Project Voodoo: Complete.

The Voodoo SS was actually completed almost 2 weeks ago, and has seen a handfull of rides thus far.

Here's Dave and his new SS:


There are 2 issues yet to be resolved, the simplest of the pair is the rear cog.
As mentioned during the initial build, the cog was taken from an old cassette and we chose the 21T over the 18T. Dave is ready to "turn the volume up a notch" and roll with a 20T. I have a Surly steel cog waiting to go in next time i get my tools on the bike.

The second issue is a bit harder to solve. The wheels were hand-me-downs from a pile of scrap parts. A co-worker stripped a Gary Fisher Opie since it has the same frame as the the $1200 Fisher GED and he already had an old Azonic Steelhead ready to donate its organs.
Just for fun, he and some others jumped/rode that poor $360 Opie really hard. The bars broke, ending their fun and saving the rest of the parts from certain death. The rear wheel is hammered. It has a big flat spot in it and doesn't stay in true long, so the rear V-brakes have to be spaced far from the rim. That in turn requires the lever to crush your fingers before the brakes do much work. I have a loaner wheel on deck from my personal collection, but also ordered a Salsa carbon brake booster since the seatstay flex isn't helping matters.

On the rear end the Rennen Rollenlager would not sit flush with the Ritchey dropouts, so we went with the cleanest cheap option...

Surly Singulator



Last year I ran a singulator with little luck in either push up/down springs. Soon after installation, a friend adjusted it for me and stripped the spring out. Why they use a hard steel spring secured in a shallow, soft aluminum body is beyond me. I hate poor product design and this is a good example of what not to do. Worse yet, the singulator is not new on the market and this issue has not been resolved, nor have any of the others. For example, to set the spring tension you must use a cone wrench. On the 2 bikes I've installed the tensioner on, both had recessed or "protected" dropouts that left little or no room to get a cone wrench. Even when I could manage to get tension and then fix the 5mm hanger bolt, the bolt would loosen and release tension over time. To top off the list of complaints, the spring tension was never enough to guarantee a drop-free ride on our rocky local loops. I would drop a chain every ride... until i started using a zip tie, just as pictured in the above photo.
Ghetto-fab, but it works better than the Surly spring.

We contacted Salsa to find a green skewer nut for Dave's vintage rasta Flip-offs. The sent him the part free of charge and threw in a bunch of stickers, including the one over the frame hole (which was first sealed with multiple layers of packing tape).


Pedals were put on too...


Building this bike was a ton of fun, and it has got Dave amped to ride.
I might have another SS build in the near future... I can't wait!