Death in the mountains

Alloy rims? On a modern bike? Dreadful faux-pas old boy.

fair

I did weigh them, can’t recall what it was now but have a note somewhere- they are a very light wheelset (I genuinely do only have alloy rims on classic bikes, thinking about it, that wasn’t a snob thing it’s just how it worked out).

Post a pic of plate of chips in Andalusia and we'll call it even

Give the brake track a thourough scrub every once in while. I found keeping the brake track nice and clean, and free of any brake pad residue build up helps significantly reduce the squealing. If you’re doing alpine descents, even more so.

I think it’s got something to do with the new textured brake track, which although massively improves braking, it can collect gunk from the pads under heavy braking.

After building this bike for Neil, I switched my 3.4 rims for 2.2 because I was so impressed with these wheels.

You have to bear in mind Neils are built with CK R45 hubs, which are not a lightweight hubset. You can easily build 2.2’s into a sub 1200g wheelset with lightweight hubs.

I don’t know why you would want to though. This is a very light bike.

Just sitting down for lunch in Capileira, 22km descent after I’ve finished taking on Pizza.

I feel more confident and comfortable descending on this bike than a lot of others I’ve ridden, partly I think because the front wheel is so stiff- my Zipp 202’s definitely feel vague as you turn into a corner whereas these track exactly where you want them too.

I have to say I’m loving this bike, my 85kg and the climbs less so!

Didn’t die on the descent, only 65km/h max though, which is poor.

Anyone commented on how nice it looks?

Love the pic against the traffic gate with matching paint work. Sweet.

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Coooorrrrrrrr that Klein is nice!

Almost run the front pads to the wear lines-on one side, more meat left on the other.

I’ll need to strip the bars and replace the front brake cable with a slightly longer (~1cm) housing and cable to allow the brake to centre correctly which should allow the pads to wear evenly.

Packed the bike up last night, 45 minutes to from complete, rideable bike to pulling the zipper round the bag. That included a lot of faffing, I think 30 minutes is likely in future.

As part of the strip down I took the front brake off- right hand pad is totally worn away, so if you have these wheels bring spare pads with you if heading to the mountains as you won’t find them once you’re there, and you may need them!

8,700 metres of climbing/descending over ~380km ridden, lighter riders/better descenders will likely fair better.

Made it home, I'll write something about the past weeks riding over the next few days, it's been a great few days on the bike.

Pft. I do that at Regents.

Ok, some thoughts on the bike.

I was expecting the fact that it was a travel bike, that it had couplers, to mean that it was in some way compromised - that it would be bendy, or heavy, or in some way weird. I guess I was expecting it to have some element of Brompton in it's otherwise road-bike DNA.

This turns out to be totally wrong - once I'd torqued the lower coupler up (it was finger tight, and giving rise to odd shifting feelings through the pedals until I checked it and did it up) the frame was indistinguishable from a non-coupled one. I think that the breakaway system is all-win, frankly - brings huge flexibility with no downside other than a very modest weight penalty (which I think the flexibility more than makes up for).

The lower coupler did loosen off slightly over the course of the week I spent riding it, so I'd recommend checking the torque before setting off - a Ritchey TorqueKey is very handy here, as you can go over the whole bike in seconds checking all the bolts.

It was interesting to contrast my experience with that of my girlfriend, who was travelling with her Klein Quantum in my Evoq soft-case, which of course had to go through as over-sized baggage with the attendant delays that that brings (my record here is two hours at Denver airport waiting for it, long after all standard luggage had cleared the belt).

We hired a small BMW, a 218, purely to get from Malaga to Lanjaron - we could have hired a much cheaper car if we'd not had to get a full-size bike case in the back, as it was the hire car was the single largest expense of the holiday at £560 (more than twice the accommodation) and was used three times.

The bike itself was great - as I've said earlier in this thread it gave huge confidence as you tipped into a corner, tracking exactly where you wanted it too, and when I went in rather too enthusiastically and had to lean hard to get round it simply got on with it. I could have pushed much harder than I did I suspect, but with that said I was pushing much harder than I'd previously done on various hire bikes - all of which had the brakes the "wrong" way round, which I'm sure was a factor.

The braking on my Zipp 202's with Black Prince pads is, I'd say, stronger and without the worry of the ENVE 2.2's/ENVE pads. I do wonder whether some of this is setup - the front brake cable is slightly too short which means the cable entry angle is compromised, and the brake itself is held off-centre which can't be fully adjusted out as the cable tension overwhelms the adjuster. I'll sort this out and see where I can get it too.

I did tend to back off when the brakes started shrieking - which was when they got hot after repeatedly scrubbing off 40km/h into hairpins with my substantial bulk bringing a lot of kinetic energy to be turned into noise and heat. I'm going to email ENVE to find out if I was doing the right thing here, of if shrieking is fine and should be ignored. I was worried about making the title of this threat a literal description of the consequences of doing so, however.

eTtap is great, I really liked it and would have it on other bikes. In the large chainring and the three largest sprockets it grumbles like a tractor, but then that's a cross-chaining situation which is less than optimal. My shimano bikes don't grumble in the same situation, that said.

I kept a fully charged battery in my pocket the whole week, but never needed it - nice to have as a backup though.

I think I'll fit blips to enable gear changing when on the drops, as I spent a lot of time holding the very ends of the bars and it would have been handy to have had that ability.

Overall it's close to the perfect bike for me, and was a great companion to the Sierra Nevada.