The Maillot a Pois Rouge

I recently won a King of the Mountain competition and hence the The Maillot a Pois Rouge

Unfortunately this was not as a result if my climbing prowess but due to luck of a draw.

I am a bit of a Strava junkie and keen to look at the data at the end of the ride. However I also upload my data to Garmin Connect and Bikeradar. And I then look at in in Veloviewer as well. This makes the uploading phase more than a few moments work as you can imagine.

However I really only upload data to the Bikeradar because they run competitions with prizes. These are generally a combination of distance, hours ridden, height gained etc but for the more ordinary riders amongst us there are some random winners as well. 

I was amazed to be one of the random winners and the prize was a T Shirt. Here I am proudly wearing it on a day at Sudeley Castle.

Cycling The High Peak and Tissington Trails

On the August Bank Holiday my wife and I cycled some of the High_Peak_Trail. We started at Parsley_Hay and rode along most of the Cromford_and_High_Peak_Railway to Middleton Top and back and then cycled a few miles of the Tissington_Trail to the restored signal box.

Here is a picture of me looking almost like a real mountain biker:

Here's my wife cycling along (northbound, about 3 miles south of Parsley Hay:

It was a great day out.

Cycling at Donington Park Race Circuit

I found out about an opportunity to ride around Donington Park Race Circuit for the princely sum of £1 on the evening of 22 August 2013. Donington is about 1 hours drive away I took a 1/2 day off work and me, my son and my wife drove over to ride round (my wife decided not to ride in the end).

It was a great evening. The weather was almost ideal other than a headwind down the Craner Curves and back up. The whole circuit was available (including the Melbourne Loop/hairpin). Several hundred riders took part from families on all sorts of BSOs, a bloke on a modern penny farthing, several tandems and road bikes from £300 Careeras to multi thousand bling machines. Passing 4 year olds on a tiny BMX bike was a surreal experience. The family nature meant that line discipline was absent and this meant that the racing line was the same width as the track.

My son had a massive explosive puncture on the rear wheel after about 3 laps. I am sure he'd like to think that is was due to massive power but it looks like a manufacturing defect in the tyre. He rode my Scott for 4 laps while I had a break as we didn't bring a spare tyre.

Like all these things nowadays Strava has dozens of overlapping segments - here's the ride (note 46 achievements!):

Here's a few photos.

On the start finish/straight

Breaking the rules

Face of pain (or just ugly?)

Massive Speed!

Building a New Bike - Part 3 - Observations

I wrote about building a new bike here and here. These 2 posts are more of an overview but I found some interesting things on the way that I thought I'd share. These are in no particular order.

Carbon Steerer on Focus Cayo
My Focus Cayo had a carbon steerer, not aluminium as I had assumed

Frame Stiffness
The Scott frame stiffness seems higher than the Focus - this was with the crude "press foot against the crank" test. From this I could detect not frame movement. Compared to my Focus a very small amount was visible and for the (Aluminium) framed Giant the movement is very clear.

Bar Tape
I had forgotten how to wrap the bar tape around the shifters. A quick search on YouTube brought up this link - it was excellent and better than the ones I had watched before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=J6g3-55iVU0

To quote one of the comments: "ive watched 5 bar wrapping vids now. this one is the best. no nonsense Australians getting shit done" - spot on

Steerer Misaligned
On the first ride I realised the steerer was misaligned - irritating and felt really odd.




Front Dérailleur 105 5700 Shift Load
Front dérailleur shift load. I wrote 2 posts about this here and here. In fact these are the 2 most visited posts on this blog by far so I guess I am possibly not the only person with possible issues. Briefly whilst the outcome of fitting 5700 series components for the rear was an improvement of the 5600 shift quality and feel the front dérailleur was a disappointment with a much high shift effort than I expected. Despite much fettling I could not get it anywhere near as good as the shifting with a 5600 set up. A problem, but not associated with the 5700 shifters is that as the cables are hidden under the bar tape, there is no room for a cable barrel shifter. The Focus did have these fitted for both front and rear on the down tube but the Scott did not. So I bought one of these (in black):

For what they are they are expensive at around £7 but without it I would have failed to get any form of sensible adjustment on the front

Here it is fitted:

However I am pleased to report that after this fettling the front shifting is now as I would have expected - light, precise and smooth shifting. I cannot see what has changed compared to the Focus as the shifters are the same, and the basic cable routing is also the same and the front deraillieur is the same. I did make another change in that I replaced not only the inner cable (as last time) but also the outer cables as well - with a Shimano set. It really has made a difference and is what I would have hoped it would be from new.

Kool stop brake pads
I needed some new brake pads for the Giant, but chose to buy some new pads for the Scott and move the Focus pads to the Giant. The Focus had the original Shimano 105 5700 pads from last year. They had lasted very well but this is because they seem quite hard. After some perusing of internet forums (fora?). I bought some Kool Stop Dura 2 inserts (black)


 

First impressions are extremely positive - significantly improved braking performance and what seems to be good modulation. Time will tell how they last. Apparently Dura 2 are:

"The Dura2 insert is our newly designed road pad. The pad is thicker than our standard Dura type for longer life, has a 7.65 mm contact width for narrow rims and cut outs for reduced weight."

New Cables
I fitted full new cables (inners and outers) for both gears and brakes. It just goes to show that improved shifting and indexing can be achieved with new parts - whilst the inners were changed around 18 moths earlier the outers were the originals and were over 3 years old.

