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@Fibreglass
Many months have passed since my last update.
I find it hard to build bikes piece by piece over time, so my projects tend to involve a lot of planning before a rapid succession of purchases. Part of the reason for this is that I like to establish a coherent vision for what the bike should become, and another part is that I like to not get destroyed on shipping from Europe so I min-max my carts to the nth degree with the aim of making fewer but larger orders. I map everything out in a spreadsheet so that I can get a clear picture of where the bottlenecks are.
Some things are only available from one retailer, which makes those decisions easy. One such thing for this build was the tires. I found a listing for 28 mm Paselas with black sidewalls at Starbike, 'ready for sending in two to four business days', and seeing as there was nothing else wider than 23 mm for 650C available anywhere else, I basically immediately purchased three along with a riser bar for my new hybrid plans. Unfortunately the quoted business days were much longer than normal days, because the order didn't arrive for another three and a half months - apparently due to supply issues from Panaracer's end.
Anyway, I have them mounted now, and as you can see, they're nowhere near 28 mm. A little disappointing, but I'll live - they're black, they're wider than 23 mm, and they're here. It may actually be for the best that they come up narrow because there's not a lot of extra clearance between the chain stays.
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