All Things Bikes and Tacos! (...and every vehicle imaginable)

YES! Legitness

 

Well, they’re here and are very nice custom built wheels. I still don’t think the rims are as nice as WAO, I like to see the carbon if I’m getting carbon… The hubs are beautiful though. There’s a mod to double the POE, but 44 is fine.

 

Bit the bullet and got a Fuji brownstone. Need to try some hard stuff but did do a celebratory ride with the boy

 

Sh*t fire! I put everything on the CC, pay it off every statement and have very good credit. Put the new bike on it last month and it just hit the credit reporting. Bike was just over double my average monthly statement balance and my credit ratings dropped ~the same it did when I bought my truck (50 & 40pts)...Bananas! I do realize one is a loan and one is a straight purchase and I know it'll recover but damn sure know it won't regain those points as soon as I pay that statement.

 

I am way too old and damaged for all that rough off-road/downhill stuff!

No plastic bicycles here yet either. Maybe someday I will buy a broken one and customize it.

Meanwhile it’s gonna be real steel, and maybe aluminum. If I can work out the new TIG machine, I will buy a used aluminum bicycle and customize it.

I have been saving aluminum tubes for just such a thing. Also saving steel. I am building a frame welding fixture from recycled steel things.

It’s not completely worked out yet. I haven’t put in the uprights. It will need leveling feet and other bits.

So far it is all just set with clamps and magnets. Any welding seen is factory-made.

 

Nice.

Do you have the ability to heat treat frames afterward? I TIG welded a broken chainstay on a Cannondale but only so I could use it on my trainer. Five years on and it's fine but I wouldn't want to use it outside. It was a tough spot to TIG.

 

"taco, taco, burrito"

 

To temper/age an entire aluminum frame? No, I’d have to send it out.

Back in the early 80s I was an engineer at the Kawneer company, and we had a locomotive-sized extrusion press and an anodizing line. We had furnaces bigger than rail cars. and we could put 8’x8’ racks of 25’ long extrusions into the oven.

If you’ve used deodorant with aluminum hydroxide in it, we used to sell off carloads of it to chemical/cosmetics companies. It was collected from the bottoms of the anodizing tanks.

Wow! That was a whole world ago for me. Almost 40 years!

Anyhow, I’m not building racing machines here. Just customs for fun.

Things may/will be a little heavier because I will design the joints for low weld requirements.

 

I have not had luck with the Dart. I found it also leaks sealant because the material is so absorbent whereas the bacon strips stay dry.

 

Yeah, it probably will.

I keep a close eye on mine. Mine can fluctuate 50-70 pts in a month depending on when I check it. Probably has to do with the percentage or amount of credit available. For example, if you go from $50k available open credit to $49k, you'll drop about 50 points. There are certain thresholds and as soon as you pay it, it changes. If you check it the week after you pay, I bet it recovers.

 

Average CC utilization does play a factor in your score, but it shouldn't drop it that drastically on one purchase. Where are you pulling your score from? If it's Credit Karma, its good as a ballpark of where you are, but what they report is their modified score to keep you logging in.

 

Yeah I just use Credit Karma and I don't lose sleep over it. Also I have kept a limit of 15k so that 2k to 6k is ~3 fold increase in usage

 

What I have read is that you want to keep somewhat of a balance to show you actually use credit, but always use less than 30 percent of your available credit. Seems legit. AmEx has a credit protection service and sends me monthly and quarterly reports, plus any alerts that pop up. My info is on the dark web, like probably everyone else's.

 

yea its keeping your balance under 30% usage, which doesn't make sense to me if i pay it off every month. but thats what they said in the first time home buyers class i took

 

The truth is: Almost nobody actually knows how the "credit score" is determined, and the 3 reporting bureaus have slightly different recipes for generating your score, but there's a lot of things the world has been able to sort of guess the formula on.

Avg age and number of accounts is king, followed by making payments like mortgages on time. Credit utilization is towards the bottom as long as it isn't a wildly high percentage.

Keeping credit card debt in the name of "keeping a balance" seems to be a very debated thing, but I suspect is more harmful than helpful overall.



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HEY LOOK! A BIKE!

 

I never close a CC unless it has a yearly fee. I always just throw one time use credit cards in the safe.
I churn CC for sign up bonuses.

Don't close too many card accounts if you care about credit.

Also love the bike.

 

Hey! I know where that is!

Also considered recently getting a motorbike but decided I would be too reckless with it. lol.

 

Me too!

Now it feels weird when I get back on my MTB. The seat isn't 8 inches wide, and the brakes feel like they don't work at all vs the big bike.

The motor sucks too

 

time to get on an e-bike! hah!