I've never built up my own bike before. I've adjusted bikes plenty, but actually starting from a frame and building up a bike is really time consuming, and really hard. I tore down the bike in what seemed like minutes. and I got everything together, cables cut and ready to adjust in not much more time. The chain was where the story begins.
Since I had never installed my own chain, I wanted one of the mechs to make sure I was doing it right. I started by wrapping the chain around the big ring up front and the big cog in the rear. I pulled the chain tight and he told me to stop, grabbed the chain, and pulled it tighter and said "break here." So I did as I was told.
I spent the next few minutes setting up the front and rear derailleurs. With all limits set, I shifted into the small ring and started going through the gears, making adjustments to tension as needed. Then I shifted into the big ring and started going through the gears. Everything was peachy until I hit the 26T cog in the rear. Cog and pulley were mulching my chain. "Hmm..." so I cranked out the B limit until i couldn't any more. Mulch.
Flabbergasted, I asked another mech to look at it. He spins the bike up to what seemed like 200rpm and starts shifting through the gears, ignoring what I had told him. MULCH!
It took him 5 minutes to unfuck my rear derailleur. When he did, he determined that the chain was too short. Original mech who told me where to break the chain took a look and came to the same conclusion. He bought me a new chain.
A day later, new chain is installed. Mulch. New mech is like "WTF?" We tried everything we could think of, but nothing would fix it. I finally said "fuck it" and we dialed in the rest of the bike and left it at me not being able to use my 25, 26 or 28T while in the big ring. Fine, I shouldn't be in those gears any way, but accidents do happen from time to time.
Today I went out to test ride it. I love compact gearing. I use so much more of my cassette now and my knees felt fine the whole time. There were times where I felt like I was too strong for the gearing, but then I would look down and see I still had two more cogs left and I should shut up.
As much as I liked the gearing, I hated how much I had to think about where I was in the cassette and the fact that I was shifting more in the front than I was in the rear. I rode my new found route to the shop because I wanted to see what it was like. Harder than I thought, but I also couldn't use my 28T in either ring because the RD started hitting spokes.
When I got to the shop, the new mech (Ryan) said he would take a look at the bike. My rear wheel was out of true (I knew that) and that it was still shifting terrible (no shit).
He trued my wheel and adjusted my low limit and "BAM!" all of the sudden my bike was shifting properly. We could get it into the 28T no problem on the front ring and were able to adjust the shifting so it's perfect in the rear. Perfect.
Completely befuddled, we decided to work on the front shifting. Getting into the small cog was not an issue, but shifting up, the chain would grind against the FD for a second and then shift up. We adjusted limits, raised the FD and adjusted again. All we accomplished was getting the chain to spit off the front ring and then adjusting it back to how it was when we started. It shifts perfectly half the time, and like shit the other half, but it'll have to do. The shifting on my cross bike was like that when I got it, but once the cables broke in, it started to shift fine every time. Here's to hoping the same will happen this time.
I get made fun of at the shop every time I tell people that SRAM takes more time to set up properly than Shimano or Campy, but it's true. Once everything breaks in and it's dialed in, it's perfect for me and I don't want anything else. That feeling is why I made the switch.
As an aside, when I bought my Tarmac, it weighed 19.5lbs. That's incredibly fat for a carbon road bike. When I had the King/IRD wheels built up, I dropped the weight down to 18.6lbs. Not bad, but still kind of a porker. Changing to Force has dropped the weight down to 17.4lbs. Not as light as I would like, but not bad either. I was hoping for sub 17lbs, but with pedals, two bottle cages and my Garmin sensors and magnets (but not the head unit), 17.4 isn't bad at all. There are plenty of other things I could do to drop the weight a little more, but I'm going to leave it how it is. It's such a nice bike at this point, I cant justify changing it. For now.
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