frame. This decision was made for a few reasons, but the top one was: It restricted what dropouts we could build the Talos with, and no one wants that. Everyone (including myself) wanted sliding dropouts, so another way needed to be found. So, the Talos now comes standard with our new Loopstay chainstay yoke. It’s beautiful, strong, and solves all kinds of problems. The ONE downside is a few mm’s less of tire clearance. It is literally impossible to fit any more than we have with this yoke. It does still fit a 29×3.0 tire AND a 32t chainring. The 3 inch tire has about 5mm of room on each side, so if you’re a huge guy who flexes wheels a lot, you may want to run a 2.8 which is an awesome size tire anyway, or keep your wheels tensioned really well. Also, I finally put up a Talos Geometry chart, go check it out.

Powder Coated cages

Turnaround time on Black powder coated King Cages is now just a day or two. I am keeping them in stock pretty much all the time, so order away! I usually ship them pretty fast. Turnaround time on Custom colors is 1 to 2 weeks however. I am only powdercoating about once every 2 to 3 weeks these days. As usual, these are maximum times, it’s usually shorter.

Ok, that’s it. Nothing too huge, but all good stuff to know, now go ride your bike.

February 23, 2018

New Tool Friday: Post mount jig

I’ve been wanting to do post mount brakes on my frames and forks since day one, but I haven’t taken the plunge on a post mount jig. I just didn’t love the options available for purchase, and they’re a couple hundred dollars each. So I looked up the standard dimensions of post mount brakes, and rummaged around in my stock of metal and found some suitable material. A few hours on the machines, and it was done!

I included all the features I wanted, and it was pretty simple. It does 160 and 180 brake mounts, and it’s pretty burly. I didn’t want it flexing at all while I weld. The spacer is for either frame or fork use, but you unbolt the arm and flip it around for use on a fork. This brings the mounts 3mm further out, which is how they work. I thought drawing it up would be confusing, but once I just sat down and did it, it was one of the more simple jigs I’ve built.

I’ve also come up with a system for post mounts that I’m very, very excited about. You’ll start seeing it on my custom frames now, but until then, here’s a sneak preview.

I love building tools. Have a great weekend!

January 26, 2018January 31, 2018

New Tool Friday: Powder coat oven

20171222_122315 It’s been a little while since I’ve done a NTF post, but here it is. A powder coating oven! This beast was a little over 2 months in the making, and it was actually a really interesting build. I’ve known I wanted to bring powdercoating in-house since the beginning, but I also knew it’s it’s own huge project. In addition to this oven, I had to make a sandblasting cabinet as well, and make sure my air compressor was up to the task. But all is functional now, and I’ve been powdercoating everything I can get my hands on.

Some nerdy numbers:
The oven is built from galvanized sheet metal and metal studs. Insulated with yellow fiberglass insulation, and it has two 2.5 kilowatt oven elements for a total of 5 kilowatts. I used a PID temperature controller with a K thermocouple from Auber instruments. The inside dimensions are about 28 x 32 x 82 inches, and it’ll fit 2 bike frames or one tandem. It warms up from cold in about 20 minutes, and in about another 20 minutes the oven walls are fully warmed up. If I open the door to stick a bike frame in, it takes about 5 minutes to warm back up to 400 F. I’ve calculated the energy it uses, and it’s astonishingly small. Once it’s up to temp, the elements run at about 50% power to keep the whole thing at 400F. So if I’m just powdercoating one or two bike frames it’s on for about 2 hours, which uses around 6.25 Kilowatt hours, or $0.75.

Why powder coating?
One of the reasons I chose powdercoating, aside from being such a durable and long-lasting coating, is that I believe it to be more environmentally friendly. Wet paints have large amounts of VOCs which are released into the atmosphere during use. Powdercoat releases no VOCs during curing. However, the ovens used in powdercoating must be powered, so using electricity is the main environmental impact. Durango’s power comes from the Four Corners Generating Station which is a coal power plant. Pretty much a worst-case scenario for emissions. However, coal generates just over two lbs of CO2 per Kilowatt-hour produced, so during a 2-hour powdercoating session, I’m producing about 12.5 lbs of CO2. Roughly the amount your car produces driving 16 miles. In the grand scheme of things, that’s pretty damn good.

_MG_0062 In the next few months I’ll be experimenting with quite a few color and fading options. These will gradually become available as color options on the Colors page. I’m looking forward to some absolutely rad looking bikes coming out of the Myth shop this year. Keep an eye out on Instagram, and this blog.

Also, we’re collaborating with King Cage and offering powder coated King Cages. These are now available in the Online Shop.

_MG_0127

June 2, 2017

New Tool Fridays: Bandsaw

I really like bandsaws. They’re way quieter than chop saws, and don’t spray dust and metal everywhere. This week’s NTF is about my Harbor freight bandsaw. I bought this thing when I got tired of walking around my gigantic Carolina that took up twice as much space. The funny thing is, they have the same capacity, 8 x 12.

My favorite things about this saw are:
-It’s an extremely common model called the RF812 that’s sold under a lot of brands, so spare parts are very easy to come by.
-It has a 3/4″ blade instead of a 1/2″ blade, and I find that the blade just doesn’t deflect as easy, and makes cleaner cuts. You’re limited to a finest TPI of 14 though, unless you make your own blades.
-It’s an extremely efficient design. It’ll cut up to a 10″ piece of metal with the vise as it is normally set up, but you can move the stationary jaw and get an extra 2″ out of it. I like being able to cut big stuff if I have to.
-It’s available from HF for $700.

My least favorite thing was the motor. So I removed the enormous, cast piece of junk motor it came with and made a new motor mount. It’s spring loaded so it’s easier to change speeds. Then put a nice Baldor 1HP I got from the salvage yard on it, and now it just sings.

It was also really low to the ground as it came, so I whipped up a steel stand and put some real wheels on it. I hate having to bend over to use tools, and I use this one a lot. Now it rolls over stuff pretty easy and I can move it when I need to.

They say everything Harbor freight sells is just an incomplete kit, and you have to finish it. This saw is a perfect example.