Quickbeam Update…

I’ve been riding my Hunqapillar pretty much exclusively since it arrived last October. I love that darn bike but that doesn’t mean I don’t love the other bikes I own as much. I finally decided that my Quickbeam needed an update.
Now that I have the Hunq with its racks and basket I don’t need my QB for carrying stuff quite as much as I did in the past. I decided I’d lighten it up a bit by taking off the Platrack. I also decided I wanted to try Alba bars on the QB as I love them so much on my Hunq.
I made the decision a bit after my birthday earlier this month. I had a pretty nice credit at Rivendell waiting for me and a one time birthday discount available as well. It was time.
I ordered up a set of Albatross bars, some Portuguese grips, new brake levers and cabling (time for a refresh there for sure) and mixed up a batch of shellac.
I haven’t been able to do a full set of photos yet but I’ll get around to that soon. In fact I only have some badly done phone camera shots of the bike with the new bars but before I put on the cork grips. They are blurry at larger sizes so I’m only putting one here. Stay tuned for better bike porn.

I’ve a few problems so far though, mostly centered around the cork grips. Sigh.
The build itself was a piece of cake. I took off the moustache bars and road levers and they’ll be headed to Hilo for my RB-1 to replace some drops I don’t care for. New brake cabling was easy save that I forgot I need tandem length cable for the rear – my bikes are large. Soon everything was together and tightened down for a test ride. Sweet.
You can see in the image I’ve got black foam grips on the bike. I wanted to wait till I could shellac the grips before I put them on. So I mixed up some shellac, a little too thin actually, put on a couple of coats, let ’em dry and stopped.
How to put on the grips. I’d test fit them and they were a bit loose. I’d need to glue them a bit but with what. Riv recommends Gorilla Glue but I was worried I’d never get them off again or, having gotten then off I’d never get the glue off without scratching up the bars.
I did a bit of a search through the RBW owners list and discovered what other people have used. Two things came up, hospital fabric tape and hairspray. Okay. I picked some up the next day and put a couple of bits of tape down, spraying the bars and put on the grips…breaking one in half in the process.
Oh no! Now I was effed.
Well…maybe not.
Actually the grip broke but didn’t really lose any cork. I could put it on, jam both ends together and the split more or less disappeared. Good enough. Not great, I’ll always know…and now you, but hey, it’s okay.
Today I was able to ride to work for the first time and noticed that…yep…the grips were loose. Not too loose to ride to work but something would need to be done before I went more than another mile.
Okay, more tape and wood glue – just a little wood glue. I should be able to get that off…I hope.
This time I did loose a wee bit cork on one little section but it doesn’t really show and I can’t really feel it. If starts bugging me I guess I’ll order another set and try again.
But how does it all work?
Great. The QB was super fun to ride this morning. I can’t wait till work is over and I can head out again. Rain be darned.
I’ll have more pictures soon…just don’t have time at the moment!’
Aloha!