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Ready for a long weekend touring in the Highlands

Pm'd @NurseHolliday and @broken_777

Nothing too exciting I'm afraid, the plan is just to chop them up and compare construction methods.

It dosen't matter, in fact if they were tapered that would be a plus.

Hi,

A bit of an odd request, but I'd like to get hold of some full carbon forks for a project I'm working on. The forks can be as smashed up as you like, as there is no intention of ever repairing or riding them.

Thanks

After not being able to find a genuine version of Secret Hitler available, I used the print & play version from the website several times over the last few days.

Great fun, similar sort of game to Mafia/Werewolves and a great opportunity to shout 'Fascist!' at your mother-in-law.

Ergo update

Test ride, the brakes actually worked ok- I think I might be missing some bits so not perfectly, but serviceable.

Does anyone have experience with this style of Campagnolo brake lever:

They have cable routing for either aero or non aero, and with initially setting them up in non-aero guise, the cable pull seems odd. The cable stop slides in the slot for the part of the lever travel and then dosen't pull a massive amount afterwards, have I set them wrong or something? Thanks!

Thanks!

Sadly the weekend had come to an end and still no headset found (though the leaf springs have turned up).

Trying to persuade myself that I don't need the campag record one, and that a dia compe for £12 will do. £39 for a Tester Approved piece of Italian craftsmanship is not a bad deal though. I've gone for Campag brake levers as well, so it would be in keeping for this as well as the subsequent Daytona ergo build.

(I know the brooks looks a bit lame, but Eroica)

The AWOL headset is limiting progress.

This morning and yesterday I have mostly been turning my shed upside down looking for the headset for this bike, and also the cassette spacer I've had in my toolbox for years waiting for this moment, which I now can't find.

This is on top of discovering that the leaf springs I had also come home to fit to my Jeep this weekend have been delivered to the wrong address.

Frustration reigns and I just needed to vent it, hopefully more pictures of bike assembled soon.

I'm hoping to pick up some bits at the Bristol Bike Jumble tomorrow. If anyone can tell me which retro (non-aero) brake levers i can use with the Athena 11 callipers which will result in stopping, I'd be very grateful.

Harry's getting dressed.

I'd prefer the aesthetics and authenticity of down tube shifters for this, but bar end might be a better investment with future touring use.

Anyway, I think these might work.

I'm there for the first time this year after my brother got us tickets for my birthday.

I'm figuring out what I'm gonna ride over on here.

Hope to see a few of you there, say hello if you see a Harry Quinn with questionable component choices.

So this is the shimergo solution I'm going for:

I think I might have been wrong saying it would be easy to sub in down tube shifters in this setup. If I want indexed then it would have to either be C9 (don't exist) or I could use S6 (ten to the dozen) but then I only have 6 cogs to use.

I've always been happy with friction shifting on the DT (admittedly for 6), but I'm not sure I'll be able to find a friction shifter with a total range of 3.2 x 8 = 25.6mm of cable pull, or does such a thing exist for cheap?

Thanks very much, good to hear from someone who's done it before, as there's only so much you can get for the feel of an event from the website.

Regarding the spacing, I don't recall having any issue with it on this bike, so I think you should be alright. I've used Sheldon's method on a cheap 501 frame before, but would probably be more apprehensive with higher grade steel.

Looking at his site, it appears 130mm came in with 8 speed, which was 1988 for Shimano and 1991 for Campagnolo.

So, an update:

I've been changing my mind about the build every half hour this week. It's made more complicated by the fact I'm going to L'eroica Brittania in a few weeks and presently have no 'regulation' bike.

I don't want to sacrafice the year-round function of this bike just for the novelty of a one-off ride, though.

My Athena 11 never ran perfectly on this, the FD seemed to constantly rub. Obviously the blame for this lies with me and not Tulio, but i think this bike should be more robust and dosen't honestly need 11. I also manged to break the RH shifter and spending £ on a replacement isn't appealing.

I have the shifters and FD of an old Daytona 9 group of mine, which would be nice to use but C9 and the S11 freehub of the wheels built for this bike don't go.

The secret, old man in a shed, underworld of shimergo has always had an appeal for me and It think this might be an optune situation to utilise it:

The excellent CTC article indicates my old style (I think?) Daytona 9 shifters coupled with an Athena 11 RD, coupled with a S8 casette on my S11 freehub with 1.8mm spacer will work... near enough.

This also brings the possibility of having a low cost temporary Eroica setup- simply using 8 speed DT shifters and non-aero brake levers, to be swapped out for daytona brifters afterwards.

I also have a C8 52-42 square taper crankset and matching BB, which would be aesthetically nice, especially for Eroica. I ahve an inkling I had issues with the cranks coming lose on the BB when I tried to use this on a fixed bike before though (I do have the right taper on the BB - honest). The thouroughly more modern option is the Athena 11 alloy crankset with ultratorque and 50-34. In order to get resonable gearing for winter rides with my weak spinny legs, I'd like to get a fairly low geared (big cog) casette- willing to sacrafice top-end to get there.

The main question is what the lowest gear I can get on an 8speed casette for my 52-42 with short cage Athena 11 RD. 12-30? 13-32? any advice would be much appreciated. Thinking about this, has anyone made a nice spreadsheet to calulate this (or at least give a guide?) If not, I might give it a go.

It won't be a purists Eroica bike- the Athena 11 RD and brakes particularly. But hopefully it would be judged to not be too offensive for use on the ride. Anyone with experience of the event, I'd be grateful for your opinion?

Rebirth

I'd recommend Brompton Bike Hire for hiring a bike for >30minutes.

Lighter, better quality bikes, easy to take on a train, and I think pretty good value at £5 for 24hrs.

Looks like a cracking tandem, no one does aluminium quite like Cannondale did, loads of room in the back and proper tandem wheels.

Have you ridden one before? I was in a somewhat similar situation to you when I bought mine 2 years ago, my brother who lives in Birmingham picked it up and the plan was for me to get the train up there and cycle it back the 20 miles from central B'ham to Leamington one evening.

Upon getting there, we found that 2 x 6'2" oafs thrashing about took a a fair while to ride in anything resembling a straight line. After an hours riding around the block barely staying upright, we didn't trust ourselves to be let loose in central B'ham traffic and so retired to the pub. I ended up taking it on a train to Milton Keynes and riding on to Reading solo. There are precious few services which take tandems but there is a specific type of 'Virgin Trains' class which take them and I believe they run between B'ham and London.

I don't wish to discourage you from what I'm sure will be a great maiden voyage. And I must say that when riding the tandem with novices since, no team seem to be quite as bad as me and my brother were. But it might be worth thinking about a plan B in case it proves too ambitious (God, I sound like my mum, sorry).

Tandem Monostay on this.