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Oh gosh, this will be hard.
Oh gosh, this will be long. I’m old.
1965 – 24″ single speed coaster brake. A Super Elliot’s I believe. My 8th birthday.
1969 – Inherited my older brother’s blue 27″ with – marvel of marvels! – 3 speed derailleur gears and a nice lightweight alloy front hub. Destroyed said hub by putting the front wheel in backwards, the LHS cups (now on the right) decided to screw themselves in crushing the hub. Rebuilt the wheel on another hub and the older brother never commented. Phew.
1972 – converted the old 24″ into a chopper, with waterpipe fork extensions and a home-welded Z-bars, a sissy bar converted from a pot stand and a custom saddle made by myself. The front wheel barely stayed on the ground long enough to turn.
1973 – converted an old 28″ frame into a mountain bike with 28″ wheels with 2″ tyres. The rims were made for rod brakes but I fitted a single rear caliper which wore the brake pads concave, but it did stop. Galvanised water pipe front forks attached to home-made crown and water pipe riser bars. Harken Hex-grips. Indestructible. Rode it to the station for years and it was never stolen. Still in the shed somewhere.
1973 – saved and bought my first road bike, a Raleigh Record 27″ 10 speed, Huret derailleurs and Weinmann centre pull brakes. Rode it all over the place, eventually wore out the 5 speed block till the chain skipped. So heavy! 14kg of British steel. Eventually c. 1982 was buzzed by hoons at 100mph – I saw their wing mirror pass under my handlebar – and gave up the bike except to ride to the pub or the shops over the years. (recently restored, image).
Until…
2009 – Bought a £12.50 Universal folder off Ebay to ride to work. Spokes kept breaking on the awful wheels.
So I bought second hand hub brake hubs and a 5 speed Alfine rear and rebuilt the wheels using BMX hubs. Heavy as lead but great riding through the snow.
2010 – Got a Raleigh Twenty, enthused by Sheldon Brown’s description of them. Totally original, from a shed in Letchworth where it had lain since goodness knows when. Was fun to ride, though I never customised it in the end as it was so cute. Obscure wheel size made tyres difficult. The hub dynamo and lights worked like a dream, still.
2011 – Sold the Twenty to one of my students who rode it to uni for years and to work afterwards. Bought a second hand Ridgeback Flite flat bar 700c with 9×3 speed Tiagra/105. Got the bug and improved it to 10×2 speed 105. That was a good bike, fast too, but very harsh and a bit flexy in the bottom bracket. My first bike with Allen keys and an Ahead stem.
2012 – A pink Planet X Carbon Pro, bargain, with 10×2 speed Ultegra. Light but vague steering and flexy. Sold the frame pretty quickly and moved the components over to…
2013 – Bianchi Infinito, the first model, with the flax inclusions (anti-vibration) and the curvy frame.
Used the Ultegra on it until i took of the Ultegra group and put Super Record on instead (having come into a small legacy after my mother died). A lovely bike, smooth relaxing for long rides, but lacking a bit of get up and go when you wanted to get up and go.
2014 – Canyon Ultimate AL 9.0 – Put the Ultegra on this bargain frame. When they were first imported people bought them for the 10 speed DI2 and sold the frames cheap on Ebay.
Rode that until 2017 when the frame cracked, later with an Athena group on it.
2015 – Tempted by a bargain (new) Sempre Pro. They were being sold off cheap at the end of the model. Put Chorus on it and it was brilliant but it was rarely used, so it went off to a good home 10 months later, because…
2016 – Sold the Sempre Pro frame and put the SR group on a bargain Colnago EPS frame that I got at a price too good to refuse, new old stock from Italy. Amazing bike, handmade in Italy, even the tubes are handmade. The model before the C59. Stiff as anything and comfortable. Seem fairly rare.
2016 – Got the hankering for a steel frame again and bought a bargain Tommasini frame from a chap somewhere on the Great Western line. Built up with 2009 Record 9 speed. Lovely.
2017 – As the Tommasini wouldn’t take modern groups (127 rear spacing and I wasn’t prepared to bend a classic frame) a Brian Rourke frame found its way to me. Now built up with a bargain Chorus group from the Sempre Pro.
2017 – the Canyon cracked and I bought the cheapest frame I could find, and end-of-year bargain Cinelli Experience. Which turned out to be a bit of a bargain rocket, stiff as you want and comfortable too. My current ride to work. The white bar tape and saddle are now black. Guards and lights spoil it.
Got a bit of push back from the OH on the Rourke so no new bikes for a while… One in, one out, is the new rule.
Quote:
Due to my weight and my lack of skill descending I want discsLearn to descend first, you’ll be a danger to yourself and other cyclists otherwise.
I’d suggest replacing your Tektro brakes immediately with 105 dual pivot brakes with cardridge pads. Then learn your limits properly, and not reply on harder braking!
Disc brakes can fade, terribly, see this recent story on Road.cc and especially the comments:
That’s why you need to learn your limits and not just imagine you can brake your way out of trouble.
Anyway, enjoy the Canyon, I loved mine!
I had a ProCarbon, and agree
I had a ProCarbon, and agree with Spangly Shiny above. Very old design, flexy as hell, vague steering and over-long reach for such a noodle. Took off the groupset and sold the frame as quick as I could and bought something decent as a ‘new other’ on ebay to put the group back on.
Old binder twine? Luxury.
Old binder twine? Luxury.
Just received the newsletter!
Just received the newsletter! Thanks Tony!
Thank Tony – fingers crossed!
Thank Tony – fingers crossed!
Matthew.
Hedgemonkey wrote:
Had the most annoying tink sound on my Whyte, replaced bb and spent ages checking thru the drive train, regreased, retorqued etc. Seemed to do it when the right pedal was on the down stroke. Eventually traced it to the front wheel QR, it really did sound like it was from the BB.THIS.
Have you got lightweight aftermarket quick releases?
Ditch them and put on quality internal cam QRs. Fixed a noise I had.
You can get aftermarket
You can get aftermarket carbon Speedplay cleats if you look around.
I’m bang on 5’10 (or slightly
I’m bang on 5’10 (or slightly more in the mornings*), inseam 85.4 cm, and set all my saddles to 72cm above the crank spindle centre. 890 above the pedal spindle centre with 170 cranks.
*People are tallest in the morning, because the spine gradually compacts during the day and recovers over night.
Tapered steerer is only
Tapered steerer is only important for full carbon forks.
Internal cabling looks cool, but don’t go for an alloy frame with internal cabling, as it can cause stress concentrations that eventually crack (as with my Canyon).
Buy the cheapest one that you like the look of, because if you get the bug, you’ll want to replace it within a year or so 😉
And you’ll get a much better bike used for the same money as a less good new bike. Go and talk to your local bike club. They should be able to help you.
£450 on a Campag Croce d’aune
£450 on a Campag Croce d’aune groupset for my vintage Tommasini
£800 on some second hand Campag Bora Ones
£250 on a pair of used Hunt winter wheels
£199 on some Zonda C17s.
Funded by selling my Bianchi Sempre for £1,350, some Vision Metron wheels for £550, a Eurus wheelset for £225, and a range of other bits and pieces for whatever I could get for them. Was a bit skint this year owing to buying a share of the freehold of our building, so money out had to equal money in…
It’s a matt frame, no paint to chip.Aha, Ok.
Looks like a paint chip to me
Looks like a paint chip to me. I had one like that on a Bianch a while back. I put a patch of heli tape over it to keep water out, and didn’t ever go anywhere in a couple of years more riding.
There’s some interesting
There’s some interesting research on this:
Tainio, Marko et al (2016) Can air pollution negate the health benefits of cycling and walking? Preventive Medicine 87, 233–236
Basically the authors conclude that the benefits of exercise outweight the disbenefits of air pollution by an enormous margin. Even on the most polluted day ever recorded in London you would have to cycle for 9 hours and 50 minutes on the most polluted day ever before the harm outweighed the benefit. Maximum benefits are at 2 hours, then harms start to climb but don’t cancel out the benefits for a long time.
This research was covered in the FT here:
https://ig.ft.com/sites/urban-cycling/ (may require free registration)
Here’s the key diagrams:
Green pads still shown here –
Green pads still shown here – but only for Campag: