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Topics - SportingGoods

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Vendor Discussion & Reviews / Any news from Peter?
« on: December 12, 2019, 12:28:53 AM »
Hi all, it looks like many of us reached out to Peter without luck in the last few month. I tried myself twice, email and Skype, to ask for a quote. No success.
Has anyone heard from Peter recently? Does anyone know what's going on?

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Component Deals & Selection / 4iiii Power meter
« on: January 31, 2017, 04:05:14 AM »
After an extensive time (50h) and km (1700km) spent on the home trainer enjoying the benefit of power reading, I have just pulled the trigger on an affordable real power meter. This is for my road bike. Model is 4iiii, left crank based. I wasn't ready to pay $1000+ for the dual sided. Total damage is $390, shipping included. Not too bad.

I have made a lot of progress on my trainer over the last 3 month (over 25% increase of my FTP, that's huge!). I see a lot of benefit with structured training, based on power. It is a lot more reliable then heart rate. Sometimes I see my heart rate remaining low (when I'm tired), it's not a perfect metric. I don't want to lose power reading as I'll get back on the road in a couple of month.
Also, this will tell me my real power values, as the trainer-based power is just calculated estimates.

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Vendor Discussion & Reviews / Wheel Fab video
« on: November 21, 2016, 05:30:49 AM »
This is a tour of the Zipp Factory by GCN. I'd love to see the same video from a Chinese vendor! Pretty amazing to see how a carbon wheel is built.


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29+ & 27+ / CS-496 Build / 27.5+
« on: August 30, 2016, 09:25:01 AM »
I really happy to kick off this CS-496 building topic  :D

This is the frame I won on the Chinertown lottery. As you know, my current bike is already 27.5+, so I will be transferring as much as possible. But before I get into any detail, let me share some pictures of the frame, that I received today (after a month out on vacation)



See that it was well packaged


And here is some details. I will update:
- EDIT: I had missed the most obvious, the frame :). I was a bit surprised by the weight of the frame, 1400g for a 17". 100g over what I thought. Apart from that the finishing looks good. I really like the ability to play with the length of the chainstay. And I did not know it offers internal routing for a dropper post.
- drivetrain. Going for Eagle as the CS-496 is not compatible with my current drivetrain (2x9).
- BB. Frame is BB92, my first press-fit  :o :-[ ???
- Headset. Got a Neco from Peter.
- Rear axle. I bought a through axle from Peter. My current frame is 135mm QR.
- Hubs. Frame is Boost. I bought Novatec Boost hubs from CarbonSpeed. Front is 149g. Rear is 264g with XD freewheel.


I keep all the rest of my bike:
- Stem. 70 mm Ritchey WCS
- Bar. Carbon Funn, 725mm
- Brakes. SRAM Guide RSC
- Rims. Carbon 35 mm internal, 40 mm external from CarbonSpeed
- Selle Italia SLR XC
- Reverb dropperpost. I will upgrade it to a Reverb Stealth later (resell my regular Reverb and buy a stealth - the frame has internal routing)
- Crank. XT triple. I really want to keep it, use the middle ring. Hope it will work!
- Fork. I'll upgrade the fork to a Boost one later (Christmas)

5
Road Bike Frames, Wheels & Components / MTB conversion to Disc Road bike
« on: July 06, 2016, 03:17:46 AM »
Hi everyone!
This is more a teaser then anything else for now :)

I'm going to upgrade my current MTB soon to Full Suspension. I used to temporarily convert this 29" hardtail into a road bike in the winter (going down to sub-8kg). I was swapping fork (26" MTB carbon rigid fork), wheels (ZTR Crest equipped with Durano 28mm), dropper post (Carbon post) and doing a bit of change in the chain ring.
That was too much work!

So I have decided to permanently convert this hardtail into a disc road bike. I plan to do it properly  8). I have already decided that I'll order:
- a carbon dropbar (B6 from Peter), for a real road bike look!
- Tubular rims, (RM30T-23 from Carbon Speed as well). My wheel sub-plan is the following:
    * take the very light Novatec D711/D712 regular hubs from my current MTB wheelset (converting those to Boost hubs)
    * Add the super light tubular rims
    * Use superlight DT Swiss Aerolight spokes
The wheelset will end up under 1.3kg, which is nice for carbon rims. If you add the gain of tubular vs. tire+tube, I loose over 700g in the wheels compared to my current road setup. That's MASSIVE difference at the most critical place.

