Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Bike parts, part 3.

So, I'm off work today, no overtime, nothing on the calendar to do. A perfect day to work on my bikes! Got up nice and early, brewed a pot of Alterra coffee (Milwaukee roasted, fresh, in your kitchen within 7 days of roast. Good stuff!), and got the kids off to school. My wife had a breakfast to attend with some friends, so I was home alone. Here is what the kitchen looked like early on:
This is what every guy's (or girl's) kitchen should look like! Bikes and parts, tools and stuff, all over!

I started by removing the Bonty crank from the E7:

And next, I cleaned everything in prep for installation. I also had to take the Ultegra chainrings back apart, and install the bolts with some locktight. The two cranks, side by side:
Pedals await the install, note the dirty gray Keo versus the brand spanking new red ones:
The end results on the E7, a nice looking Ultegra crank with gray Look Keos. Nice!
And the Giant, with new red Looks. Man, I love this bike!
A closer look at the red pedals, I think they accent the red and black theme well!
A closer look at the scratches in the frame and fork, from last year's crash in the Carolina's:
Some miscellaneous pics, just for fun:


And here is the lake effect snow we got hit with, right at rush hour. 3-6" more, I can't wait for Spring! Glad I was off today!

The E7 TT bike needs a front brake cable next. I was adjusting it today and noticed the cable was fraying pretty badly, from the original build by the looks of it. Also, I need to get some new tires before road training. The stock Bonty's basically peeled apart, with only +/- 400 miles on them! The only thing left made by Bonty are the wheels, and some day I hope to get ride of those too! No more Bonty, BOO for Bonty.

I got a quick spin on the TT (on the trainer, of course!), about 45 minutes prior to dinner. The crank itself is, as expected, as stiff as I could want. I could notice the longer crank arms right away-the arms on the TT bike are 175mm, all my other bikes, 172.5. The reasoning I came up with was this; last year, I felt like my seat needed to go up a bit higher, but my reach on the TT aero bars felt too far forward. I did not want to place so much weight/pressure on my forearms, as my right shoulder was bothering me on longer rides (say, 56 mile rides for a 70.3 race) from the pressure of being forward too much.

So, I shortened the stem, 100mm to 90mm. And I lengthened the cranks arms by 2.5mm. And I left the seat height alone (for now). I am still debating on switching to straight aero bars, instead of the "J" bends I currently have. I am still up in the air on this-I think I'm going to give it a few hundred miles to get used to the new parts and positioning, before I do anything else. I might have my wife photograph my TT position, and compare them to some photos of "real" TT and Tri riders online, just to see where my position is at. I've got some time, after all, the first real race with the TT bike is in July!

Anyway, thats all I got. Time for a glass of wine and some relaxation, maybe a good book. Or, maybe some Olympic hockey tonight-Russia plays Canada, so it would be fun to watch Alex Ovechkin and Sid Crosby beat on each other some and score a few goals. I think Canada will still win gold, despite the early lottery round loss to the US. Just my 2 cents!

3 comments: