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Topics - ChrisB

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Road Bike Frames, Wheels & Components / Project "Purple Rain"
« on: February 17, 2024, 08:42:12 AM »
Just want to share my latest Chinerbike project using a well known clone frame that was on offer during singles day sales in November and of course some other components off AliXpress.

I know clone frames are  frowned upon but I had a good experience so far, so here we go:
- Frameset including seat mast and carbon handlebar
- Ltwoo GR9 Hydraulic Gravel Brifters and Rear derailleur
- Zrace XG hydraulic calipers
- Elite SLR Gravel wheels 45x31mm
- Continental GP5000 STR 30mm with Ridenow TPU tubes
- ZTTO 11-46 ULT cassette
- 105 Crankset with Stone 46T chainring
- Mixed 5D Carbon saddle
- Wellgo SPD pedals
- Weight just below 8kg



I really like the frame geometry, so I decided to build a second bike with the same frame set and 1x11 gearing to be mainly used for indoor cycling on a Tacx trainer.
First I tried to combine the GR9 brifters with a Shimano GRX 812 Garbaruk modded derailleur but could not get it to shift properly, therefore reverted to the original GR9 derailleur which works reasonably well.
The frame interior looks clean by checking with an endoscope camera and the paint job is OK, but not perfect. The BB is a T47 which installed without any problems. The only thing I do not like on this frame are the plastic head spacer parts which require quite a lot of tension from the head cap to get all the play out in the fork bearings.
In case of questions, please let me know.   ;)

BR Chris

2
Road Bike Frames, Wheels & Components / Chinerbikes at Nova Eroica Switzerland
« on: July 10, 2023, 01:49:08 PM »
Here for your summer viewing pleasure...   8)
We participated three weeks ago at the Nova Eroica Switzerland with our two Chiner Builds:
http://chinertown.com/index.php/topic,3555
http://chinertown.com/index.php/topic,3118

The video from the event is over on Youtube:


BR Chris

3
Component Deals & Selection / Magene L508 Radar bike light
« on: March 22, 2023, 12:28:57 PM »
What are the long term experiences with the Magene L508 Radar bike light?
I believe several regulars have this already in use?

Tempted by this offer to combine with my Garmin 830:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004639380107.html

BR Chris

4
Cyclocross Frames, Wheels & Components / Titanium Gravel bike: PYTitans
« on: January 21, 2022, 02:46:33 AM »
Sorry for the cross posting...

Since the frame is metal I put the complete build thread under MTB metal frames.   ;)

Here a picture of the finished project.



If you are interested you can find all details in the build thread:
http://chinertown.com/index.php/topic,3555.0.html

BR Chris

5
Metal Frames / Titanium Gravel bike: PYTitans build thread
« on: January 16, 2022, 03:46:59 PM »
I felt tempted to build a Titanium gravel bike after checking the offers of on Aliexpress, I decided to pull the trigger on following PYTitans frame in October:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001085459477.html?spm=a2g0s.12269583.0.0.7cfc1333bqHRlA

It took until beginning of January to arrive, but the seller was communicating clearly it would take more than two months for the frame to be ready to ship. Communication with the seller was good.
The weight including seat post clamp is just shy of 1600g.

Below some pictures of the frame.






6
Road Bike Frames, Wheels & Components / 1st Build: TanTan/Seraph GR029 with Sensah SRX Pro 1x11
« on: January 10, 2021, 07:20:42 AM »
Thank you for the admission to this board.
After positive experiences with Chinese carbon wheels, we decided to research the possible build of a Road/Gravel bike for my girlfriend. Chinertown gave some hints on what to look out for and which suppliers to choose for our project.
The goal was to build a bicycle mainly for the use on tarmac with some lighter gravel, therefore had to have clearance for wider tires.
Finally we decided on following components for our build:

Frame and Fork:
TanTan / Seraph: GR029 with 15mm Fork and BSA BB in size 52
We ordered the matching headset and thru axles directly with the frame to prevent any mismatch.

Groupset:
Sensah SRX Pro 1x11
Crank Zrace RX 172.5mm long with 44 chainring
Casette Zrace 11-46

Brakes:
Ordered seperately Zrace cable actuated hydraulic disc brakes for 160mm rotors.
The sets normally offered on Aliexpress only include adapters for 140mm discs which do not work for our terrain.  ;-)

Seatpost and saddle:
Ordered a separate carbon seat post 27.2mm and a saddle in "Specialized Mimic" style.

Wheels:
We still had a set of Alexrims with Schwalbe X-One 33mm tires laying around to be used.
The disc rotors are some standard Schimano.

Some additional parts such as brake and shift cabling were sourced locally.
The Fizik Cyrano bars in 420mm width and 110mm stem completed the build.


Additional remarks:
The frame was ordered mid of October and we requested a specific custom paint.
Communication with Seraph was excellent over Aliexpress. They sent us a CAD drawing with the custom paint for our confirmation after 24 hours, which is great service.
They let us know that the paint job would delay the shipment for about 20 days, which was about correct.
Due to the reduced air shipment choices caused by Covid-19, the shipment was rerouted and finally left china around the 9th of December 2020 and arrived in Europe end of December.
The quality of the frame and custom paint is very good. The only complaint is that the whole in the fork for the axles were not perfectly protected during painting so some colour entered, which I had to remove before assembly.

The assembly went pretty smooth without bigger issues. Inner cable routing always presents a challenge so you should have the right tools at hand.
Cable routing was done using a Zitto routing tool that is similar to the much more expensive Parktool counter part. For around 10US$, I can highly recommend it.  :-)

The Sensah groubset works well especially the shifting is very nice.
The break power needs to be checked once we had the chance of some extensive rides.
But make no mistake it is certainly not on the level of Shimano hydraulic disc brakes but we expect it to be OK for relaxed riding.

The total bike including Shimano SPD pedals is at 9.065kg which is not too bad considering the 33mm wide tires and quite heavy wheelset.
Going with some nice carbon wheels and tubules would certainly be a big improvement.  ;-)
The cost for the whole build was around 1000US$ including shipping, import taxes and additional parts.
Not super cheap but a real fun project with good result.  :-)

Some things still need to be fixed:
- For correct crankset mounting you need to use spacers adjusting the side to side play and preload of the BB. Unfortunately the shims in the set do not fit perfectly leaving about 0.5-0.8mm play. We will have to source a matching shim to correct this.
- There were only 4 instead of 5 screws speed to fix the chainring to the crank. It seems some mountain bike chainrings only use 4. We did order some additional parts to fix it.
- The cable routing for the rear break is not perfect on the first try so we have some slack and soft feeling when actuating the rear break. This should be easy to correct.

No riding experience yet due to the points to be fixed and cold and wet weather.
We will report our experiences at a later point in time.

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