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Re: Velobuild VB-R-218
I ordered my VB-R-218 in size XXL with the 110/42 cockpit on August 20, with a September 5 ship date and September 13 arrival in Texas. My intention was to use it as a frame for all of the spare parts I've been collecting in my garage to use as a fun project bike. I spent yesterday building it up, and it's now mostly complete. I was worried about the shifting quality with the full internal routing -- enough that I actually started researching buying a Rival eTap groupset before I built up the bike, negating the entire purpose of even beginning this project -- but I powered through and I'm pleased to say the shifting is superb. Running both hydraulic brakes and mechanical shifting through the headset was a royal pain, but now that it's done I'm happy with the results. Handlebars rotate just fine with everything bundled up in there, and the shifting is just as smooth as my bikes with more relaxed cable routing. It was a little tough to get the bottom bracket threaded in. There was a ton of paint in the threads that I had to carefully scrape out because it was preventing me from even getting the threads engaged, but after an hour I was able to finally get the bottom bracket installed. I haven't noticed any friction or problems rotating the cranks, so I'm hopeful everything turns out to be aligned well enough. The only problem I have so far is that after several hours of tinkering, I can't get the hydraulic brakes aligned at all using the normal tricks. The scraping is much more severe than I've experienced from any of the other bikes I've built, and I suspect the mounts need to be faced. I ordered the Hayes brake alignment tool to see if that will help, but if not I'll pop into my LBS to get them faced. I just want to fully exhaust all attempts to do it myself since they're an authorized Pinarello dealer. Maybe they won't care, or maybe they'll be totally offended and toss me out. We'll see. Component list: - R7000 105 mechanical groupset, including 172.5 mm crank with 4iiii power meter - Giant PR2 wheelset - Continental GP5000 tires, 700x25 - Bontrager tubes - Proxim W350 saddle - Jagwire shift cables - RS500 SPD SL pedals, sitting in the garage not installed yet Definitely not lightweight. In its current state without pedals, it's 8.76 kg. The RS500 pedals are about 320g, and when I install the water bottle cages that arrive tomorrow that will tip me well over the 9 kg mark. Definitely not concerned about weight since this is a spare parts build, but depending on how it rides I could see myself swapping the wheelset out with something a little more svelt sometime in the future. Once I can get the brakes to the point where the wheels turn without waking up the neighbors, I'll report back on ride quality. September 18, 2022, 04:37:50 PM |
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Re: Velobuild VB-R-218
Velobuild painted it. I found a picture of a VB-R-099 that I thought looked decent -- http://ueeshop.ly200-cdn.com/u_file/UPAB/UPAB004/2010/photo/e47e33d856.jpg -- so I asked Chris if they could reproduce that on the VB-R-218. There are some areas where the paint is a little uneven where two colors meet, but it's much better than anything I could do myself. Sometimes I think I should have gone with something a little crazier, like gold and green (green for the money, gold for the honey) or maybe one of those chameleon paint jobs, but I suppose this simple and understated color scheme is the safer option. September 19, 2022, 12:45:17 PM |
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Re: Velobuild VB-R-218
I got the brake mounts faced last week, finished getting everything adjusted, and put 80km on the VB-R-218 over the weekend. I'm not going to make any claims that I'm the most discerning rider, but I haven't found it to be sluggish or harsh. The final ready-to-ride weight[1] comes in at a whopping 9.945 kg, a full kg heavier than my Giant Defy and 1.5 kg more than my Canyon Ultimate in similar configurations, but it feels snappier than the Defy because of the steeper head angle, and is just as much fun as the Ultimate. If I hadn't seen the numbers on the scale, there's nothing about the ride that would make me think I'm riding a battleship. My only complaint so far is that I decided not to wrap the cables with foam -- I've never had to on my other bikes, so I decided to forgo it with this build as well -- and that was a huge mistake. On the first ride the noise was distracting, but on the second ride I was more used to it. The internal cable routing was enough of a pain that I'm not going to take it apart to wrap the cables, but once the cables snap and I need to replace them, I will be putting in foam liners. [1] Ready-to-ride includes pedals, saddle bag with repair kit, bottle cages, Wahoo, and lights, but not the water itself. September 26, 2022, 09:47:55 AM |
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Re: What's your ERC(Every Ride Carry)? Show me what your ride kit looks like.
It all fits nicely inside my saddle bag, except for the tire bead jack, which I carry in my jersey pocket. The hand roll method is nice, but I seem to get a flat once a month and the bead jack turns the entire tube change into an effortless 5 minute task. September 28, 2022, 03:44:14 PM |
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Re: Advice on fake frames
The idea of a Madone knockoff with IsoSpeed is both really cool and terrifying. It's questionable enough getting something like the Cervelo S5 or the Tarmac SL 7 that have no moving parts, but throwing a suspension bearing into the frame takes this to a whole new level. I'd love to see some actual details on what they did for that and whether the parts are interchangeable with the real thing. January 16, 2023, 04:18:08 PM |
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