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Re: ZRace RX crankset - broken
I wouldn't go as far as expert but I have a little bit of knowledge of this kind of things. If you could get some good close up photos of the two faces if you can get them apart that might be helpful. Make sure to indicate which side is the pedal side.

Non-drive side.  Had to grab a monkey wrench to bend the piece off- you can see where I just broke it off.  Aluminum shavings probably from me trying to get pedal off - pedal extender threads are perfectly fine. 

Before anybody says it first- it's time to cut my nails.   ;D

October 25, 2023, 09:43:58 PM
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Re: Travel 120mm Carbon Hardtail Frame There are so many hardtails suitable for hardtail use.   The market is already completely saturated.  As you might see from the many posts and threads here, what people are really interested in now, and the growth market, is hardtails suitable for use as drop bar gravel bikes.

So I'd scratch the 120mm and do 100mm.

Legit 44-46T 1x clearance without an offset chainline.  Option of running an FD with up to 50-34.  If this can be achieved with 142x12 spacing, so much the better, as it increases crank and gearing options significantly.

Top tube on the slightly shorter side, to allow for additional reach from drop bars.  Maybe 15-20mm more stack than usual, as often these bikes are used for very long races or rides.

BB offset larger than usual for hardtails, given the use case.  ~70mm.

Steep seat angle to keep effective reach down for longer legged riders. 76deg.  Head angle around 68-68.5 degrees. 

Maybe consider a kinked downtube to allow more space for bottles and frame bags.  Aero shaping.  Down tube storage.

Top tube mount points.

August 24, 2024, 05:39:48 AM
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Re: Spcycle New Mold G068 Carbon Gravel Frame



My 650b rims came in about 10 days earlier than I was expecting, so I built them up over the weekend and took them on their first ride today. 34 miles with 3300 feet of climbing; pretty short in absolute terms, but it was a good split of surfaces, about 45% pavement, 35% smooth/slightly washboarded dirt, and 20% jeep doubletrack with lots of rocks. Not a ton of distance or vert, and it is only one ride, but my impressions of a bike rarely change after the first ride so I think I can provide some useful info.

Main thoughts:
  • With tires measuring almost exactly 50 mm, I have 4 mm clearance at the chainstays on each side. I expect the tires to stretch a little bit over time, so it's good to know that if they plump out another 2 mm I'll still have adequate clearance. I didn't bother measuring the front, there's easily >6 mm of room on either side, the fork could probably take a 2.1" tire if it's not too knobby.
  • The total diameter (including tires) of my 650b wheels is about 1 cm less than my 700c wheels; the ~5 mm difference in radius didn't really change handling but did lower the cranks by that much, which is important because I got two or three pedal strikes, even with a decent choice of line so as to avoid the larger rocks. I'll be getting crank boots since my crankarms are carbon. Not really an issue on terrain where you're not trying to navigate through a rock field, but that does make up some of the more fun routes around here so it applies to my use case.
  • Probably due to the far fatter and squarer tire profile, the handling at the front was more sedate than with the 700c wheels; it did take a bit of persuasion to rapidly change direction when I was crawling uphill. No real change with how the rear wheel tracked, though, which was nice. Overall the handling is quite stable but I wouldn't classify it as slack, certainly not on the level of a Stigmata or similarly headtube-angled frames. No problems staying upright the few times that the rear wheel broke traction, which fortunately never happened up front.

Side thoughts:
  • The downtube bottle cage mounts are a bit too far up to fit a 750 ml bottle. I used a bottle cage extender (https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805494776538.html but the design is generic) to drop the cage about 2 cm down, which works well. I did drink all of that extra water so it's worth it.
  • I didn't get any chainslap on the way up even as I was bouncing around, but did get a fair amount on the rutted dirt descent, even in the big ring and lower gears in the back. I'll be putting on another layer or two of clear tape on top of the single layer that's already on the chainstay, just for a bit more cushioning.
  • Being able to run a dropper post may be the single biggest advantage this frame has over an actual Canyon Grail. The dropper is pretty much mandatory for the dirt descents I do and I also use it quite a bit to get aero on parts of descents faster than I can spin my 48/11 top gear (i.e. most of any descent). I have the clamping wedge torqued to 7 Nm and the seatpost hasn't slipped at all - I put a ring of silver Sharpie around the base to make sure - which is impressive, considering how fat I am.
  • The rear rim already got a few small nicks from rocks flipping up from under the tire, but I've found with my road rims that a tiny bit of clear nail polish hides such marks on glossy carbon very well.
  • The wheelbuilding process on these rims was quite nice. LightBicycle AM728 rims, i9 Torch rear hub + i9 Solix front hub (Torch hubs are effectively impossible to find now and purple ones simply no longer exist  :'( ), Sapim CX Ray/Sprint front/rear respectively. Was my first time building with alloy nipples, Sapim Double Square, and they performed no different than the brass ones I've used before. The internal square part is easy to fit an internal tool (https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256802115683590.html) and rotate, which is nice because it allows a spoke holder to keep the bladed spoke aligned without a spoke key in the way.

I'm using the SRAM T47 BB and even though it's nominally for 85.5 shells, I can confirm it works perfectly fine in the 86.5 mm hubshell of this frame. With RED cranks, the fit is absolutely perfect with a 2.5mm driveside spacer and the preload adjuster turned all the way out. My subcompact chainrings sit a little closer to the frame than stock chainrings would, so with a 2 mm driveside spacer you could get some preload adjustment.

