Have the WTB speed, it’s comfy enough and may just try to remove paint from and polish the rails (no silver rail version), 363g bit chonke.

IDK perhaps saddle tech has gotten to the point where you can get comfort from flexing materials and not just padding, and light weight + sleek looks at the same time?

At home I on my fancy bike I have a bontager aelous I ride w bibs, but its comfy enough for short rides without.

My use case is different, it’s not for commuting to work but usually to tennis practise and occasionally for longer rides otherwise just to get around town.

Regardless my current wtb speed has black rails so it has gotta go :p

Lighter more responsibe bike (particularly wheels) is always more fun especially in stop n go traffic.

No, get hambini best there is.

Just wondering what to choose, the real life difference might not be that significant. Can go:

1 All Sapim Laser
2 Sapim laser front, d-light rear drive side + laser non drive side
3 All sapim d-light
4 Sapim d-light fron, race rear drive side, d-light rear non drive side (overkill?)

2 or 3 seems best to me.

DT comp IMO at that weight and spoke count.

Because it’s a very stiff deep carbon rim for a road bike? For my race bike I have 20/24h on 60mm carbon rims and CX ray spokes. No problems so far, but this wheelset would be used more and is a bit shallower so I reckon going up in spoke count makes sense.

AFAIK you’re not compromising anything with D-light spokes, but question is if lasers could be better – smoother ride perhaps on the front, a tad cheaper and a smidge aeroer :p

Also for the front wheel? I know, splitting hairs here about 20 grams here which is what going all D-light would add.

EDIT2: Ordered the tiagra 28 holes i found..

When I lock my bike up in town I put an aldi carrier bag on the saddle. Not sainsburies Asda or Tesco, aldi.

Maybe some home-made Aldi decals for the carbon rims could do the trick..

i think a lot of the carbon rims were branded chinese ones. difference is that there’s someone to contact if it goes wrong

Seems like you can get some customer service buying from the bigger vendors on aliexpress also (they replied to me next day), plus you have the option of leaving angry reviews which they apparently respond to. Harder to do that buying directly!

Cracked? Guess it was with MTB use then?

To answer Haggises question, the reason is NOT to get better durability or workmanship, but to get adequate (for my use) durability and workmanship and more importantly extra fun: boosting acceleration, speed and aesthetics by complimenting the beautiful color scheme / paint job (not a fan of pure silver or silver and black alu rims).

It’s simply to make the bike more joyous for me, I’m very keen on a fast and snappy bike even for a budget get-around-town one.

But I don’t want to buy anything that’ll fall apart immediately either, my feeling is that your no-name aliexpress rim is fine for my use, but looking to hear more opinions. Maybe a brand name one is worth the extra money.

Why not buy very good alloy rims instead of cheapo carbon ones?

Where can I get good 465 gram 50 mm alloy rims for 99 pounds each?

Switched from using windows and lenovos to the M1 Air this year, and I’m very happy. Macos is annoying in its own ways, but it doesn’t come with candy crush preinstalled and doesnt force you to upgrade the OS or anything.

Also got the LG 5k screen, fonts have never looked as good..

I don’t think the difference between running 50 mm unbranded ali-carbon or de-branded mavic open pros decide if your bike gets stolen or not, especially if you use some common sense about where and when to park it.

2nd hand is a good idea but I can’t seem to find any, used wheelsets yes, but used rims are rare to find.

Might go 50 mm actually, haven’t had problems with the 60 mm rims on my racing bike..

My feeling is that they’re totally fine and would be similar to my old farsports rims (functionally great, few aesthetic imperfections)

Shimano resin pads should give good bite right away, but if you ride them in the wet on cruddy roads they get contaminated and sucky easily. For mostly dry weather use I find them excellent paired with Shimano XTR rotors.

For use in the wet on cruddy roads, I’m not sure anything will be contamination proof and give good initial bite, I used metallics for this, howled for a bit then died down. Perhaps ceramics could work.

I don’t care to make it look less attractive to a thief, I just want to keep my insurance premiums low and get something I could replace without too much faff – CAADs are plentiful in the second hand market.

Thanks for the Planet X rec, I’ve looked at some of their models, not as many in Poland where I live but there are a few.

So forgot to mention, I’m in Krakow and need a size min 58 – 61 cm..

Probably easier to spin a cadence, aggravates my osteoarthritis less, and gives a little more clearance when I put a crank turn in the wrong place. it’s not an obvious instant noticeable effect where you realise that the cranks are shorter or longer but rather effects on pedalling dynamics.

Yeah, I’m 6’3″ and 175 mm cranks made it harder to “sit and spin” on my roadbike and plus aggravated knee pain more. Happy at 170 mm.

It depends what kind of riding you do however, if you’re mostly doing steep technical MTBing crank arm length may not matter much and longer arms could offer a slight leverage advantage going from standstill and up across some roots or whatnot (at the cost of lowered clearance). That said I’d still go shorter.

