Bike Upgrade

After more than 45,000 km for the components on my trusty Griffen Kompressor, with the original Shimano Ultegra groupo, I decided that this year I’d switch out most of the moving parts but stay with my existing Boron Carbide frame. So, after some study, I spent a little while with John Tsang, the owner of Conrad’s Bike Shop in Manhattan and we decided on the right pieces for my upgrade.

First of all, after riding on the indoor Tacx trainer all winter, I’d come to appreciate the value of a good watt meter. The Tacx system, since it creates artificial resistance to the rear wheel with a computer controlled power brake, does a great job of providing an accurate readout of the wattage produced. In fact, it is so accurate that I was able to subtly increase the wattage by making small changes to the way that I pedaled the bike, concentrating on creating more of a smooth circle on each stroke and “brushing” back with the pedal at the bottom of the circle, like wiping my foot on a mat. So, I decided that getting a watt meter that was compatible with my wireless Garmin 705, using the Ant+ system, was an important part of the new drive train. So, John has built a Cycleops Powertap SL+ hub into a Mavic CXP33 with 32 spokes and attached a 11-27 cassette. It is a beautiful wheel!

Now the 11-27 cassette is no big news, since this is what I had in terms of rear wheel gearing before, but it is the combination with the Dura-Ace Compact Crank that makes it so special.

The larger ring has 50 teeth but the smaller one has only 34, giving a much lower gear combined with the 27 on the cassette.

Also, the derailleur is part of the Dura-Ace 7900 series, which is the 2009 state-of-the-art top line racing groupo.

Even the brakes and shifters are new…

  with the internal cabling so that the brake cables are neatly tucked into the handlebars along with the shift cables, giving the bars much cleaner lines.

Probably the nicest part is that when they pulled off the bottom bracket, it was in really bad shape with lots of corrosion. So, the entire power train from cranks through the rear wheel all move so much more smoothly. Who knows how much power had been wasted in the little inefficiencies of my old chain, gears, crank and bottom bracket.

Cape Argus Classic, here I come!