ojwithbikes

Why didn’t you get titanium!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i do manual labour for a living

Samsies x

FOR NOW…

Haha, I've already replaced mine! Thanks though.

Grease those threads!

Otherwise the 3mm allen key will round out on the pan head screws. (Ignore if you went for hero-spec Torx )

Yeah i was a touch worried about that and considered just using them in the bosses I don’t actually use i.e. every boss except the 4 holding my bottle cages on. Maybe torx is a good shout

This doesn't seem to fully be the issue for you, but in general that barrel adjuster (same one more or less on ultegra and 105) is shit. You can replace it with earlier models (ie 6800 for ultegra) and it works much better.

Ah right okay, maybe I’ll give that a go then whenever the cables break in and I need to do some adjustments haha. Thanks

I was thinking also I could just try an online barrel adjuster like the ones Jagwire make right? I’ve never used one before so I’ve no idea really.

Not strictly CP related but I just bought two Hiplok Z LOK combination lock cable tie things as a way to get some basic protection for solo bikepacking resupply stops.

But then I’ve been reading online that many people have had issues with the combination seizing up leaving them unable to unlock their bikes. In a somewhat paradoxical sense, luckily they’re fairly easy to cut through with some scissors or a decent knife.

Safe to say I’ll be taking my opinel with me on a trip next week as i really don’t wanna be stuck in a petrol station in middle England questioning why I’ve just wasted money on these dumb things.

I used to carry a knog cable lock but it’s seized together on some dumpster bin in Bloomsbury now.

Perhaps i should just walk back the bike shop I bought them from and ask for a refund… sigh

I've got a mini abus chain lock for this. Feels like one slight step up in security from the cable tie ones but still light enough and packs into bags or pockets pretty well

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Ah that seems decent! It’s a weird one ennit, less weight = more fast

but

no bike = very slow

40cm road drops on the new thing anyway.

I can’t get any 40cm flared in time for a trip next week so am just going to commit to these for a bit. Luckily said trip is mostly lanes with canal path and some westerly champagne gravel.

Will test bar roll and lever position over the next couple days n taper ‘er up

@amey I’ll run your Zipps back to you soon! 🫡

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#baaw

Going to ride this 200 miles across the country, starting tomorrow, finishing Wednesday.

Though in the process of checking everything over for this ride i notice that somewhen in the last 3-6 15 min commutes to and from work, I had lost my crank arm fixing bolt and the crank arm was making its way to falling off the bike. I’m not mega surprised this happened as I put the cranks on a bit of a rush, didn’t clean the threads very well certainly, and must not have tightened it up properly either

I’ve checked it, the splines all seemed fine and undamaged, I’ve put a new fixing bolt on, cleaned, greased/loctite’d relevant threads, and tightened it all up, hopefully properly this time. It seems fine after a small ride around but i doubt that’s gonna tell me anything regarding the likelihood of this working loose again after 30 miles 🤪

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Really nice that. The lustrous finish on those silver Ritchey stems rivals Nitto's dullbright finish IMO, lush. Have a good ride, upload pics!

Lovely.
Always knew he’d come back to drops

Looks great!

tidy. looking forward to the post ride report

Well we did it folks, cranks didn’t fall off but the bars and the levers did start doing what they want at points. I really should buy a torque wrench shouldn’t I…

I left the door of my lil south london home at the lovely time of 5am yesterday and arrived in Cardiff at 3:30pm-ish today.

On the first day I finished in Devizes and fell into the sweet arms of a Travelodge and a foot-long Italian sub from the Subway conveniently located below aforementioned Travelodge. First time having in a subway in years, not good, but yummy calories. It was all going smooothly until after around 4 hours of constant riding cramps began to creep in and would set in here n there whenever going up the small climbs. So that was fun. Whole second half of riding time was pretty dramatically slowed by that. Shock to the system I guess. Haven’t ridden a bike much more than an hour for the last month n a half.

Second day. Devizes to Cardiff. Left knee not playing the game. But with ibuprofen, some deep heat, and an unwillingness to quit, I hit the canal and stayed on it till Bath, hit the railway track for a bit, tunnel was mega fun i thought, but i did divert and took a shorter route through and into Bristol. Stopped at the brilliant Farro bakery for a just-under-halfway stop. Really good, quality stuff. If you like baked goods and nerd out a bit on flour, ya gotta check it out, as someone who works in the biz I’ll stand up and say it’s probably better than anything we have in London. ANYWAY, you know the rest: left Bristol, negotiated lots of closed shit around the Severn Bridge, got on it, rolled on into Cardiff. Fuck aye.

I took a mixed-terrain-as-much-as-possible-but-still-making-haste-in-westerly-direction approach to route planning. Sooo it ended up being mostly road obviously, but with the 45c tyres pumped up, enough fun offroad dribs and drabs, and the awful state of some of the major A-road cycle ways that made up the Welsh portion of the journey it was fine. No complaints there. Bike felt great, much more ærö-enabling than my last one.

Certainly not your most action-packed or scenic route choice or ride plan. 200 fairly flat, road-centric miles through middle England. But it was probably the perfect challenge for me right now at this point in the year. Plus, most of the reason I chose to do this is that I lived in Cardiff for a good 4 years a few years ago so the place has a lot sentimentality about it for me. I rode down the horrible Newport road strip, 6 lanes wide with every possible standard UK retail and industrial estate fixture bordering either side of the road, past the McDonalds, past the Halfords, basking in golden hour light with my headphones in playing music me and my friends used to listen to back when I was fun and didn’t regularly go to sleep at 8pm. And man was I happy to be there.

Some compressed pretty scenery pics attached.
I took some video and less pretty stuff too but that doesn’t really work here well. Might post some instagram soon, if ya happen to use it, im @ b_dare on it.

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beautiful ride!

Great effort! Great photos too.

Lovly ride and photos.

Sometimes all you need it bog standard flat road routes, it's a kind of meditation.

Just gave you a follow :)

Cheers people! (:

Hope you’re all doin well

quality write-up. looks like the perfect shakedown ride.
insta added.

I think you may have been spotted...

Sounds like a great ride!