The biking thread

[Greycap]

Worth it... that's a 50-50. Maintenance becomes infinitely easier as the Hollowtech is pretty much the ultimate in ease of (dis)assembly while square taper more or less sucks in that regard, but the big question is how often you'll need to take it apart. The weight savings though, not only are they negligible in the grand scheme of things, but the difference is also mainly in the spindle itself which makes it just about impossible to feel when pedalling with no noticable extra inertia compared to an external system.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I'm leaning towards square taper with these cranks:

Crank - Silver3 - Arms only

Short version: It’s svelter, lighter, not as versatile or all-welcoming as the original SILVER, which we still sell and endorse. The SILVER3 is for road use by riders 200lbs or less naked. Detail etc. We have all of our-branded metal mechanical bicycle parts tested to established international...

www.rivbike.com

and this chainring:

110 BCD Gravel / CX / Road Chainrings

110 BCD 1x chainring sprocket gravel cyclocross cx road wide narrow wolf tooth drop stop

www.wolftoothcomponents.com

I think the silver and black would actually look rather cool.

Along the way of searching, I found this set of cranks that are absolutely stunning:

Sugino Super 75 DD2 fixed gear track crank arms & bottom bracket

Sugino's Super 75 DD2 crank arms feature S-Cubic (S3) coating and a stiff IDS24 chromoly axle. Compatible with any 144mm bcd track chainring of your choice.

www.retro-gression.com

They are far too expensive for me to consider, and I don't think I could get a 40t chainring on there, and they are meant for fixed gear/track so are pretty heavy. It did get me wondering....could I nickel plate the Riv cranks to achieve a similar finish?

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I have never really researched bottom brackets before. They are fascinating and the permutations are deeeeeep. I assumed that square taper would always be heavier than hollowtech BB & Cranks, but it honestly depends.

If you're feeling particularly spendy, you could get a Sugino RD4 crankset at 458g and a white industry titanium square taper BB (how neat is it that this exists?) that weighs a paltry 142g. That's more than a typical hollowtech BB (figure 90g average), but the hollowtech doesn't include the spindle. A 105 crankset with spindle and cranks (and chainrings) weighs 750g.

ST BB: 458 + 142 (+50 for a chainring) = 650g
EB BB: 90 + 750 = 840g

Now the former setup is significantly more expensive, but its also way more interesting and the cranks are far more elegant.

I'm close to pulling the trigger on the RD4 cranks (they are way prettier than those Riv ones) and debating whether or not I want to spend 1.5x more than the price of the whole bike on a BB )

edit: For reference, my Ultegra 3x crankset weighs 892g. Add in the BB at probably 250g, the 3x derailleur at ~100g and that's over 1200g worth of front drivetrain. The RD4 1x + WI BB will save nearly 5 quarter-pounders.

I think I'm going to end up taking around 3lbs off the bike with this planned suite of changes. Time to weigh it tonight before the knives come out...

 

[Greycap]

If there's one part in a bike I wouldn't spend a lot of extra on, it would be the BB because it's literally a couple of bearings and an axle through them. The cheapest one does exactly the same as the most expensive one as long as us mere mortals are concerned. Having said that, if my Chisel some day needs a new one I'll throw an XTR on but that's more of a "because I can" thing, as the cheapest Shimano is 15€ and the XTR is 40€ it may just be worth it just for the better seals it has but I'm fully aware it won't perform the slightest bit better than the base model.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

If there's one part in a bike I wouldn't spend a lot of extra on, it would be the BB because it's literally a couple of bearings and an axle through them. The cheapest one does exactly the same as the most expensive one as long as us mere mortals are concerned. Having said that, if my Chisel some day needs a new one I'll throw an XTR on but that's more of a "because I can" thing, as the cheapest Shimano is 15€ and the XTR is 40€ it may just be worth it just for the better seals it has but I'm fully aware it won't perform the slightest bit better than the base model.

Took this advice and ordered a $25 BB. At some point I realized that the drivetrain was quickly adding up to me more than what I paid for the bike, even without a fancy BB. I still want the Sugino cranks, so I ordered those + the wolf tooth 40t crank. Pretty stoked to get this setup together. Unfortunately, the shifters are coming from Germany (for what reason...I'm not sure) and possibly won't arrive until the end of the month. So the full parts list:

Fyxation Rodeo Pursuit Bars
Tektro RX.4 Inverse Brake Levers (silver)
Sunrace SL-R91 downtube shifter(s)
Sugino RD4 Mighty comp cranks (silver)
Andel 110mm square taper JIS BB
Wolf Tooth 130 BCD 40t chainring (black)

I still need a chain and bar tape, which I'm planning to buy locally.

 

[Greycap]

That was definitely a wise choice. You were looking at a $450 BB for a $300 bike... meanwhile I have that cheapest possible 15€ Shimano SM-BB52 on a roughly 4000€ build. Or actually two such combos, my old full suspension bike is also somewhere around the same total price tag accumulated over the years and it too has the BB52. Moreover, it has had that exact BB for 12 years now, gone through all the weather Finland has to offer and travelled a five digit amount of kilometres, and it's still smooth. The red Chisel is "only" at 4½ years at the moment but it too has its original BB52 while just about everything else that originally came with the frame has been swapped to something else for one reason or another. No issues there either.

