Cannondale CAAD2 Zipp 808 restomod

As a kid in the 90's I always lusted after the Cannondale CAADs with their then "exotic" alloy made in USA frames with the smoothed welds. I've also loved the look of early to mid 2000's Zipps and that era was when I really got into road cycling. So lo and behold a Cannondale CAAD2 with Zipp 808's comes up on eBay and was sitting there for ages, it had been converted into a TT bike and had a jumble of nice parts. Luckily it was in a small size, 51cm tt. It even had a rare Look Ergostem!

Plans are to modernise with a 11sp Groupset, slammed and blacked out everything, possible conversion to threadless headset w/ carbon forks

One of the first stems was to strip off and sell the parts that I don't want, which is almost everything on it. Thanks to the buyers on the forum I've managed to recoup some of these costs to pay for the modern bits I'll be putting on it.

The frame itself dates from 1999, the Zipp 808's are from about 2006 or thereabouts. The rest of the parts are a mish mash of Dura-Ace 7900, 7400, 7700 as well as 10sp Campag Chorus. I'll keep the wheels and frame and sell the rest. What was amazing was how clean this whole bike was, the seller advised me that it was used by his late father for a few TT's and it definitely appears so, barely a scratch and the paint looks practically new!

Second step was to have a better look at the wheels. Those decals with the red stripe bugged me so off they came, I much prefer the plainer Zipp decals, not sure if to go with the white or black ones later....

Both ran very true and checked tension. Front wheel was a good 80kgf all around, the back was a bit low so I attempted to bring this up a bit and managed to shear one of the alloy nipples in half... So I decided to rebuild the rear wheel with new brass nipples, I never liked alloy nipples particularly on highly tensioned rears.

FYI, the original rear wheel weighed about 993g with alloy spokes, and then 1009g with brass.

Exactly my type of project 🤝

Wheels look much awesome on this small frame🤤

Assuming it needs a 1“ steerer fork, this might be of interest:

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/time-carbon-road-fork-1-threaded-145mm/2066004697-217-18859?utm_source=copyToPasteboard&utm_campaign=socialbuttons&utm_medium=social&utm_content=app_ios

Stripped down the frame, reasonably lightish

Rotor Aldhu cranks 165mm. I already have a set of Vegast cranks on my other bikes with a P2m NGeco power meter

The Zipp 808's are quite old so the hubs only support up to a 10sp road cassette officially. Initially I was going to just leave it at that but a bit of research there were a few options to go to 11sp

• Change to Campag free hub (although these are not available anymore and couldn't find anything send hand
  
• Run a 11sp MTB cassette
  
• Run a 11sp Road cassette but get the back machined out 1.85mm
  I took the last option and got two cassettes machined out by Bomber Bikeworks. Fits perfectly without any issues, in fact there is quite a lot of clearance
  
  
  
  
  

Installed the BB and cranks, the Rotor BB manual is quite confusing so had to install and reinstall the cups about 5 times... Here's a quick mockup

😻😻😻😻😻😻

Edit: awesome to see that you pursued the 10s to 11s route without problem. Gives a lot more flexibility on the second hand wheel market 🤝

This is right up my street

Installed the drivetrain, decided on SRAM Force 22, as this is what I have on my other bike and it’s also one of the lightest groupsets for that price range.

took it out for a spin up to Cambridge as well as Lancashire whilst visiting some family. It’s been a while since I’ve ridden on a skinny tyre road bike (other bike has 32mm tyres) so with a stiff alloy post quite bonshaky, so first upgrade will be a carbon post. Otherwise feels super fast and has a great sound from the 808s

Phew I have to admit that is hot

Ordered some Zipp decals and redid the wheels. Gotta love the early 2000's look, I always loved the look of the old Zipp logo spinning around even if it is a bit OTT. Also changed the seat post out for a USE Alien Carbon one, much easier on the backside than the old alloy one.

Great job on the wheels, bike looks insane. I did the same thing to my cassette after overlooking the fact that the hub I got built into a wheel was only 10 speed!

Lovely bike. What bars and bartape are they, please?

From @ghettro 's post history, seems like the bars are Procraft

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/375421/#16503501

There's also this thread with some options

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/214488/

Heya, I didn’t end up with those bars. Ended up buying Nitto M109aa. One of the few 26mm clamp bars that come in ergo shape and black :)

Tape is supacaz black

Love what you've done with it, looks superb

Nitto M109aa

Thanks, are they sized c-to-c or outer edges?

C to C from memory. I’m running 40cm

I love it! The silver stem and hubs are a nice touch!

Where is the last photo taken?

Hell yes

The big decals make it - cracking bike

looks nice and zippy that

I realised I never posted a pic of when I changed the forks to carbon. They are a 1" threadless fork which shaved a good 500g of weight or thereabouts.

However I've now decided to go into a different direction and bought a CAAD5 to do a frame swap as I'm after something with a lower front end and less weight.
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/384608/newest/