The Many Bikes of an Inveterate Tinkerer...

Back to the TT bike now, and I was getting my DIY skills out again. I'd always thought it could use a nicer transition from the bar to the top tube, and needed a space to store a car key whilst racing, so dredging up some 15 year old knowledge on 3d modelling made a bento box

I was messing around with my position quite a bit and getting fed up of how long it took to change stack height on my existing base bar, not to mention the small fortune that was being spent on bolts and risers, so ended up springing for a Tririg bar set up. This also had the incidental bonus of making the setup look pretty badass from the front:

You may notice Shimano sprint shifters enabling base bar shifting, despite the shifting system being SRAM. The blip box just responds to any swich input so five minutes with a soldering iron and some sacrificial clics later I could now shift from the hoods position. I repeated this trick with a road bike later on...

I went back to a boring off the shelf bento box, which also hid all my eTap shift wiring very nicely. The only issue was mounting it, but this was soon solved with a drill, some courage and a rivnut gun

A splendid yarn. Keep at it!

Very nice to see you going from non cyclist to 3D printing stuff for your n+1 tri bike in a few years

Thank you both! Yes cycling has certainly given me a big outlet for my creativity, both in terms of build choices but then also the little extras. I always need to have some sort of project on the go to keep me sane I'm very grateful it gives me that.

Sadly, not long after the last pictures were taken, I went over a speed bump on the P4 and heard an even louder crack than normal. Returning home and inspecting the frame I noticed the telltale hairline cracks around the seatpost entry on the frame. I loved this bike, I achieved all the times I set out to when I began Time Trialling on it as well as posting my most competitive performances, so I couldn't just get rid of it. The components have been sold but currently the frame hangs on the wall by my desk. One day I'll treat it to a visit to a carbon repair company and possibly a custom paint job, but for now it rests after a life well lived.

Now the demise of the P4 came around at the time I had just started to dip my toe into triathlon. I'd always been better at the longer events when TTing so had the vague bucket list item of getting around an Ironman in my head. As such the focus when looking for a machine to replace the P4 moved to something that was comfortable, could hold a lot of bottles/nutrition and be practical for long training rides, rather than flat out speed from point A to point B.

One day in late 2019 I picked up a rather large box, and inside the box was this:

I quickly set about setting it up, taking the groupset off the Venge which went to fund the build, and pretty quickly it was looking quite a lot like a bike.

Early in 2020 it was done, which was perfectly timed for the multitude of events I had entered that year...

Over time I made some tweaks, getting rid of the high hands (they just made my head poke up like a meerkat to see where I was going), and procuring some race wheels.

As the world finally started to open up again and neared the whole having to actually drag myself around a long distance tri thing, I treated the bike to a set of Aerocoach extensions

And having successfully dragged myself round Ironman Barcelona, I rewarded it with a nice Zipp TT crank, for no other reason than that it looked cool.

That's where I'm up to with TT rigs at the moment. The PX is an interesting beast. Extremely heavy (2kg heavier than my winter bike with its mudguards on), but also extremely stiff through the BB and very comfortable on long rides. On the raw TT bikes you knew you were going quickly, everything felt fast and on edge. This feels (golf club alert...) like some sort of posh executive saloon - quiet, comfortable, then you look down at the speedo and see you're going rather quicker than you thought.

Wow😱 this is escalating quickly

My brother in Christ, are you drilling and riveting carbon?

A little bit, yeah...

The guy at Tririg said it would be fine... https://tririg.com/blogs/reviews/tutorial-diy-top-tube-bosses

If it was a frame I was ever planning on selling on I likely wouldn't but as I've never been a huge fan of my teeth anyway what's a little catastrophic failure between friends?

Oh lawd

Your heart pumps diesel, I salute your bravery.

making a 3d printed bento box for your BMW keys to rest on top of your drilled p4. wild.

You haven't cracked the 4S yet? Need to lift your game.

Neat idea with the bento box rivets. I see Drillium in the Shiv's future (it'll probably never get raced again)

The Sim Simma box.

Now if you are truly serious about speed and comfort over distance, you should be in touch with Ku Cycle

Ah yes, I saw one of those out in Barcelona (along with that bonkers Ceepo with the front wheel fairing). It's definitely a marmite one in terms of looks (as, I appreciate, is the PX). It does look good value, although that's a relative term, against the other superbikes too.

I'm really enjoying the escalation. Any more surprises up your sleeve?

There are a couple more then we’re up to date. It’s probably gone this way already, but prepare for things to take a turn towards dentist… I should get them up tomorrow

I have always wanted one of these.

Haha this is amazing, TT bike needs blue neon's on the underside.

What are the wall hooks you've used to hang the P4?

Don't tempt me, at this rate I'll chuck a subwoofer in the storage box too and ride around with a non-stop speed garage soundtrack...

The wall hooks were these - they don't come out far enough to hang a build up bike from but for the frameset they're fine. Rather than drilling I just put them up with command strips and they've been there a couple of years now and not come down yet. If the frame wasn't already in need of repair I'd have gone safe and screwed them into the wall.

Right, after having had to actually do some work over the last few days the end of the week is approaching and as such such it's back to projects. Just two more to go...

Cast your minds back to lockdown. Everyone's going slightly mad. I'm stuck at home whilst both my wife and I are attempting to work and parent a one year old. I need some escapism. A friend had always raved on about an old S Works Roubaix he had and how it was his most favourite bike ever. I saw a frameset going on clearance in a lovely mint green and instantly decided this would be the project to help me maintain my sanity.

And so it was this arrived

It then went straight back again as there was a massive chip in the bottom of the fork, however a replacement came a few days later sans chip.

I decided that purple accents would offset the frame nicely, and having wanted to learn how to deal with hydraulic discs went straight in at the deep end with Hope RX4 front and back. Much swearing was done, but I eventually got them set up without any wheel rub.

A few more purple accents were added

And soon enough the bike was ready to go. Infuriatingly the Supacaz tape came much darker than it looked online, and this has irritated me ever since.

I had a lot of fun with this bike, my favourite being an M25 ride with a friend when lockdown had eased. Unfortunately the upgrade on the Kinesis does pretty much everything this does almost as well, and I have some other plans afoot so I've decided to now let this go - if you're interested the sale thread is here

And to my final bike, bringing us up to date, I once again dipped into the PlanetX sale and came out with a Hurricane Disc Ti frame. The groupset from the Kinesis went onto it, with the addition of a further set of RX4s, and the Di2 bottle cage mounted battery holder which handily doubles up as a junction box.

I love this bike, with the rack mount it can easily fulfil dad bike duties (as below), but can also be a comfy and pretty race mile muncher once those bits are stripped off.

It recently got the crank arm that came off the PX put on it (now I'm 175mm across all bikes), and I'm very much enjoying my winter riding on it.

So that's it for the history, however my Time thread has the latest on that project...

If it's never getting raced again then no harm in going full Drillium I reckon, see just how much safety margin they build in material wise...

The 4s frame is now hanging in the shed, I shall check it for cracks but probably haven't been able to match your awesome power ;)