Isen no7

Ride report?

At least DBAD had good pictures

How long are your legs??

79.5 saddle height

Am no hipster with a photography obsession.

Just has phone camera.

Having suffered a chest infection for a few weeks I didn’t want to make this a long ride more just a little shake down and to test it out.

I took my Silca baby torque wrench kit with me and a torx key for the @mdcc_tester top cap. After 1/2 a mile the brakes had been bedded in but the headset needed a little tightening.

When I turned on the Garmin it gave an error message regarding calibration of the power cranks but this quickly resolved itself. For the rest of the ride they performed flawlessly.

650b is awesome, 45 psi in the tyres and it all felt super plush. Ideally the bars need to drop a fraction lower as they felt too high and my arms were more than adequately bent while riding on the hoods.

Ugly bars don’t appear so ugly in situ and they offer a lot of give and comfort. When in the drops my wrist could just catch the bulge but if the bars are levelled I think this’ll be resolved.

The bike just felt invisible underneath me. Super comfy and responsive. Big tyres gave ample grip, local roads here are muddy and lumpy and yet these things presented no issues to the bike. A couple of times I diverted down footpaths which were bumpy but the bike just felt like it floated and it felt oblivious to what was under the rubber.

The new shifters sit well in my hands, but the right hand one needs an adjustment to its alignment. The brakes are much better than previous non series di2/hydraulics or the mechanical/hydraulics. The bite point requires much less lever travel and they have great sensitivity. New Di2 is great, I decided to try synchro shift and was really pleasantly surprised by it. It basically does what I do normally, ie shift two gears at the rear when I do a chainring shift, but unlike me, it doesn’t forget which gear it’s in.

Being able to control the Garmin via the hood top buttons is great, especially in winter gloves when the touch screen is often non responsive to clad fingers. Also being able to get it to illuminate via these buttons on night rides will be a huge benefit.

I have a feeling this will be my general go to bike for a lot of riding, and envisage myself doing more little detours down bridle ways and through woods.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1324048333

The bike just felt invisible underneath me. Super comfy and responsive.

Glad to read this!

Get those rim stickers off!

Immediately.

Looks great out in the wild, agree re rim stickers, let the frame shine!

Fucking mudguards have taken more time than anything else.

Rear ones needed cutting to fit between chainstays and dremelling to fit between seat stays.

4 Attachments

But you won in the end, and now they're on there looking good. The fuckers.

Or do I detect a slight lack of perfection up front. Looks like the bit in front of the fork is a bit too far from the tyre.

ssssshhhh!

but yes. the problem is the mudguard can't go any lower from the fork crown

any updates?

It took another six months of frustration and back and forth with the frame to get it to actually fit the 42mm tyres I had been told it would take. Bike had to go back 3 times, twice at my expense. To be honest the whole purchase was marred by poor communications, delays and quality control. I remained quiet at the time as it was a new business and hoped the teething problems would be ironed out. But judging by many other forum members communications with me the problems were not just limited to me or the first batch of frames.

Sorry to hear that.

I've still not built up mine (no. 23 from first batch) for various reasons, but I'm aiming to have it done for this winter.

Have you ended up with a bike which works for you or are there still issues?

It finally works but the amount of hassle and stress was not worth it. Yes it’s nice but so would have been many other things with a lot less stress, hassle, inconvenience and incurred costs.

Why at your expense? why didnt they pay (twice) if they said the bike could do something it clearly could not? Strange.

Because they wouldn’t! And otherwise it would never have been resolved.

And I just couldn’t be arsed with further to and fro with them and just wanted to get the fucking thing finished.

It definitely wasn't that you were trying to shoehorn knobbly tyres and massive, fatigue-crack-prone aluminium mudguards into an OTP frame not designed to take them, then.

I've yet to see DJ link to a popcorn thread about himself...

No

I had been told it would take 42mm tyres but there wasn’t adequate clearance. Also after one attempt to adjust the stays the rear end was reduced to below 130mm which is not great when trying to install a 135mm disc wheel!

The whole thing was a catalogue of errors.

If those Resolutes actually measure up at 42mm I'll eat my hat

But I was told prior to purchase by both Matt and Caren the frame would take a 42mm 650b tyre, so you would expect 4mm of clearance on either side of the chain stays. At one point I had Caren denying she had ever said this, but I had the email to back it up.

When the bike first arrived a wheel with a 38mm tyre couldn't even turn because it caught the chain stay . It was returned and adjusted. but only to give about 45mm of spacing on the chain stays, so still not enough, also it was not evenly spaced on both sides.

It was returned again and came back with adequate clearance but only 129.9mm spacing at the dropouts. So had to be returned again.

And that is before I detail the problems with late delivery, misplacing of my parts (when the bike had been returned to Isen), rudeness etc etc.