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@jonnym
After a long couple of days and driving 700 miles, I was greeted by a large box! Tres exciting!
My Miche wheels had arrived, quick "hi" to the girlfriend and I set to work. Fitted the tyres and tubes and was mighty impressed with the weight and solid feel of the wheels - hopefully helps my confidence as its been 20+ years since I last rode on skinny tyres!
As I thought, the skinwall looks great with the deep section black rim. Now I had pre-decided to remove the stickers on the wheels (I'm not a huge fan of OTT branding) - but think they look quite slick and understated. We'll see. . . . . .
Got all over excited putting air in the tyres, think the gauge read 120psi and something (the tube) went pop - so a bit of a delay before the first ride. Think karma had something to do with it, as I didn't line up the tyre label with the valve hole (did on the back wheel) - lesson learnt, don't f**k with tyre labels and karma.
Got this hollow pin chain from KMC, looks very nice in 1/8" track size, hopefully its strong enough!
And a chunk lighter than my half-link chain.
So rattled together the rest of the bike, (with temp seat/post) and took some pics.
Au Nature . . . . .
And a little more urbanised. (Apologies for the flat dull photography)
Clearances are nice and close (although a bladed carbon fork a touch shorter would be nice) and quite like the look of the compact-style geometry. Ended up running 50/17t gear ratio (80") after running a 40/12t (72"ish on a 24" wheel??) but have scope to go higher/lower should I need it.
So I'm very happy with the final product (despite the green bars/blue stem!). So to finish, need a new tube and a brake cable (& pos a skinny Selle Italia Flite-style saddle). Then I need to put some miles in.
On a side note, popped up North (where I originally hail from and went past this (see link) I thought it had been knocked down, so my bro now lives 1/2 mile from this tarmac 400 velodrome, with steep banking. Next time I'm up North I'll take the Kona and do some sprints...
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=south+shields&hl=en&ll=54.995029,-1.409136&spn=0.003047,0.010568&sll=51.580257,0.02717&sspn=0.013201,0.042272&hnear=South+Shields,+Tyne+and+Wear,+United+Kingdom&t=h&z=17
Updates to follow.