Current Projects chat and miscellany

^ Ok, maybe more than one.

That must have cost literally a million pounds.

No, not really. I was a bit lucky.
If that was true, I wouldn't have asked here to help me finding an affordable matching chain.

Any one got any spare cheap drop levers? some old 105 or similar, don't really need to work well, just to hold for a longer ride

I might actually... think I have a pair kicking about in my spares box.
I'm by Viccy park.. pop over to collect anytime ish...

is this park in London?

Yes. Smack bang in the centre of London.
Victoria park, E3.

Why is there stickers on the gitane :((((((

LoL

I'm not local to London, you would have to post them

def finished.

def finished.

beautiful!

What components do i need to turn my road bike from friction shifting to index 'brifters'?

cheers me ducks!

how many speeds?

I'd say:
-cable stops
-new inner/outer cables
-brifters
-opportunity for fresh bartape?

^ that's the best case scenario. Might also be new dérailleur, rear wheel and a cheeky cold set of the frame if it's steel.

^ this, unless you're using a 6spd friction system, as to my knowledge shim and campy brifters are all for 8 speed and up. In that case you'd need an 8 speed freewheel/ 9 or 10 speed cassette (and a wheel with a freehub), and possibly a longer chain..

In lay/non mechanic terms, can someone please explain to me what the deal with all these different modern BB standards is?

I'm thinking about buying a Power2Max power-meter + cranks I need to ensure that the cranks and BB are compatible. Rotor3D+ appear to be the most versatile being compatible with BSA68, ITA70, Cannondale BB30, PF30, Pressfit BB86, BBright.

One bike currently has an "FSA BB-6000 Gossamer MegaExo" BB and the other (SRAM rival?) is printed with BSA but the DS reads "33-09" and the NDS reads "38-09".

I guess neither of these are compatible with the Rotor? Why is it all so fucking complicated??

as to my knowledge shim and campy brifters are all for 8 speed and up

Aren't Shimano RSX 7 speed? or do they just work well with 7 speed?

They might be but I don't think that they'll index with an ultra-7 screw-on block, even if he's currently running 7 speed friction. 8-speed exists in screw-on but it's quite rare I think

Thanks dudes, but by the looks of prices of levers, and possible complications, may leave this one for a while and stick with friction.

Is it downtube? if so, you can get indexed downtube shifter.

what the deal with all these different modern BB standards is?

In the beginning, there was a 68mm wide BB shell threaded 1.370"×24tpi. Except for French, Italian, Swiss and Raleigh bikes, that is, but they were all there or thereabouts. This worked fine for solid steel axles of about ⅝" diameter with loose ball bearings.

Next, some clever bloke decided that 22mm hollow axles were better (and they are) so we got ISIS, Octalink and Powerspline. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite clever enough, and the thin bearings lasted about a week.

A slightly cleverer bloke figured out that you could make cantilevered cups to put proper sized bearings outside the conventional shell, and increase the axle even more to 24-25mm, which is big enough to make reliable aluminium axles saving even more weight, and we got HollowTech2, GXP, UltraTorque and MegaExo, plus Zipp pushing the envelope with a 30mm axle version. The new problem was that the BB shell had effectively grown to 90mm wide, which didn't leave room for both a decent crank thickness and the riders' heels unless you increased Q. Alongside this, we got Shimano's BB86/90/92, which simply integrated the bearing receptacle into a wider plain-bored shell.

Cannondale looked at all the problems with their engineer's eye and worked out that the good things were; 30mm axle (light, stiff), pressed in bearings (cheap to mass produce and assemble) and 68mm shell width (room for both cranks and ankles) and designed BB30, and published it as an open standard.

All was well with the world for about ten minutes, until people decided that the cost of making frames accurately was too much for them, so we got PF30 where the BB shell accepts the bearings via a mushy shim, which avoids the need for a high precision bore in the shell at the cost of putting some cheap plastic in the load path from cranks to frame. Also, some people (Vroomen&White, THIndustries) thought they were too good for a mere common standard, and started fucking unnecessarily with the bearing spacing, so we got BBRight and BB386Evo

What components do i need to turn my road bike from friction shifting to index 'brifters'?

cheers me ducks!

You could save money by using having one brifter for the rear, then keep the friction shifter for the chainrings, just maybe get another brake lever thats a bit more chunky so it feels more like the brifter on the other side

strange white secretion from my nipples (fnar)

any ideas? weird how it occurs every 4 spokes - probably random?

corrosion? have you oiled your nipples?

Wheel was built from new in mid January by TFG. I'm sure they oiled them.

edit: Just came across a thread on MTBR forums and checked the wheel again. It is indeed all the non-driveside nipples, some worse than others, but all the non-driveside nipples have a little corrosion.

tl:dr so they didn't oil the secreting nipples?