#i-link

Happy new years!  Winter is a good time to make replace worn out parts and make upgrades. Below are a list winter projects for both my road and cross bikes:

New wheels for cross bike:

Was having issues with my freehub and had a pair of Bitex hubs laying around so decided to build up a new wheelset.  I went with   Sapim laser spokes, Alloy nipples and Kinlin rims.  I not only did I go wider (28mm outer width) but tubeless.  I am not running them as tubeless at the moment since I didn’t feel comfortable experimenting in the winter where most of my rides are cold and dark. I’ll most likely switch over to tubeless in the spring.

Rebuild rear back up wheel for cross bike:

Towards the end of the year my freehub has slowly to not freewheel as smoothly.  I clean and re-lubed the freehub pawls and seals which was only a temporary improvement.  After a few rides it would start to progressively get worse.  After the third time I decided it was time to either replace the freehub or trash the hub. The hub had only 10k miles on it which is very low in my opinion so I was hesitant about spending money replacing the freehub that failed so quickly.  I could not find a replacement freehub anywhere so the choice was made for me.  I scrapped the Powerway hub and rebuilt the wheel with one from Fastace.  While Powerway or Fastace may not be household names, these are large OEM manufactures from Taiwan who most of the time have another company’s names on their hubs.

1x10 for cross bike:

I have simplified things by going with a single chainring.  I had been running 39x48 chainrings with a 12-25 cassette.  I switched to a 44 narrow wide chainring and 11-28 cassette.  My gear inches on my old set-up was 41.6 - 106.8 and now it’s 41.9 - 106.8.   So far it’s been nothing but positive.  I have dropped a few grams, less maintenance, less that can go wrong.  I don’t do much cross but if I feel the need to go lower for those muddy or hilly courses I will just swap out the 44 chainring for a 40.

Gator i-Link housing for road bike: 

I-Link is a great tool to use for finding jobs and internships. Employers post on I-Link specifically looking for University of Illinois students to fill their positions, so you are competing with a much smaller pool of applicants. There's even an option to upload your resume, which then allows potential employers to view it and reach out to you specifically

Being a transfer student, we have to adjust to a new school very quickly. This means all new information, new resources, new online databases, new everything. I hadn't even heard of I-Link until about a month into my first semester. If this post is the first time you are hearing of I-Link as well, now is the perfect time to sign up! If this isn't your first time hearing of it, now is still a great time to create an account and start building your professional career.