And that, people, is exactly why I root for the cheapest possible parts in that area.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I think this is why many of the custom hand built carbon frames are essentially of the standard tubes with metal lugs variety. It's just far too development & labor intensive to build custom monocoque frames - or it would be so expensive basically nobody would buy them. Lugged carbon tube bikes can look cool, but you are giving up the entire benefit of CFRP - the ability to create a structural monocque that is stiff as hell, compliant, aerodynamic, and very light all at the same time. I'd bet that the development cost of the Specialized Tarmac SL-8 is somewhere in the 7 figure range.

Circling back to this future bike. I did a ride on my Cannondale today and the brakes are terrible and the bottom bracket has started creaking again. I will never buy another press fit BB bike again!

The other thing that occurred to me is that I don't know how much I like my Ribble. It's capable, but it's also damn heavy and I don't really use the "adventure" mounts enough to justify having them. It does have a good group on it though.

So I started to think - could I consolidate two needs into one bike? I could make some adjustments to my Soma to make it more of my go-to bike for really rough stuff (it's practically there already) and then maybe I get a racier "all-road" / gravel bike. One that I find particularly appealing is the Ibis Hakka MX. It wouldn't be as capable as the Ribble, but it would be way faster - possibly faster than the Cannondale to boot, and it's just as pretty as the Cervelo Soloist I was contemplating before, and from a brand I like better. I could potentially sell my Ribble frameset for $500-800 depending on the market (it's still a ti bike afterall) and then pickup a Hakka frameset for just over $2k and move my whole GRX group over to it, with the two wheelsets I have.

Not sure what I'm gonna do yet...but I feel like reducing the quiver might be a smart move.

 

[Greycap]

Another thing is, what's really faster in real life. I'll get back to it later in this post.

Back in the day I had the full suspension MTB that was pretty nice everywhere, but obviously overkill for anything but actual trails and I thought a hardtail might be better for most of my needs. So I bought one and eventually went though three of them to get to a point in which I had to face another similar decision. It was a lot faster on good surfaces so mission accomplished on that part.

Some time later one thing led to another and I thought I needed a faster still bike, so I went and bought a cyclocross. A more aerodynamic position, narrower tyres, everything in the combination says it should have been a lot faster than the hardtail, but in reality it wasn't. Perhaps on a straight road into a headwind but that's about it. In real life situations it was so much more difficult to handle that the hardtail was usually as quick, and it wasn't uncommon for it to be faster. In the end the conclusion was that the cross bike didn't offer basically anything in terms of performance, while being considerably less relaxed to ride and outright frightening on rough surfaces so I sold it and eventually bought an even better hardtail.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Well, I got the crankset, shifter, and new chain installed on the Lemond. Chainline is just about perfect with the 110mm spindle - right down the middle of the cassette. I'm absolutely loving the indexed downtube shifter. It reminds me of the best kind of manual transmission shifter....super direct with absolutely zero play. I've only ever used friction DT shifters, and this thing is a revelation in comparison. The click-click is just so satisfying. The 40T chainring combined with the 12-25 cassette is pretty well suited to the terrain of my typical commute. I find myself spinning out around 27mph/43kmh (which is plenty) and the low end is totally sufficient for the ~9% max grade on my route. My only gripe is I don't love the black chainring, but narrow-wide 130BCD chainrings are not exactly common, so it'll do for now (I actually reached out to Wolf Tooth and they've said they've had a lot of interest in doing runs of silver chainrings, so I'm gonna keep my eye out). So glad I don't have to deal with that triple chainring anymore, not to mention the obnoxious cable routing of the old Shimano STI shifters.

Next up is the pursuit bars and inverse brake levers, which I plan on doing this weekend. I'm going to skip the WT Road Link and larger cassette for now, as they don't actually seem necessary.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Well, after struggling a lot to get the original bars out of the quill stem, and then threading the new ones in...I realized I have a 26mm stem clamp and a 25.4mm bar. Thankfully, there are plenty of shim options available online so I ordered one from Velo Orange. I probably could have done it with a cut up beer can, but this felt more legitimate.

 

[Volksauto]

Cycling has always been an interest of mine. But when it comes to bikes, the older it is the more it peaks my interest. I’ve collected a few vintage bicycles. One of which was this unusual 1939 Elgin Deluxe I found a couple years ago.

I disassembled the bike and went through it. Visually I wanted to preserve its originality as much as possible but its rusty and dull appearence needed some tlc. Unfortunately the ornamental pieces around the headlights were cracked so I had to repair the damage and repaint them but the rest of the bike is still original paint that cleaned up nicely with some elbow grease.

The bike is a joy to ride. Being a single speed and how heavy it is, it’s also quite the workout.

