Today was one of those days that every bike nerd gets sweaty thinking about; the arrival of a box full of shiny new bike parts!
The parts are the new and improved SRAM Rival parts that are spec'd on our newest version of the Gran Criterium. These have the new carbon brake lever, the reach adjustable levers with trim adjustment and the new sweet black finish. I have been riding the first version of the parts on one of my bikes for about 2 full years and have only ever needed to adjust the rear derailleur once in that time. The only problem I ever had was with the non-drive crank arm loosening up- never coming off, but loosening. After some cleaning and re-greasing, the problem went away. Since then... perfect! So I'm pretty excited to get this stuff to ride- now that I CAN ride!
The frame the parts are going on to is this new prototype of a full Scandium frame- it's painted and decaled in the livery of our SoulVille SS, which is one of my favorite looking bikes we do currently. With all the black parts, it should be smoking hot! I'm thinking of white cable housings and maybe some red color accents too... not sure. Looking at putting the Ritchey "wet black" finish bars, stem and seatpost on it too. Talking to my friends at Spinergy about a set of wheels too- those white PBO spokes would be hot!
I've been itching to ride this frame for forever too- I got it just before my crash and have been going nuts to ride it. The Gran Criterium I currently ride uses this proprietary new Scandium tubing for the top tube, head tube and down tube. It rides incredible and I have a feeling that the full Scandium frame will ride even better. The tubing shapes used should create a great ride with plenty of stiffness and comfort- thanks to Scandium's vibration damping qualities. I have been toying with the idea of either replacing the current Gran Criterium with this tubing or just offering a frameset with the tubing as a special edition kind of thing. The price should be pretty competitive, so I'm very excited about the potential. If it rides the way I expect it to... it will likely find a place in the line. The geometry is our traditional Gran Criterium geometry that I have ridden for the past 4 years since coming to Masi, so I am VERY familiar with it. Any new subtleties in the ride should only come from the frame itself. THIS is the kind of shtuff a bike nerd LIVES for! Trust me... many reports will be following along the way... another great reason to be recovering and able to ride again!
Ok folks... time to wrap this up. Another very busy day tomorrow as I get ready for Montreal on Saturday. So... see you soon!
Tim
4 comments:
Tim, you are a lucky dog to have the opportunity to "play" like this! You make me jealous...
I would vote for offering the all Scandium as a frameset, rather than supplanting the existing bike.
Now, back to the roaster...
second on the full scandium as a
limited frameset only! while there's dream requests:
-a steel frame/fork set with a reynolds quality tubeset, chrome
detail, similar to the speciale
commuter i keep eyeing.
-and some wool masi softgoods?
omg!!! I am hard at the thought of an all scandium bike. No more of this flexy carbon bs. I love the thought of a totally utilitarian race weapon!!! Good job with that.
Nice though I got to say I'd hardly call the black finish on the Rival parts "sweet". More like cheap. I'm getting more and more bummed that nobody is really doing polished silver parts these days. So much easier and cheaper to just paint them black. Except eventually the black paint starts to wear and then it just looks like crap. If a part is aluminum I say polish it.
The Scandium frame looks nice. I think Scandium and even regular Easton 7005 are highly under rated frame materials. Way cheaper than carbon and potentially as comfortable as steel.
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