My son, who's a keen Triathlete, came over for the week and brought his bike. "Dad - can you have a look at the crank, I think it's gone wrong":
I'm sure he'll claim it's massive power but I'm sure there's some defect somewhere that's the initial cause. Whatever, the damage is impressive.
Apparently this is not an unusual failure.
See here: Bikeradar, YouTube, YouTube (again), TrainerRoad forum for examples, or just put "Shimano Crank failure" or similar into Google
I have run Shimano WH-6800 (Ultegra) wheels on my Scott for the past 6 years and almost 13,000 miles. They have been great to be honest - they are light (a claimed 1640g for the pair), and yet after all these miles are still round and true.
The front wheel still has the wear indicator showing but the indicator has disappeared from the rear wheel, and the rim is slightly concave - not surprising given that I have used them in wet conditions and it's the rear that gets the grit and mud on it. It's difficult to tell exactly how worn the rear wheel is but even I felt that some care needed to be taken and it was time to renew.
This is a stock image of WH-6800 wheels from ~2014:
I'd spent a number of months occasionaly surfing the online bike stores to see what was available and the initial proposal was to get a like for like replacement - however equivalent Ultegra wheels today are about £700 and there was no way I was paying that - the older I get the slower I am getting and £700 of wheels is not going to make a difference.
Plan B was to get some (effectivley) handbuilt wheels from one of the small traders in the UK who advertise on EBay etc. This route would appear to get me a similar build to my Ultegras for around £300-350.
However I needed to be careful as my Scott has quite a narrow frame. I have run 23mm Continental GP4000S II ever since I have had it and I think that even going up 25mm tyres may be very tight for clearance. The current trend for wider tyres is coming pretty common, but I needed to keep to wheels with the same rim width (within 1mm or so) as the Ultegra wheels.
So plan C was to "downgrade" to some cheaper wheels and keep the Ultegras for occasional riding when I wanted to save some weight. So I ended up getting a pair of Shimano WH-RS330 wheels for a lower price than even the "handbuilts". Yes - they are heavier (I weighed them at 2100g with no skewers) but the are effectively the same wheel with heavier materials and the rim width was identical (20.8mm). The main difference is that the rim depth is ~24mm on the Ultegras and on the RS330 it's closer to 30mm. Finally, I trust the Shimano brand and the fact that I've got 6 years and 13,000 miles (with more wear left) meant it was not really a risk.
Here's a stock image of WH-RS330 wheels (as you can see from here - basically the same wheels):
I also needed to replace the tyres on the Ultegra wheels. If I could, I would have bought another pair of GP4000S but these are no longer available having been replaced by the GP5000S. Given I was letting the weight go up on the wheels I decided to put a pair of Continental Grand Sport Race on. I have a pair of these on my Pinnacle (winter and commuting bike) - and they have proven hard wearing currently at 7000 miles so far with more wear left, but with good grip all year round. However I am sure the rolling resistance is probably higher than the GP4000S and they are heavier. But they are also a lot cheaper and hence these seemed a good compromise as well.
So I spent a Saturday morning swapping the wheels over. It's always exciting to get new bike bits to open:
I was running a 105 11-32 Cassette but put a new (spare) Ultegra 11-32 Cassette that I had lying around on the RS330 wheels. Thus with new wheels, tyres, tubes and cassette I now have 2 sets of wheels for the Scott ready to go that I can just swap over.
Given the concious decision to allow the weight to rise I also weighed various components as I went to see what I ended up with after the wheel swap. This is shown in the table below.
Note that the scale is a simple and cheap luggage weigher device with a display resolution of 0.01kg like this
I doubt it's that good in the 0.01kg range but actually calculating the wheel weight change seperately to the whole bike weight change only gave a discrepancy of 0.01kg - so actually not that bad! It would be interesting to use it on some calibration weights and also do a Gage R&R to see how good it is
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Whole Bike: Initial Weight: 8.28kg |
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WH-RS330 Rear wheel (bare): 1.19kg |
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WH-RS330 Front wheel (bare): 0.91 kg |
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Continental Grand Sport Race 23mm: 0.25kg Note continental clain 0.245kg in the spec so not too shabby For the GP 5000 in 23mm claimed weight is 0.20kg - so I could save 90g total running these tyres |
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Continental inner tube 42mm valve: 0.11kg |
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Ultegra 11-32 Cassette: 0.29kg |
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WH-RS330 Rear Wheel, tyre, inner tube: 1.56kg |
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WH-RS330 Rear Wheel, tyre, inner tube & cassette: 1.90kg |
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WH-RS330 Front wheel, tyre, inner tube: 1.32kg |
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WH-RS330 Total Wheel weight: 3.22kg |
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Ultegra Rear Wheel, QR, tyre, inner tube & cassette: 1.60kg |
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Ultegra Front Wheel, QR, tyre, inner tube: 1.07kg |
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Total Ultegra Wheel weight: 2.67 kg |
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Additional weight: 0.55kg (3.22-2.67) |
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Whole Bike: Final Weight: 8.82kg |
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Bike weight increase: 0.54kg (8.82-8.28) |
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A few other things I was interested in
I usually use 105 cassettes although my Giant does have Ultegra. What I'd not realised is the Ultegra cassette has 2 spiders - the first is for the biggest 3 gears as per the 105 cassette, but gears 4 & 5 are also on a spider that's made of plastic of some sort!:
Also I knew the chain was quite worn but was not aware it was this worn - the full 1% and more:
