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@swmlon
I've always liked the look of the Cannondale CAAD and SuperSix series of bikes. Something about the horizontal top tube gives it a retro-look in the sea of sloping top-tubes. The SuperSix is out of my league both in terms of price and and functionality. I'm no racer nor do I turn the dial on the speedometer above 20mph unless I'm going down hill.
I did consider going out and plumping for the CAAD12 Disc frameset and building that up. But, I was put off internal cable routing which I find to be ballache to fit and service, and I find the paint work to be really boring and didn't want to shell out an extra couple hundred quid to re-spray. I much preferred the paintwork on the older CAAD bikes.
My search for the frameset started with the CAAD4. I was leaning to this bike because it had the clean lines of the CAAD series, had a 1 1/8 steerer fork so no messing around with quill stems, and was pre-BB30 bottom bracket. I nearly pulled the trigger on a few I'd seen on the forum and eBay, but these had all invariably fallen through.
By chance, I stumbled upon a CAAD9 on sale on this forum, and by some miracle, the sale had been cancelled so was back up on the board. It came in the nice shade of blue, and for all intents and purposes, it looked pretty much as new.
And so, I now have the base for my new build.
The question now is what direction to take the build in. Option 1 would be go to with a silver Shimano 105 5800 setup. I have 105 on my other bike so I know it's a stellar performer and builds up quick and easy. Again, I'm leaning to the silver to give the build a retro-ish look. There are good deals out there for the whole groupset so the build will come along much quicker, in time for the summer. Option 2 is to go for a dream build with Campagnolo. To keep with the retro-ish look, I'd probably want to build around the silver 11-speed Athena groupset. The main obstacle is the price and availability of all the parts. my rough estimates has the groupset probably costing almost twice that of the Shimano, and because I'll need to trawl the forums and eBay, this build could take significantly longer to put together.
Any thoughts on which build option to go for?
Photos of the build as it progresses below:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/shingweima/albums/72157682937232996