Ride feel
It does "feel" different - a non-engineering metric but it rides differently

Weight
The weight came out at about 400g less than the Focus. I was hoping for a little more. The bike is now (fully equipped) just a shade of 8kg. I am pretty happy with this.

Seat post
I thought I might need a new seat post - in the end I didn't as it was the same size as the Focus.

Cutting cable outers
I was going to buy a "proper" tool. But didn't. I very carefully cut all the outer cables using a small (junior) hacksaw with new blade. No problems for the brakes cables but I needed a lot more care to get a smooth finish for the gear cables which were made of wrapped separate wires. The finish came out OK in the end.

Torque Wrench
I had bought a 3/8" torque drive a while ago (torque wrench). I used it for some of the components. It is amazing how tight some screws actually need to be - much tighter than you would have thought.

Chain Length 
Despite fitting all the same drive train components the chain is about 1 link too long now - on the Focus it was exactly right. I am not going to make any changes now, and will resolve when the chain needs a change. As its too long in small-small which I don't use its not a problem for now.

Building a New Bike - Part 2 - The Build

In a previous post I discussed the new Scott CR1 Pro frame I had bought with the objective of moving the components across from my Focus to the Scott. I have now completed this successfully. This post is a report of the whole process.

I'll document some more details in another post - this is mainly just photos showing it going together. For example in other posts I have commented on the high shift load for the Shimano 5700 front dérailleur and this will be covered in the next post (here).

Firstly of course firstly I needed to get the frame:

It came within a few days well packed

The frame and fork unpacked

The Frame with the protection still in place

Frame and fork

Frame and fork

As I wrote in the first post Cult Cycles fitted the headset and cut the fork for me. I then went on holiday for a week so the frame sat in the loft. I knew I needed some additional parts so I ordered these from Wiggle at the end of the holiday for delivery in the week I came back.

The first main activity was to strip all the parts off the Focus and clean them thoroughly. I also weighed them reasonably carefully (see here). However the cheap digital scales:

I used seem a bit inconsistent and I don't fully trust them. It's easy to re-weigh the same parts and get different results. The resolution is also on 0.01kg so not great discrimination for some of the lighter parts.

It took 2-3 evenings to strip the parts from the Focus and clean them, before I started on the build of Scott. Here's the build at a very early stage:

The frame in my Park Work Stand with seat tube fitted to given some strength to the seat tube. The stem is a temporary part to hold the fork in place

Before any parts fitted (with the recycling bag in the background)

With the correct stem, handlebars and shifters fitted. Also front and rear brake calipers and front and rear dérailleurs and chainset. The cable outers are still connected to the shifters to give an indication of length.

Front on view

The wheels are now fitted

Almost finished. Chain fitted. All cables installed. Gears indexed. Brakes adjusted. Bar tape fitted

I fitted an in-line cable adjuster for the front deraillieur given the issues I had with the front mech on the Focus

Cable outer length might need a little optimisation

The drive train

The massive seat stay/seat tube interface

Detail of the front of the bike

Finished

The massive bottom bracket area

Total build time - about 6 hours over 2 evenings and a Saturday morning.

Road Tax Myths

Road Tax Myths Busted Link From the BBC

2010 Focus Cayo Bike Weights

Update 6 April 2014 - I have added some more info in this post: Giant Defy Headset Bearings

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I wrote earlier that I had bought a new frame: a Scott CR1 Pro (here). The plan was to move all the parts from the Focus to the Scott. Some new parts would be bought such as cables, new bar tape etc. 

I was very keen to itemise the weights of the Focus and its components to see actually how much the bike, the frame and the other components weighed.

As I stripped down the bike I spent some time weighing the bike and the components.

The digital scales I used were these:

They are OK but its easy to get a different weight each time the same component is weighed (this may be influenced by how the component is suspended from the hook, and the resolution at 0.01kg is low for some of the lighter parts). In Engineering terms, the Gauge R&R is poor.

This weights are all tabulated here:

Focus Cayo 105 (2010) Weight Break Down
Components	Detail	Actual Weight (kg)
Full Bike Pedals, bottle cages x2, pump, Garmin Cadence sensor etc)		8.57
Bottle cage 1	Specialized	0.04
Bottle cage 2	Specialized	0.06
Pump	TopPeak Pocket Rocket	0.11
Pedals	Shimano SPD-L R540	0.33
Bike		8.03
Chain	KMC X10	0.26
Front Wheel/inner tube/tyre	Shimano RS80 C24	1.04
Rear Wheel/inner tube/tyre + Cassette	Shimano RS80 C24	1.53
Cassette	Shimano 105 11-28
Bike		5.21
Crank RH	FSA Gossamer	0.55
Crank LH	FSA Gossamer	0.25
Front Brake	Shimano 105 5700	0.18
Rear Brake	Shimano 105 5700	0.18
Front Deraillieur	Shimano 105 5700	0.09
Rear Deraillieur	Shimano 105 5700	0.23
Bike		3.72
Handlebars/Stem/Shifters/Cables	FSA/Shimano 105 5700	1.19
Seat Tube	FSA	0.28
Saddle	FSA	0.29
BB Bearing	FSA Mega Exo	0.09
Final Frame Weight		1.82
Component Total		6.7
+Frame		1.82
Back Check Total		8.52