Some photos (sorry pic heavy) show its state of when I first found it / before and after.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

So I test rode a Cervelo Soloist (105 build) and a Specialized Aethos (Pro Ultegra di2 build) over the weekend. Both bikes felt really nice, though, to my surprise, neither felt as "alive" as my lowly $300 Lemond Zurich. Steel is very much real*. The Aethos was probably 16lbs or less and it felt very quick to accelerate, but the Soloist was no slouch and seem to maintain speed better. Both bikes felt very smooth and comfortable. I think I would enjoy the aero benefits of the Soloist more on longer rides over the lower weight of the Aethos because I'm more of a Rouleur/Puncheur type rider than a Climber. Also everyone and their dog has an Aethos in San Francisco...One thing that surprised me is that the Soloist is actually heavier than my CAAD12. Part of that is in the components (in particular disc vs rim brakes) but the frame is only like 200g lighter also.

One important thing I learned is that I'm not a 54cm frame size. I've bought bikes in the size for close to a decade now, but after riding my 55cm Zurich and noticing how natural it felt. I started to question it. Both bikes I tested were in 56cm and they felt just correct. I rode my 54cm CAAD12 today and I realized how weird it feels - I have a really hard time holding a more aerodynamic position because I feel super scrunched up, my quads are doing all of the work (because I'm too far forward) and I'm constantly pushing myself backwards on the saddle (which is already slammed back almost as far as it will go without an offset post) in a semi-successful quest for more glute power. My size medium Soma riff feels comically small even with a dumb looking 120mm stem. My size medium Ribble has an even more honking long 140mm stem so it feels pretty good. I think I might be a large boi.

*Part of me wonders if a high-end and/or custom steel or Ti bike would suit me better than a carbon frame for just this reason. However, I would really like to experience the aero and compliance benefits of a carbon bike.

So all in all, I'm likely going to get the Soloist. I wish I could get a 105 build without wheels, because the stock ones aren't great, but I don't want to pay an extra $1500 for the "race" build, when I could get a decent set of carbon hoops for around $1000 and the rest of the build is totally fine for me. I'll probably try to sell the wheels.

I will probably end up offloading the Cannondale and the Soma while keeping the Lemond and Ribble - a 4 to 3 consolidation.

 

[Greycap]

Bike sizing is an odd thing. Back when I bought the Crux I was deemed to be size 52, in reality 173 cm with longish legs, and it never felt comfortable. Over two years I tried different stems (both lengths and heights) and saddle positions and never got it to feel right. In recent times I've looked at the geometry and while it perhaps wasn't too short, it was definitely too low with a 554 mm stack and an inverted 90 mm stem - then again it was a very race oriented cyclocross bike, but what's nowadays known as gravel hadn't been invented yet. It always felt like I was in some extremely cramped fetal position with my chest all bunched up and not being able to produce any proper power thanks to not feeling good at all. Sounds a lot like the CAAD12 situation actually.

Every now and then I keep wondering if it was simply the wrong bike for me, or if the entire road handlebar riding position doesn't work. If I got my hands on a modern gravel frame with a ~600 mm stack, a short-ish stem, and wide (for a road style bike) 460 mm bars it would certainly be an entirely different experience compared to the Crux that had the front end so low that you could basically trim your beard with the front tyre tread. Then again, I don't really know what advantages it would hold over a lightweight hardtail that's already on gravel tyres and sports a road cassette. Aerodynamics perhaps, but that's about it.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Anyone watching the tour?

I know some people find the TT stages boring...but man watching Remco's time trial skills is something special. That man is a weapon on a TT bike. The power, the position, the control is really awesome to watch. Jonas did not have a good day...even Roglic beat him. Would have been great to see MVDP hold onto yellow for another day, but not his day. Where the hell is Wout? He finished way, way back. I miss the days where he could actually give a MVDP a run for his money, but the past 3 seasons have been very disappointing after his historic 2021 and 2022 seasons. Visma seems to have faceplanted after Jumbo left the team.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Well that was probably the least suspenseful tour since 2021. Pogacar dominated from start to finish and never really seemed troubled. There were some entertaining subplots like Ben Healy's epic breakaway and yellow jersey, and I always like seeing MVDP in yellow. For me the first week of the tour is usually the most interesting and I have to wonder - would a tour that has only 1 or 2 high mountain stages and more hilly stages be more fun to watch? I feel like there are so many more contenders and more tactical opportunities on the hilly stages - you could get multi-rider breakaways, you can get long range attacks, you can get bunch sprints, and teamwork actually has tangible results, the stages are just much more dynamic. I suppose that's why I like the 1-day classics more than the tour. At least WVA finally showed some of his magic at the end. The world needs more WVA vs MVDP slugfests!

In other news, I finally pulled the trigger.

Cervelo Soloist. 105 Mechanical build. I've only done one ride, but I broke my fastest-ever flying mile by 30 seconds. Thing rides amazing. I plan to upgrade the wheels at some point, but for now I'm ok with the stock alloys. I also sold my Cannondale, so the stable remains 4. I'm trying to sell the Soma MTB because as I noted a few posts ago, it is also too small for me.