Force

The coolest part about working at a bike shop is being able to E.P. (employee purchase) products directly from the manufacturer. Companies want bike shop employees to ride their product because they know that if the employee likes the product, he will tell just about every customer that walks in how much he enjoys it. Offering discounted prices on their products is basically just paying for advertising. Very cheap advertising.

That's not to say all is bad. A lot of companies make really good products, and being able to ride stuff you would never be able to afford otherwise is great. It's an even trade in my book.

SRAM has a pretty cool E.P. policy they call the SRAMbassador. They offer most of their products as cost or less for a period of time. If you keep in mind that SRAM owns Zipp, SRM, Truvativ, Rock Shox, Avid, and has a partnership with Garmin, and your options to buy just about anything but a bike are pretty damn good.

While I probably could have afforded a Red group, I wanted to save a little coin for some other parts and went with Force because It's similar, or better, in most cases. Sure, Red is lighter, but the front derailleur is made so light and thin that it doesn't shift as well as the Force unit. If you check out the spec on Tour bikes that are Red equipped, almost all of them have listed a "prototype" Red front derailleur that is just a Force FD with Red labeling.

Red Does have some better things, like ceramic bottom bracket bearings and rear derailleur pullies, but I don't need that shit. And if I ever want it, I can order just those parts and throw them on.

Speaking of bottom brackets, you may notice that in the picture, there isn't one. Or that the crank is not a Force crank and has no chain rings on it. I already have a Force compact crank on my cross bike, and seeing as how I bash that bike into stuff much more than my road bike, I decided to swap it over. So there, full Force group on my road bike, but now I have no crank for my cross bike. That's where that S900 crank comes in. The S900 crank is a carbon armed crank that is meant to be a slight upgrade over the Rival crank, or anyone else who wants an inexpensive carbon crank on their bike. It's a little bit lighter and stiffer, but also a little bit more expensive.

The chainrings are missing from this particular crank because of Specialized. "Huh?" you ask? Basically, one of the guys I work with ordered a Specialized Crux aluminum cross bike and when he put it all together, he noticed the rear brake mount was off by 5mm and caused his brakes to contact at very bad angles. Specialized replaced the frame, but the new one they sent him was an upgrade and had a BB30 bottom bracket. All Specialized bikes with BB30 BB come with a Specialized crank and bearings already, and the S900 crank wouldn't have worked even if it didn't. The bike, strangely enough, did not come with chain rings, so he took the rings from his S900 crank and tried to sell just the crank arms and spider. To the surprise of no one, the crank never sold. I bought the crank for the price he paid, minus the cost of Rival chain rings (he never used the crank) and will order rings next month after I get paid. The only downside to the crank is that the guy I bought it from is a bit of a beast, and ordered a standard crank bolt pattern. That means that the cross gearing I'm stuck with is 46/38T. That's a whopping one tooth smaller front small ring than the standard crank on my road bike currently. If I find it to be too much of a pain in the ass (or knee), I'll sell the crank next year for what I paid for it and buy a compact version of the S900 with easier cross gearing for the same price. Another plus of getting that discount is that when you sell it for what you paid for it, people who don't work at a bike shop think they're getting a deal. They are, so it's win, win.

Other good news is that I ended up getting a white FSA bar that is just an aluminum version of the bar on my cross bike (which I find really comfortable) and I got white cable housing to go with it. My bike is going to look so obnoxious, I can't wait. Pics will surely follow after I build everything up.