I finally had a chance to hop on my road bike and try out the changes I made in the last post, and one more change I made in the middle of the week. While I didn't expect much in the way of "wow! this feels like a new bike!" revelations, I will say that I've never been wowed by a bottom bracket before today.
I had forgotten about the bottom bracket until I kicked my pedal around to clip in and the crank spun faster than muscle memory had expected, and I completely missed the pedal. My ride today was pancake flat so I did a lot of pedaling and It was obvious within minutes that this was one of the best changes I've made on any of my bikes.
I've been skeptical about hybrid ceramic bearings because they tend to die quickly. A common misconception is that the ceramic ball bearings get ground up by the steel races and that's why the end up feeling crunchy and toasted. What the reality is, is that the ceramic balls are so much harder than the steel races that they actually dent the metal. The lack of smoothness feel is the still perfectly fine balls getting caught in the dents they have made.
Because of this, and cost, I've always just stuck with steel on steel action because A) I didn't think that ceramic bearings would be that noticeable a difference and B) there are next to no ceramic/ceramic bearings on the market (HSC being the only company I know of that makes them). I'm almost sold on them now. I want to wait and see how they hold up over time before I rave about them, but I was shocked at how smooth the crank spun. It helps that the bearings that were in there before were done, so the difference seems huge.
Cutting the steerer didn't really change anything because the stem is in the same place it has been. The bike just looks better now, so there's nothing to really report here. I will spend a minute bring you with the front shifting, though. The flipping of the inner cog shifted beautifully in the stand, but not on the road. I flipped it back and decided I would try plan b.
A while ago, I read a tech article on VeloNews where the author was saying that when he used to work on Pro bikes, he wouldn't move the front derailleur when swapping between a standard, and compact crankset, and that he wouldn't shorten the chains either... and that everything still shifted perfectly. The raft of shit the author caught from every home mechanic on the internet was massive. But, as a guy who, on his CX bike, switched from a 48/38T to a 46/36T and just kept everything else the same, I knew he was right.
Still, I have a tendency to listen to the mechanics at the shop because they have way more experience than I do, so when they told me to set it up with a few mm between the tallest tooth and the FD, I listened. But, after futzing with the bike for months now, I finally recalled the above article and decided to try raising the FD.
The bike shifts better now, but because I didn't run a new cable, I increased cable tension by raising the FD. When I replace cables in the spring I think I should finally be good in the front shifting department... as good as I can be with a SRAM FD. However, the shifting is much better than before, so I'm pretty happy about that. It's just a little bit of chatter every 5th shift or so. Just enough to be annoying still.
Now that I'm super impressed with the BB, I've been thinking about replacing other bearings as well. I've heard from a lot of people that upgrading pulley bearings makes a difference, and SRAM Red RDs come with them from the factory. They also sell them as upgrades for their Force and Rival RDs, and they're fairly inexpensive, so I see that happening in the future. One of my favourite customers has an FSA ceramic headset on one of his bikes and it's absolutely silly how smooth it feels. However, FSA doesn't make a ceramic headset for the size taper of the R5, so that's out. No one makes Speedplay bearings in ceramic either. That leaves the hubs, and the wheelset I'm looking at getting comes with them. The smoother bearings, in conjunction with the aero benefit should make for a faster ride.
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