Saturday, February 20, 2010

Parts, part 1.

So as I said in my last post, I went out and attempted to resuscitate  reinvest and revitalize the economy all on my own. I did this, of course, buying some bike parts! Here are what I've received so far:

So here we have a new pair of Look Keo Classics, complete with the gray cleats, and a new Ritchey 90mm aluminum stem, 31.8mm with a 6 degree bend. Those two items are compliments of PBK in England (so most of the monies didn't remain in the states, so far!).

The nifty crankset is a Shimano Ultegra "Ice", 175mm arms and BB, sans the chainrings (obviously!). This little sweety I picked up after work on Thursday from an ad I found on craigslist, for $50, I did a cash deal in the parking lot of an IHOP. The seller was a little bit of a hippie, but otherwise, seemed OK. Next, I did some quick shopping on ebay on Friday, and found a used 53/39 Ultegra set of rings for $25. Not bad, $75 for an Ultegra crankset in great shape! And it beats the crap out of the flimsy Bonty stock crank on my TT bike, for sure! And, more of the cash is staying in the US, great!


The E7, in the process of my install!

The stems side by side, 10mm difference in length, one degree less slope/rise on the Ritchey (+/-6 deg).
Another view, the Ritchey is actually beefier. I do not like the Bonty stuff, if you could not tell! Oh, the Bonty stem is FS, asking $40. It retails new at $89.99, FWIW.

I installed and tweaked the new stem, messed with the aero bars a little, and rode for 60 minutes today, again watching a TdF stage for entertainment. A little better, still needs some positioning tweaks. I'm hoping to get the crank rings on Monday, then I will get the Ultegra installed, along with my gray Look Keos from my Giant road bike (the red Keos are going on the Giant, they should complete my red and black color scheme). I feel like my seat on the TT bike still needs to go up a little-I think the slightly longer crank arms will help out too. And I'm thinking of switching to a straight horn aero bar, instead of the "J bend" I have right now. I will post more picsm, once I have swapped everything around and out.

BTW-I will be selling the Bontrager crank ASAP, it's a 53/39 in a 172.5mm crank arm (I think?), in case you or anyone you know is looking for one! It's like new, with only about 400 miles on it.

And last, but not least, dinner pics, to mix it up a bit. OK, this was actually the other night, but my wife was so impressed, I took a few pics!

California sushi roll, with fake crab/mayo, cucumber, avocado and rice chips. The sauces here were soy, teriyaki and hot kung pao. Today, I did the grocery run and bought some wasabi and more "sushi fixings", as my wife calls them. Sushi is becoming one of my more favorable dishes-we went to a great little sushi place the other day during lunch while training, it was super!

Next time, parts-numero deux, with install pics. Maybe an update on the TT position tweaking. Also, maybe a word or two on box wine review, which I've finally broke down and tried (I'm on box #2 right now!).

2 comments:

  1. Ooooh! Sweet! Looks like you're putting together a smokin' fast bike! Way to stimulate the economy! :)

    ReplyDelete