followup on mechanical disc brake + non-brifter drop bar lever dithering:
I figured since I’m on tarck I should own at least one set of the Official Cable-Pull Disc Caliper Of Tarck, and ebay’d some Hayes CX Experts. Dang these are chonkly - real snappy action, I can see why y’all like them. Unfortunately, same deal as the other calipers I tried: they’re definitely engineered around the slightly-longer-short-pull of modern brifters, and the very-short-pull BL-6403 levers went straight to the handlebars.
I bought some IRD Drillium levers from @drwelby and they have a quite long pivot-to-cable-anchor distance when compared with the Shimano BL-6403 levers, Tektro R200 levers, and even a tiny bit longer than the Sram S900 lever that I was trying. They work GREAT with the Shimano CX77 calipers - the lever firms up well before the lever bottoms out, but they still have more than enough power. I’m sure they’ll work well with the other calipers I have on the bench as well but we’re down to single-digit hours until the first big ride on this bike so I’m buttoning things up and may dither more later.
I know this is going to cost me, in time, not money. My first wireless power! I have two wired powertap hubs, one is intermittent on a decent rim, the other good, on a mostly slogged rim. Will pull them down, use the rim off one and the spokes off the other to make this hub into a wheel. One is built 2x and the other 3x, with the good rim having wrong length spokes anyway, as the original PT had different flange heights. I probably have the first 3 iterations of PT here. A shame it’s not the third, as it would talk to my Garmin. Will probably put it on my yellow Steelie and do some retro TTs with my spinachis. EDIT: gawdang, seems it’s the SL+ which works with the REAL ANT . I should be able to sync it to Strava and in theory, intervals.icu
The alluring tire clearance of this lock-up, Steven, I took in from a common in-law, has led me on a dither. Took L’s old venture maxes and short stem and threw it on here, then chased down some short pull v-brakes. edit: also rigid forked.
Next step is to acquire some bigger tires. We will take this on a trip through the gravel and sands to the South, which her Soma just is not up to.
I had one, it was great! Now I have the Manzanita and the RL Cross bike on the way so was leaning toward the road version… Allez Sprint is interesting but they’re too expensive, the fanboys/cult following keeps the price pretty high around here in the bay. A phenomenon observed by many:
I’ve put about 1100 mi on my CAAD13 so far and really love it. Feels sporty but quite obviously not built like the older iterations and rides really nice. Fits 32s no problemo.
For to put on the Coffee Grinder. It’s a little bit taller than stock cross forks and should slack it out about half a degree, with about 4mm of bb/stack increase. Probably not as cool as an Enve but I don’t care.
Dang. The set I have worked flawlessly through maybe 20k miles of all weather commuting. They’re still attached to the drops they were on when I decided to put flat bars on my Wolverine, still covered in years worth of grime. They were great and the only reason I’m not still using them is that drops aren’t really my jam these days.
My first set leaked. I was told that they don’t like being inverted (I stored my bike upside down for a brief period). Kept it upright with the next set and never had a problem. Could just be coincidence or maybe there’s something there.
i’ve done shimano mtb banana (10sp slx?) with red 22 road paddle. it worked alright. i think sram mtb banana paddle probably pulls more than road paddle. ultimately i ended up moving back to a rival22 banana, but the key to making it work was the sram offset braze on clamp on. otherwise the limits weren’t enough to do the thing.
if you can tolerate slack at the beginning of the throw, you can make most double paddles work with double bananas