I've not placed any order yet but I'll keep this post updated with thoughts and decisions :)

As I'll be transferring most of the equipment to the full-sus frame I will also need to buy:
Drivetrain + brake: unsure if I go with cable or hydraulic brakes. It will be a real road group for sure. Mechanical disc would allow to buy a complete group, which is usually cheaper then buying separate. I would just have to add the mechanical calipers.

EDIT: After looking into some other posts related to disc road bike I think I will go mechanic disc brake instead of hydraulic. The reason is that hydraulic now uses a different mount system (flat mount). I plan on selecting Ultegra drivetrain (Dura-Ace is over what I want to spend). After looking at the weight of these components, I'm heading to a bike below 7.1kg (w/o pedals) for a cost around €1000.00 (parts to buy only, not including parts that are my MTB for now).
It's probably as good as I need!!

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Component Deals & Selection / Smud-carbon saddle
« on: June 13, 2016, 03:58:27 AM »
Hi guys,
After running into smud-carbon in a post related to bottle cage I decided to buy a saddle from them. I really don't need it, really satisfied with my Selle Italia SLR, but I've been too tempted to drop the weight of my bike by 115g.
I'm going here to share my experience with you!

So... I don't get the saddle yet but already get some interesting stuff for you.

- Smud-carbon is based in Poland, most likely a one-man company, Piotr.
- Their product look amazing to me: both very nice looking and incredibly light. Not too expensive either (still far from being cheap!).
- It is difficult to buy from them. You can't buy online (it's not a web shop) and they are not fast to reply to email (multiple days, if not weeks). The only way to buy is by email.
- So, after waiting a long time, I finally got feedback from Piotr and have ordered a saddle (with custom paint) and a top cap (not for weight saving, but because it looks really cool!). I paid by Paypal (they don't even send a PP invoice, you have to get online and send a payment after agreeing on the total cost).

Now I need to wait 2-3 weeks to receive my parts :)

EDIT: I realize that I have missed the most obvious, their address: http://www.smud-carbon.eu/index_eng.html

7
29er / BB30to24 bottom bracket Problems
« on: May 02, 2016, 03:25:08 AM »
I thought I would share with you all a mistake I made. Hopefully it will prevent anyone from doing the same mistake.

OK, when I bought my frame about 18 month ago, for some reason I picked a BB30 bottom bracket. The short story is: As my current cranks were Shimano 24 mm axle I should have picked a regular BSA.
The long story is that I thought that:
- BB30 is new, I will probably want to upgrade my cranks to 30 mm axle in the future: WRONG (still use my XT cranks and love them!)
- BB30to24 converters exist and they produce a more robust BB, because you have the BB30 shell plus the converter, VERY strong then: VERY WRONG :)
Let me explain why it is very much wrong.
First, a BB30to24 converter needs to sit on a solid planar surface (the aluminum shell). A BB30 bottom bracket is NOT designed for cups to sit on the shell, but inside. So, when you buy a BB30, the vendor rightfully lacquers the outer side of the BB30 shell. It looks very nice like that. So, my BB30to24 was tighten at 40 Nm on the lacquer, and after 18 month, the lacquer was damaged and my BB was loose.
I understood then that I should nicely cut the lacquer around to expose the shell to the BB30 converter. Smart idea ;)
The next thing that happened is that the shell started to slide away from the frame. Not much 5 mm. Still enough to cause chain line disaster. I know, the design of the BB shell is really poor, there was nothing to prevent the shell from sliding except the lacquer (no pin, screw).
I have finally fixed it. The shell was still very tight in the frame, so I hammered out about 2 cm so that I could clean the surfaces and inject some slow curing epoxy, and hammer the shell in again.

It's now fixed and very solid, but really if I had picked a BSA BB nothing of that would have happen. Stick to it if you can, but don't use BB30to24 if you can't (use BB30 then!!).

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29+ & 27+ / CS-M04 27.5+ plus full suspension
« on: January 26, 2016, 03:53:14 AM »
Look at what I just noticed on Carbon Speed website:
http://www.xmcarbonspeed.com/Productinfo.asp?f=1438

Now, I have to keep control to not order it just now!!
I think this is 100% what I need: 27.5+, full sus, slacker head tube angle.

But that's a significant investment... the frame + shox + new rear hub. Thankfully the seatpost is the same size as my current Reverb :)
The problem is that I'd see that frame with a Pike, 130 or 140 mm travel (that would add up to the bill).

That would add about 1.2 kg to my current setup but I don't anticipate that to be a problem (would land around 12 kg).

OK, am I the only one getting crazy with this frame??

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