Almost There

I haven't thrown anything up on here in a while, mostly because I've been so busy with work, I've barely had time to ride my bike, let alone write about it.  However, during this time I have been hard at work, plotting and scheming on how to improve my bikes.  I have nothing better to do during render time since I don't smoke.

My main focus has been my R5 and achieving my sub 15lb weight with Force, PowerTap wheels and steel cables/housing.  While I was at it, I also wanted to improve my bike, because I finally found somethings I didn't like about it.

While doing maintenance on it a few months ago, I discovered that my cranks didn't spin freely when the chain was off.  I noticed this when I built the bike, but sometimes, new bearings need to break in.  However, the bike is over a year old now and the crank would barely do one rotation when given more than ample force.  Not only that, but the bottom bracket would creak when I was standing and giving it some umph.  It wasn't loud enough that people ever noticed unless I pointed it out to them, but I noticed it.  Both problems needed to be resolved.

My theory is that when I installed the FSA BB that came with the bike, I put too much side load on the bearings and ruined them.  It's a common issue when installing PressFit pick your bottom bracket standard.  Bearings are designed for the races to take all of the load and that's it, no other exceptions.

As a replacement, I decided that if I was going to get a new BB, I might as well do it right and get ride of the adapter all together and get a proper BBRight to GXP bottom bracket.  Only two companies that I know of make a BBRight to GXP bottom bracket: Enduro, and Rotor.  Since the Rotor BB uses Enduro bearings, and the shop already has an account with Rotor, I just bought the Rotor BB.  And, if I was going to get a new, proper BB for my bike, I might as well get as much ceramic goodness as I can get, so I ordered the hybrid-ceramic 5 BB.  They make a 3 series ceramic BB, but even at shop prices, that was too rich for me.

If you've never removed a PressFit BB, know that it isn't for the faint of heart, especially if your BB is a full carbon sleeve.  At the shop, it's common practice to remove PressFit BB's after the customer has left, mostly because no one wants to see some monkey with a hammer whacking the fuck out of your carbon bike.  I've done it before on an alloy bike, but I have to admit, I took a deep breathe before I unleashed hell on that thing.  Getting the plastic sleeves to come out as well as the bearings can be tricky, but with the right tools and a little imagination, it's a pretty straight forward job.

Installing the BB is where 99% of all the bad press (pun, boom!) for BB30, and it's plethora of different iterations, comes from.  It's not always the installers fault either, as bad tolerances from the factory means that the bearings/cups don't always go in perfectly.  With BB30 you're supposed to ream the BB first to make sure tolerances are correct.  With PressFit, the flexy plastic is supposed to make up for imperfect tolerances.  If you fuck up installing BB30 in an alloy carrier, your BB will always be creaky.  Forever.  Even if there is a fire.  With PressFit, you can bang out the old and put in new ones and it will still probably creak at some point.

The Rotor BB comes with a whole bunch of seals to hopefully quiet down any creaking.  It also slid into place perfectly, so I was thrilled about that.  I threw the crank in and gave it a spin, and it was nice and smooth and worked properly.  It's the little things.

I haven't had a chance to ride the bike yet, but I should have time for a ride tomorrow, and I'll report back whenever I bother to write something here again.

While I had the crank off, I decided to see if I could figure out why my front shifting wasn't perfect.  When I got my Praxisworks rings, I noticed that the big ring had white writing on the outside, but in all of the pictures I'd seen, the small ring didn't.  My small ring came with white writing on it, so I just assumed that the pictures were right and installed it with the white writing on the inside.  Also, the shape of the ring was identical to the front ring, so I was sure.  After over a year of imperfect shifts, I thought that maybe turning the ring around might improve things.  All of the derailleur adjustments and playing with derailleur height had failed, so I figured why not.  In the stand the bike shifts like it's supposed to now.  Every time.  Not a single chain dropped or thrown.  Things are always different on the road when there is load on the drivetrain, so, like the BB, I'll have to report back on if this is the fix or not.

While I was at the shop, I decided to do a little steerer tube chopping.  For the past few months, I've had my stem damn near slammed.  When I built the bike, I was used to Tarmac/Allez geometry and I was very inflexible, so I left myself a lot of spacers on top of the 15mm top cap.  An additional 15mm to be exact, with another 5mm on top of the stem.  That felt good for a while, but with the tall headtube on the R5, it started to feel too high.  I dropped it down another 5mm and rode the bike like that for a year.  I thought it was perfect.

A lot can happen in a year.  For instance, one's flexibility can improve.  I was starting to feel like I was too high up again and that I was more comfortable in the drops, so I decided to drop my stem again.  Only this time, instead of going from the top and working my way down, I decided to start at the bottom and work my way up.  I love the new position.

The only downside is that while 5mm, or even 1cm of spacers on top of a stem is acceptable, 2cm of spacers looks terrible.  While it came to affectionately be known as "the butt plug" to the guys I ride with, I only felt like it really had to go when I hit a bump while tucked on a descent and I felt it graze my chin.

When Cervelo ships a bike/frame, the fork comes uncut and with a metal sleeve for you to epoxy to the inside of the steerer once you've found your desired position.  Since I never thought that I would change my position, I went ahead and just epoxied that fuck right in there.  The sleeve is long enough that if you ever change your mind, you can lower the star nut and cut the steerer if you'd like.  So that's what I did, however, because I was cutting off an inch of steerer, we decided to cut through the start nut because we weren't sure how long the sleeve was and we didn't want to exceed the length of the steerer and hit carbon.  Metal on carbon = ruined fork, so we cut through the star nut and then grabbed another and installed that into the steerer.  I have about another inch if I ever decided I want to ditch the top cap for a zero rise one and cut the steerer again.

What no one tells you when you cut a carbon steerer with an alloy sleeve epoxied in it, is that it looks like complete shit when you're done.  Also, when installing a star nut, it's more of the whacking carbon parts with a hammer story from above.  That being said, with the stem back on and a 5mm spacer on top, you can't see how ugly the steerer is.  The bike looks fantastic.

Having wiped the bike down for the first time in months (it was filthy), I decided to weigh the bike and see how close I was to my goal.  The bike was 15.2lbs the last time I weighed it.  The PFBB and adapter came in at 81g and 30g.  The new BB came in at 128g.  so plus 17g for function and better engineering.  I'll take it.

The chopped steerer with sleeve was 21g and I removed 20g of spacers for a total of 41g for you math retards.  Add back the 17g from above and you have a 24g reduction which brought the bike down to 15lbs 1oz, or 15.0625lbs.  15.1lbs for good measure.  Only 46g more to go to reach my goal.  It's a good thing Ti Spindles is shipping me a package that should save me 50g.

Overall, all weight bullshit aside, the bike is improved, and that's what really counts.  The bike (potentially) shifts better, the cranks spin better, and I'm in a more comfortable position on my bike.  All wins in my book.