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I also picked up some other wheels. I remember when my plan for this bike was to just clean up the 6400 groupset that it came with.
Obviously, I have a decision to make - I can't really justify keeping two sets of luxury 650C spoks around for one 650C bike. The Hed 3s are certainly a better wheel, but there's something really nice about the Spinergys on this frameset. They speak the same language: the blades resonate in both the beam and the fork, not only in the tapering, lightweight form but also in the material and its texture. Also, the decals match.
The Hed 3s aren't chopped liver but they just don't talk to the frame in quite the same way. I can acknowledge that they're a much better wheel - and much less likely to fail catastrophically - but I'm leaning heavily towards selling them and keeping the Spinergys.
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Thanks. I'm pretty happy with the way this fork works with the rest of the bike thus far, and I just can't go back to the quill/adapter lifestyle.
I am more than likely going to be moving the Hed 3s on, so if you're interested feel free to send me a message.
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On the Spinergys, I think the risk of failure is probably not actually too bad. In addition to my being lightweight and basically pretty careful, they're a late-model X-tra Lite with serials in the 300000s, no visible damage and very light brake track wear. From what I've read, the serials place them among the last Rev-Xs that Spinergy made, by which point they'd addressed the issues that made the earlier iterations failure-prone. (I believe there was only one model after this, the Team, which had the more 2000s-looking logos and combined the titanium axle and internally drilled out rim of the X-tra Lite with the double-layered spokes of the Super Stiff.) I got these attached to a 1999 Cannondale Multisport 4000 with DA 7700 that I drove eight hours there and back to collect along with some other stuff.
As for the rest of the components, I've purchased everything and am just waiting for it all to arrive. The above pictures are a dry fit to get an idea of where the contact points will sit - I've never had a 650C bike, or a bike with risers, or a bike with aero bars before this. The silver stem is a 90 mm Kalloy destined for my Colnago; I've ordered a true chode 60 mm also Kalloy in black to try to get vertical upper arms in the TT position. In addition, the SLR Superflow, which I've had for about a decade and never found comfortable - and which is absolutely not suited for riding in the aero bars - is being replaced by a Bontrager Aeolus Elite that's en route. The slightly jaunty/unfortunate saddle angle is probably going to have to stay since it compensates for the flex in the beam when it's loaded; fingers crossed it looks less goofy with a less flat saddle.
To do next:
- Design and print steerer tube battery holder.
- Drill frame for Di2 (scary).
- Rebuild brake calipers.
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- Design and print steerer tube battery holder.
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Thanks! I don't, but the Cannondale was more or less stock other than the bars having been switched for drops, so it looks something like this. It also came with a pair of normal wheels (Open Pros on 105 hubs), and the seat post being a Thomson was a pleasant surprise. There are a couple of things missing - most notably the right STI - but my aim is to sell everything to make the Spinergys effectively free.
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I spent some time last night working on this. It's a transverse mount for the XT Di2 display to enable it to fit onto aero extensions, which I can admit is a pretty niche use case. I discovered that I needed this when I went to dry fit the various relevant front end components to sketch out how things would sit relative to the steerer tube battery and found that there was not enough free space on the clamp area of the handlebars to fit the normal 31.8 mm display mount, and even if there were the screen would be directly underneath an elbow pad.
The clamp on the display can be removed and replaced with a 35 mm version because this is a mountain bike product. It's held in place with one screw, which keeps the various protrusions and recesses on either side of the interface mated to one another. I recreated the clamp side of the interface using Rhino, a pair of digital calipers, and some phone photography.
This was a relatively quick prototype, with the primary aim of getting the interface with the display right. It basically fits, although it is a little tight and I will fix that in the next iteration. On the other hand, the clamp is too thick and won't open up sufficiently to fit over the bar without removing the grip. Also, the rest of it needs a lot of work: there's a whole bunch of extraneous bulk, the connection between the display interface and the clamp is unresolved, there are no chamfers anywhere, and it is not aerodynamic in the slightest.
I currently intend to have it on the right of the right aero extension, which may be a little awkward because when I'm in the tuck my arm will be exactly on top of it, but since I don't have bar end shifters yet it's not like I'd be able to change gears anyway. The other mounting position I am considering is on top of the stem, which I think would look better than it sounds because the display would be shrouded by the aero bars.
This prototype was printed in ASA because I have a lot of ASA, but I will more than likely print the final product in carbon fibre PETG because it is my bikiest material.
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It'll be 1x, but I actually want the display. I'm using it as my only junction (battery, shifter, derailleur), and it provides a convenient charging port and Bluetooth.