Decided to try some latex coated freezer work gloves coming in at around 6 gbp, rated EN 511 x3x so a very high rating for contact cold, not rated for convective cold or water resistance, but imagine they could be 131.

https://i.imgur.com/TAgJNxm.png

@singletrackmind

Cheers, those do look extremely grippy, but I’m in Poland atm and have hand size medium, would be happy to pay for shipping however.

Anime is legendary, I made a flash animation that got me into an art academy interview round based on its intro..

Yeah seems like a good tradeoff between volume and reaching high pressure, the small one is 17 cm and weighs around 100g. Albeit I reckon it would take some 500 pumps to get a 32c tire to 100 psi with it.

Standing on tools is removal only in my book. With the exception on car wheels at the side of the road.

Indeed..

Generally the size of the tool roughly dictates the maximum torque you can apply by hand. Standing on them violates that 😉 So standing on a 0.16m Allan key with 700N is huge overkill. Did you put all your weight on it? If you were still on one foot then you probably put less than half through it, say 350N with a torque of 56Nm which sounds better.

Never had a problem with the full size Park Allan keys but have never needed to stand on one either.

Yes almost all as I stood on it, perhaps more realistically 60 kg worth so 94 Nm, I could just keep going so I stopped – hopefully in time to prevent the crank arm hole from getting permanently dilated lol.

Wonder if I can spray it right on the fork, presumably it has a matte clearcoat? hmm

Looks brilliant, also checked out the amazon uk reviews – now where to find it or something equivalent here hmm – thanks for the tip!

Think Wurth Matte Varnish black could work

Nice, and it doesn’t rub off on clothes? I’ve had that exp when not using clearcoat..

Very nice, no matte overcoat either then? Need to figure out what they have here in Poland..have some experience spray painting parts so..

Got some Roubaix Pro 32s on it, very very pleased.

Claris groupset works great and Shimano mechanical breaks are strong and completely silent even in the wet – in fact the bike makes no noise at all even when coasting which suits it. Don’t miss anything from the 105 groupset I have on my racer.

Dynamo front and rear lights are a revaltion.

A530 pedals are perfect for this application, got some Specialized Recon 2.0 shoes and they work well for both walking, training and commuting – quite water resistant too.

Tempted to spray-paint the front fork matte black..

I’m living in Krakow at the moment, so availability is different. I ordered the Uniche from ebay.com, shipped from Taiwan, see what happens :)

Uniche (a taiwanese company) has a contender at 138g that can allegedly reach 140 psi

Make em look I say!

Thanks for the tips! I’m surprised the Proviz is that bad since it has pit zips, upper and lower back vents.

Altura has a Typhoon model that looks decent too, in a kinda bright grey..a lot of the sugoi stuff is very drab in daylight :S

yes, but try to get a doctor that specialises in sports folks. When I got my heart checked out they would let me go anywhere near the sorts of heart rates I normally run at going up hills and probably no-where near where you were

Sound advice, haven’t done an ECG under max exertion (ECGs at rest are normal) and It would be nice to get my coronary arteries checked for (degree of – we all have some don’t we) atherosclerosis with either ultrasound or cMRI – if some are narrowing a lot might be worth monitoring and then it may be a bad idea to keep doing maximal efforts (not going to until I get it checked out).

Also possible that this kind of pain is harmless for what I know, but not going to assume that

I asked my wife who is GP. She said if you presented with that she would get you back in for ECG and bloods. Would be checking for anemia, thyroid, diabetes and other stuff that may be simpler than dodgy ticker. If nothing found and issue still happening she’d refer you to cardio.

Have done, everything is normal, otherwise healthy.

Yes I’m thinking I should get it checked, as for the individual more testing is generally better, but many public? doctors tend to think socio-economics first and that such testing of otherwise healthy, relatively young individuals doesn’t “pay off” esp if having to double check results if positive to avoid false positives.

Thx eskay! Max is 1101w ;p

Got the ortlieb bag and the laptop fits (just barely), hard to close however with a janky velcro closing system, and not practical to carry around with no real handle (it does come w a strap).

I did end up making some further changes, but more sidegrades than upgrades to make it fit me better.

40 cm compact long reach handlebars from 45 cm wide 15 cm drop ones.
170 mm tourney crank instead of 175 mm claris – technically a downgrade (dislike long crank arms for spinning in an aero pos, save them for mtb).

Think I found it

Wheels def not, hydraulics def not, cockpit def not, seatpost??? saddle possibly, the one it came with ain’t comfy, but I’ve got a comfy one at home I can bring ;)

Tires and pedals are getting replaced.

Bad photo I took to document my very DIY pannier setup..

So far happy with the Grandurance, very smooth, Shimano Claris is plenty good too.

Minor gripe: Rear rack is a bit limited and you can’t really change it without major mods as it attaches to the mudguards.

Tires feel very slow rolling (confirmed by testing), getting some 32 mm roubaix pros..

..ordered the Recon 2.0 found a cheap pair in germany..