At long last my new road/gravel/CX racer is complete. And I'm DIGGING it. At least the look of it anyway, haven't ridden it yet on account of ice world. This build started with the new disc edition of the All-City Macho Man. This was one of those impulse buys towards the end of last year. I had taco'd the wheels on the roadie and as I thought about their replacement my mind drifted to wanting to build up a more versatile road bike seeing as I live on a dirt road and have access to all kinds of great class VI and dirt roads around the house. I've also been interested in trying some cross racing so I wanted something that could shape shift a bit with minimal parts swaps.
I think this is going to be perfect for that goal. Initial build has it in 'road mode' with a compact road crank and 25c tires. Switching to CX mode will be as easy as swapping out the tires and the chain rings. Its a bit on the heavy side for a roadie, haven't weighed it yet but its probably a bit over 20lbs, which isn't horrible but my previous road bike was probably 17-18lbs so that will hurt a bit at first on the climbs. But thats fine, I ride road to train for MTB primarily anyway. This will be a much comfier ride which will allow me to ride longer which is what I like doing nowadays anyway. Long and slow.
full run cable housing to avoid the grime and the what not
This should allow me to go on more local training rides as well right from the house which will be nice. I'm interested to see how the disc brakes perform on the road. Setting them up was interesting, eliminating rub but making sure you still have enough braking power is a bit trickier with the short pull stuff. I think I got it though, feels good on the stand anyway. I'll have to be sure to remember to do a short shake down ride so as not to die.
serious head badge
I got to do my first go at internal cable routing. The front derailleur cable is routed internally so you don't have to worry about it while shouldering/carrying the bike during a CX race. I was all ready with a home made little hook device to try and snag the cable as I fed it through but I got insanely lucky and it just found the hole on its own without any intervention from me.
Everything else came together great and I am very pleased with the look of this ride. I love the traditional skinny steel tubes and the understated paint job. Its very likely that if we get any kind of thaw in the next few weeks that I will be trying to get this thing out for a spin. Many miles will be racked up on this baby. In the immortal words of Shaun Pinney...We have to explore, we have to go this way.
Oh yeah who wants to buy my old road frame?? MandieLaLa looking at you...:)