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Thanks for the kind words. This is how the Di2 display mount turned out in the end. It actually took me many, many iterations to get the fit right because the geometry of the underside of the display is just slightly irregular - things are at weird angles to one another and you can't really tell visually.
I managed to refine the form down quite a bit from the initial version. There are a couple of things I could continue to work on, but this will do for now - I have other things I need to model and print for this bike.
Unfortunately I didn't take any more photos of the ST-7800s before I sold them on, but the ultrasonic cleaning didn't do anything to help the scratches, if that's what you're curious about. What it did do was strip out all of the sludgy grease on the inside of the mechanism in places that I'd never be able to reach.
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I've mounted the new saddle, short stem and pleasingly enormous cassette now that all of these things have arrived. The 60 mm stem puts the elbow pads in the right place, but looking at it mounted now I actually kind of miss the appearance of the temporary silver stem - it matched the saddle clamp and provided lightness and visual comprehensibility to the front end. Unfortunately 60 mm only comes in black, but if it turns out I need to lengthen the stem again I will definitely go with silver. I also replaced the previous valve extensions with these better ones. The crankset is off because I've been considering my strategy for routing the Di2 wire.
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I discovered that I don't actually need to drill a hole into the down tube: like some Cannondales from the mid-90s apparently, the shifter bosses, rather than being brazed on, are threaded into one another like a seat binder bolt. This means I was able to just unscrew them from the frame, conveniently leaving a 7.5 mm hole on either side of the down tube.
This is nice because I was starting to get a bit antsy about the potential long-term effects of drilling a large hole into 25-year-old aluminium. For this reason, I decided to not drill into the chain stay; instead, I enlarged the preexisting hole in the bottom bracket shell to create the exit point for the wire to the rear derailleur. I'll route the wire along the bottom of the stay and through the cable braze-on there, and then secure it in place with the external wiring kit that Shimano makes (electrical tape for now). I think it'll look fine, but if it doesn't, I can still revert to the initial plan of drilling the chain stay - all I'll have lost is the original BB cable guide mounting hole.
I will need to design and print some different Di2 wire grommets - I have the ones for 6 mm round holes and they won't fit the holes at either the down tube (too small) or the bottom bracket (too shallow).
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Just wanted to document this before I take it all apart to implement some different ideas that build on this.
The thing about building a Softride with Di2 that you don't really think about until after you've bought the Softride and the Di2 is where are you going to put the battery? I think the best answer is probably in the steerer. Shimano (via Pro) does make a kit to facilitate this, but as you can imagine it is not compatible with one-inch head tubes.
So I designed my own kit. It's printed out of TPU to provide some grip on the inside of the steerer and around the cable plug. It's not weather-sealed but it's probably close enough; the Pro kit doesn't provide any protection at all so I think it'll be fine. I intended the case to be held in place vertically by friction, but it turns out that the inside of the steerer tapers towards the bottom, so there isn't any risk of the battery falling out.
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The case has an inset rail on each side that is the size and shape of a large zip tie, with a cutout at the bottom to fit the head. The zip ties are there to provide something to pull on to remove the case from the steerer. I also made some custom one-inch spacers from CF-PETG, of which the top one has a cutout for the wire to exit. A TPU top cap mates securely with this and the inside of the steerer to seal everything up.
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What I want to change about the above is the routing. When it's all connected up it looks a bit more, well, wiry than I envisioned. Part of this is certainly that the cable exits the steerer tube really high up and is thus really conspicuous; I left a ton of extra steerer just in case but I think I can safely trim an inch off. I am thinking of routing the wiring through the aero extensions, which conveniently already have cutouts for bar end shifter cables. The hole is right behind the display clamp, so I think it should look pretty neat. I'm also thinking about trying to figure out how to route the wire to the derailleur internally, but it might not be worth the effort and complexity given that if I leave it as is I can just heat shrink it to the brake cable and it will probably look fine.
The wire enters the frame where the down tube shifter bosses used to be and is held in place with these grommets that I'm quite pleased with. The geometry works with the layer lines and the gloss of the material to create a visual effect. You might say they are 'authentically digital'.
The one underneath the bottom bracket is less interesting, but who's looking there anyway?
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You know, I never even thought of that. It does fit.
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Thanks for this suggestion. It's a much neater solution. Back to work!
Fatbiker
greeno
e54
Five-Hats-
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Unnecessary Bicycles with Fibreglass: Softride Qualifier 650, Look 496 Tri, Colnago Super, Velo Orange Neutrino
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@Fibreglass
Until I received the tires I didn't do much to the bike itself, but I did do some things on paper. In addition to working out the rest of the build, I sold the 7800 groupset at a small profit, as well as the cassette that came with the XT Di2 since I want to start with a completely fresh drivetrain. I also picked up some wheels.
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