Gideon's bike life - Genesis, Graham Weigh, Cinelli, Land Shark & Ritchey

Yeah, I am going to have a think about some colour when it's all together. My Ritchey is quite monochromatic now the blue/tan GravelKings have been & gone, though I like its subtle world champs stripes. A similar touch might be nice here.

Turns out I'm missing a little screw thing in one of the shifters. A bit annoying, but I'm not too fussed as I'm off to Scotland next week anyway so not like I'm going to be riding it soon.

What's more annoying is the weather forecast for the next week in the Trossachs & Scotrail strikes messing up all of our travel plans.

Back from Scotland - had a great, albeit cold, time - & the Genesis is all hosed up! As expected, there's another bit I don't have - seat tube requires a 31.8mm front derailleur clamp. With any luck should arrive tomorrow (thank you, Amazon!) so I can ride it at long last. It's now sitting in the living room, constantly drawing my gaze.

Fit is obviously temporary. Need better bottle cages, maybe the same stainless ones as I have on the Ritchey. Happy that the titanium seatpost matches the seattube silver well. Cranks are a little off, maybe worth polishing. Will probably put some gumwalls on it.

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That's so good already! Gumwalls would look great I reckon.

That seat post looks like an excellent match for the frame!
Love that it carries the fade all the way through.
Silver cranks with black spider/chainring looks good too.
And keep the black walls imo.

Serves me right for my impatience - the RX4+ callipers I ordered yonks ago have arrived the day after I collect the brakes hosed up to the cheapo Shimano callipers I bought as a stopgap. The Hopes are lovely, will use those once I've ran through the pads on the current ones first I reckon, seems silly to swap them now.

@ltc @MisterMikkel Cheers! Am at least going to wait until we get some consistent non-rain for gumwalls I reckon.

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Hopefully going to take this for a pootle around the block at lunch to check things over/bed things in if the rain stops. Excited!

Now this is a serious road bike, am tempted to go back to proper road cleats rather than SPDs everywhere. Think it deserves that.

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Love the wheelset, and the monochrome look.
Enjoy the test ride.

Also. Fit the hopes asap ;)

I wasn't on board at first, I agree with Simba, as the monochrome look has grown on my quite a bit.

Road pedals are overrated IMHO. I switched to spd on all bikes last year so I could use the same shoes on all my bikes, mountain and road. Best descission ever.

I enjoyed riding LOOK Kéo for a while but I got through so many sets of cleats. I currently have SPDs on everything, it's hard to find nice looking shoes though - something which was brought back to the fore with the cleat plate snapping on today's ride & having to go twenty miles without being able to clip in.

Anyone got any thoughts on Shimano XC7s? I've got two (now one I guess) pairs of the older XC5s & they've been great. Non-laced shoe looks a bit more serious.

Put about 150 miles onto the Volare now, it's proper good!

Few little teething pains still to solve though:

• Had to swap bottle cages from the Ritchey as my cheapo, old, carbon ones didn't hold bottles very well. The stainless bottle cages work well here, so will need to find something to replace them on the other bike.
  
• BB is a bit creaky, reckon I've undertorqued the cranks.
  
• Found a crack in the front derailleur (adjustment screw overtightened at some point), will have to try & find a new one or nick the one from the Ritchey & go 1x there.
  
• Need some frame protection so I can run a frame bag on it at some point.
  
• Install Hope brakes, the current Shimano ones are okay, but not as confidence inspiring as I'm used to with discs.
  

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Glad to hear you like it!
From an aesthetics point of you, hitting the DT bottle cage with some black paint to continue the fade on the DT would be proper anal.
All in all, it looks like a really nice bike.

So just ticked over a thousand miles on the Genesis now & I'm still thoroughly enjoying it. Few little niggles now though.

I'm going to have to replace the cranks. While I don't approve of his delivery, Hambini is right on this one - 30mm axle in a 42mm BB shell doesn't leave much room for bearings, & these are a bit crunchy now. A bit of a shame as I love the stripped look of the current cranks. I've got a Rotor 3D24 crankset I'm probably going to use, which I could strip too to be a pretty similar setup. Longer crank arms too which I think I'd appreciate, could lose a few spacers that way.

The wheels probably need retensioning, I'd guess a thousand miles is more than enough to bed them in. Additionally I still need to swap the brakes to the Hope ones which are still sitting in their boxes. These are all the sorts of tasks I should have done last week while I was on-call so couldn't really ride.

Will have to delay a few of these things until the end of August as I'm riding from Leeds to London in a day in three weeks. Was supposed to do it six weeks ago but my friend got covid so that put a dampener on things. Thankfully the fit of this bike is pretty comfortable so should be fine!

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Got some cheapo aero bars extensions for the Leeds to London trip. On longer rides I lose sensation in my little fingers so figured now would be the time to try them out for more hand positions.

Swapped the cranks to the 3D24s from the 3Ds, tiny bearings couldn't hack it & didn't want to annoy my mates all the way down with a creaky BB! Don't look as good as the stripped 3D ones though :(

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Looks very purposeful! Hope the ergonomics work out.

I also just noticed the glass in the background, love Dale’s pale ale.

Ha, I regularly get comments in Teams calls (perma-WFH) on the glasses we have - pretty much every pint glass in our house is from a pub.

Also, need to get around to fitting these. After hearing of multiple people not being able to get hold of disc brake pads for Shimano callipers! Still a fair bit of life left in the current ones though.

Edit: & cheers, going to give them a little test ride later to figure out the fit.

One of my first posts here in forever, but I've been eyeing a Volare 931 frame for a while for an almost identical build to yours. I keep having doubts and questions, as there aren't all that many of these around.. Main one being around tyre clearance, I see you run 25's, no space for 28's or just personal preference?
I've always been a bit bummed they didn't provide internal brake routing on the 931, while they do on the 853. It doesn't look too bad on the pictures you've shared but still a missed opportunity for an even cleaner bike imo.

I'm running 25s at the moment purely because it's what I could get my hands on! I specced wide rims, so will be getting 28s when I get through these. In fact, I'm thinking of going up to 30s, as I tried the bike with 32mm tyres a few weeks ago out of curiousity & they fit with more than adequate room (on a 20mm internal width rim).

I'm torn on the internal routing. For neatness of build, it seems like a great idea, but for personal maintenance it seems like much more of a faff. That said, I don't trust myself to do hydraulic maintenance on my bike anyway. I do find the hose rattles a little on the downtube on some roads, still need to figure out something for dampening that a little.

Hope that helps! I'm still thoroughly enjoying this bike if that makes up your mind any more - it's fantastic :)

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Oh, that's really really great to hear. My biggest turn off was not being able to run 30s or 32s. I have a set of Easton R90SL rims to lace up for whatever frame I choose, which are 19,5mm internal, so pretty close to your Pacentis.

If it can mean anything, doing a simple fluid flush is almost simpler than replacing mechanical brake cables in my opinion. Running the lines and filling from empty is harder for sure, but that's such a rare job..

Internal routing is stupid, added to the points already presented it weakens (steel) frames, cables/hoses are more likely
to rattle and it (when gear) makes shifting worse.

Speaking of big tyres, I've chucked some 32mm tyres on the Genesis for going on tour next week to Croatia. Umming & ahhing a little about them as they are rather big, leave little clearance & is probably overkill, but rolling along at 50PSI it positively floats along over the road buzz. One problem is that it tempts me to ride it off road which I really shouldn't but I weirdly can't help myself. I blame TCX.

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One problem is that it tempts me to ride it off road

Wrong bike for the job sometimes yields the most fun!

I do agree - underbiking is great - but I'm still precious about this one, still new to me!