Slight amendment; this did work fine but when the chain was on the inner chainring it was like 0.3 mm from the frame, close enough that wax got onto the downtube. I ended up sanding about 0.7 mm off the inner face of the preload adjuster ring and swapped to a 3 mm spacer on the drive side. This bought me ~0.5 mm more clearance, which is good enough. This problem is likely unique to my setup - the Bikingreen chainrings sit further inboard than stock chainrings due to the weirdness needed to fit subcompact rings to a 110 BCD spider.

-----------------------------------------------

Final thoughts, having put ~175 miles of road riding in on this frame with 700c wheels plus this one ride on 650b: this frame is really good at being a road bike, pretty good at being a rough-terrain gravel bike, but it's not a master at either discipline. Where it felt the best was the smoother dirt, and I think it would be absolutely outstanding when ridden on such roads with a set of 700 x ~45 mm tires. Still, it's plenty good enough at fulfilling the dual role I ask of it - a keeper for sure! 

September 16, 2024, 10:02:17 PM
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Re: Chinese cycling clothes Any argument on that? Saying so sure it's 'fake', should know something we all don't...

Because I have 4 bibs here with EI pads (2 ykyw, 1 spexcel), and they're still very nice to ride in, we'll after a year of frequent use
I don't really know if real or fake, cannot say for sure.
What I can say is that the ones I have are well finished and comfortable.
I'd expect that for these more known brands it's real ones. But then there are 'shady' brands with much lower cost advertising EI, those cases I'd be sure it's fake

They are all fake. :(

October 26, 2024, 12:34:38 PM
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Re: Travel 120mm Carbon Hardtail Frame I keep saying and looking for a gravel frame something similar to a Salsa Cutthroat. (148mm rear hub, not 142mm)
 
I run my carbon hardtail SPCycle SP-M05 with a 100mm front susp. or rigid fork, with carbon "H" bars.  I actually like it better than my regular gravel bike.  The SP-M05 is a lightweight frame, but it is a longer wheelbase than I'd like for for my gravel grinders.   

Regarding 120 front travel, I am fine with 100mm front travel for almost all of the trails I take this bike on.  At 120mm travel, I'd prefer using a 120mm FS bike.

Regarding a short travel FS gravel bike, I don't see the need.  With 50+mm tires, at the right pressure, my hardtails handle almost a good as a FS bike.  (Unless I run into rock gardens or root fields.

I agree with RDY too regarding a drop bar ready frame.  There is a growing group of rider that like riding local trails on "H" bars or drop bars.  It is a growing niche.


October 31, 2024, 07:18:26 PM
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Re: Magene P505 PES Base Spider Powermeter
People happily using P505, could you please tell me, if it fits a 90.5 mm wide BB? And how much this powermeter returns back to bike's frame? I wonder if I could use P505 with my Spcycle G068 frame with t47 BB.

Where's the 90.5mm BB measurement from? The Spcycle G068 BB shell is 86.5mm wide.

I don't have specific experience with the Spcycle G068 frame, but I've successfully used my P505 Base PM crankset with both an Spcycle G056 frame and a VeloBuild VB-R-066 2023 Disc frame, without any spacers. Both frames used a T47 BB with internal bearings (86.5mm shell width). The clearance is slightly less on the G056 frame than it was on the VB frame.

November 03, 2024, 09:35:13 PM
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Re: Chinese cycling clothes "winter" gear update. Tested the gloves mentioned earlier in the thread. EXTREMELY warm, so much that my hands sweated. 85km at 6 degrees Celsius, 35kmh average, windy and no sun.
A bit bulky, but you can still shift and brake. For girls especially who tend to always have cold hands, a blessing. For me, it was arguably too warm, but that's a happy problem really.
Winter shoes (40 euro on AliExpress). Sole is very soft, so forget performance. I had cold feet a tiny bit on that ride, but nothing too unpleasant. With my regular shoes, I would have been very cold and miserable. Boa lacing, for the price and convenience, it's a win. They seem well made. I used a cotton sock, I'll try a wool sock.
I really like the wind jacket (mentioned earlier in the thread). On that 6C ride, mostly in Z2, base layer, plastic LS TS, merino wool LS TS, jacket, buff around the neck. Long BIB. I felt great, neither hot nor cold.

November 04, 2024, 12:33:36 AM
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Re: Magene P505 PES Base Spider Powermeter Being able to use the P505 Base PM crankset is more about the shape of the BB area on the drive side.

https://chinertown.com/index.php/topic,4952.msg60729.html#msg60729

November 04, 2024, 06:42:26 AM
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Re: Magene P505 PES Base Spider Powermeter
The shape of the frame itself is almost round, but I need info about P505 radius and how much in millimeters does it go back towards the frame.
the lockring is 4mm in height and the labled part 13mm deep, so 9mm difference. and it is 53mm in diameter at the inside of the ramp and roughly 53 at the outside of the ramp.

November 05, 2024, 03:02:55 PM
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Re: Magene P505 PES Base Spider Powermeter Hi all,

Want to chime in and report that I installed this unit on my bike and it works well as far as I can tell.

Why can't I post youtube links in here? I can only get a large blank space when including a yt url in my post :/


November 07, 2024, 12:42:21 PM
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