Condor Squadra

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know as much about bikes as a lot of you, but there are so many nice bikes on this forum that I really wanted one of my own. I thought a steel frame would ride nicely across the shitty roads here and a sprung saddle would result in a more pleasant ride.

So, I got a frame off eBay, had it resprayed twice, bought bits and pieces for it before finally giving up on the idea of going Shimergo, and just got a proper groupset.

A word on the paint... the first respray was disappointing, the second one was done by Condor and is a gorgeous pearlescent blue!

Yeah... there's some stuff I need to do, such as replace the yellow tyres with normal black ones (going for gatorskins), adjust the saddle angle, move the saddle back, get a shorter stem and add an extra layer of bartape in a colour that matches the saddle.

The ride is pretty good too!

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that looks like a great build, wtf is Shimergo though...?

It's a mix of Shimano and campag in the drive train. I was planning to use Centaur levers with Shimano mechs.

Do you not find the saddle set quite far forward an issue? giving that Brooks usually idea with layback seatpost due to it's short rail.

I do like it, although this type of Brooks saddle doesn't suit the build, but that's just my opinion. If you want to go for brooks, than a professional or a B17 would look better, in black.

Not sure how I feel about the saddle.. Definitely think cranks and chain ring should be silver though. But that is just me :-)

Muchos gracias for the feedback gents!

@ed Yeah... the saddle needs to be moved back, but it's only that far forward because the reach is a bit long right now. Once I've got a shorter stem on I'll move it back. As for the layback, I bought the inline after a forummer here pointed out a good deal on Thomsons at CRC. The Thomson laybacks remind me of Peter Crouch trying to score a header.

It rides very nicely, so much so I tried riding over the worst bits of road I could find (not particularly difficult in Central), and I reckon the saddle smooths out the bumps. Until it's stolen that is... then I'll put a more appropriate/normal saddle on it.

@jakebrown silver cranks would've been nicer, but that's all there was on ebay at the time. Naturally, a plethora of similarly priced silver groupsets appeared shortly after.

@everyone Still not sold on the saddle? Well, if we ever we meet at drinks etc, you're more than welcome to have a ride and experience both the speed and plushness of my touracer!