Bar Swap, Skewers, Front Shifting

Last night, after a little home disassembly, I headed over to the shop to swap some bars, "fix" my front shifting and install the ridiculously light weight Control Tech skewers.  I was hoping to have weights for everything, but the gram scale was sitting in an undisclosed box in the back, and I didn't feel like digging for a half an hour.  I'm a little disappointed but it's not the end of the world.

Bars

Holding the two bars in your hands, there is a noticeable weight difference.  Very noticeable.  I also discovered that the carbon bar is 42cm, not 44cm like I had thought all of this time.  Now my CX bike has a wider bar (good) and my road bike, a narrower one (also good).  They are almost the exact same shape and the alloy bar is actually slightly more "compact" than the carbon bar.  I figured the drops would be the same, but apparently not.  How I missed all of this over the past six months is beyond me, because the bars have been side by side the entire time.  

Both bikes look great.  The carbon bar with black tape works very well with the white/red/black paint scheme on the bike.  I may do white hoods just to do it in the future.  The white bar/white tape combo is also a nice addition to the CX bike.  I'm happy with the swap all around.  

Skewers

Again, with no scale, I have no actual numbers, but I put both Control Tech skewers in my left hand and just the front, alloy skewer I was running in my right and the two bolt on skewers are way lighter.  You read that correctly, both skewers lighter than just the front.  I want to get the weight of the training skewer I was running in the rear because it's so heavy, it's comical.  

Aside from being light enough that I'm almost worried about my safety, the Control Tech skewers are also a drastic visual improvement.  Other than taking thirty seconds longer to put on and take off, there is no downside to bolt on skewers, and I don't know why more people don't make the change, unless you're racing, of course.  

Front Shifting

I put the little metal wedge in between the front derailleur and the braze-on and it did drop the tail end of the cage like advertised.  After some adjustments we were able to make it shift properly in all but one gear combination.  Since I'm never going to be shifting into the big ring while being completely cross chained I'm not too upset about it, but every time I shift to the larger ring the chain dances on the teeth before taking a proper seat and it still allows for the chain to be launched over from time to time.  The best we can think of is that the Red ring is designed to work with a 34T small ring and my putting a 36T there is just fucking up the ramping and pin placement.  I'm going to be putting the 34T on for H.O.H. so we'll see if that fixes the problem.  

On my CX bike, the change from 36-34T small ring hasn't affected the shifting one bit.  It's also a smaller ring instead of a larger than designed for ring, so maybe that has something to do with it.  Either way, I may just shift all of the time, just to wear the rings out sooner so I can have the excuse to buy the Praxis Works rings and just not have to worry about this at all.  Or, buy the rings and then sell the Red/Force 50/34T rings for what I bought the PW rings for.