I'll throw a couple more numbers around about wheels. Back in the 1980s
when roadies had clinchers for "training wheels" and tubulars for "racing
wheels, we picked up the number 1500g as the number for "light" wheels,
without a freewheel/cassette. Without tires. Without skewers. Turns out
that number is pretty applicable today as well. Carbon disc wheels aren't
much lighter, but their rims are considered a LOT stronger than
featherweight aluminum rims. My top-shelf HED all-metal wheelset weighed
in at 1532g, so it's right there in the neighborhood of light wheels. It's
all-black and has low spoke count, so it will be the most eye-catching
non-Rivendell look on the build. That was the ironic vibe I was shooting
for based on my DT240 conversation with Will. The Riv employees will look
at it and say "Ha! that's awesome".
In my stable, I have another wheelset with the same HED Belgium+ rims,
built on Dura Ace hubs and 32 silver spokes. That wheel set can swap right
in and will have a lot more typical Rivendell look.
OK, moving on to Section 3, the drivetrain. My drivetrain section is
comprised of:
3. Drivetrain
A. Crankset
i. Crank Arms
ii. Chainring(s)
iii. Bolts (crank and chainring)
B. Pedals
C. Chain
D. Bottom Bracket
E. Rear Derailer
F. Front Derailer
G. Shifters
H. Cables and housing
Whether to include the cassette in the drivetrain or in the wheelset is a
clerical consideration. There can also be blurring of the categories if
you insist on using integrated brake levers / shifters. I "never" do that,
so it's not a problem.
Architecturally, the first lever I pull for a light weight build was/is the
first trick I listed up in the frame set section: "Air is weightless". So
I decided to do a 1x 8 drivetrain featuring a crankset that can be set up
as a multi-chainring build later. The lightest front detailer is no front
detailer. The lightest left shifter is no left shifter. The lightest
small chainring is no small chainring. Cassettes with fewer cogs tend to
be lighter, etc.
I had planned on running what is, in my opinion, the nicest crankset out
there: Rene Herse. It's great, it is reliable, simple, minimalist. It can
be set up as a single/double/triple and it is gorgeous and very light. It
is also $450. I had it in there as a place holder, but later decided to do
some swapping in the stable. My RoadUno build is not light with front and
rear racks, a basket and three bags always attached. Who cares about
another 150g? I swapped IN a Silver1 Crankset to my RoadUno and freed up a
Silver3. The bare Rene Herse arms have a claimed weight of 418g. My
Silver3 bare arms came in at 460g. The universe paid me $450 to accept 42g
of extra weight, and it will be cool to have a <9kg Rivendell CHG featuring
Silver3 cranks. The single ring will be a 38T Wolf Tooth 110mm BCD ring
that I used my REI discount and rewards to pay for. My kids like getting
me bike bling for Christmas so I gave my son the URL for some nice Wolf
Tooth aluminum chainring bolts and RAZR grips.
For the Bottom Bracket, I picked up a titanium White Industries unit, used,
on the list for a good price, from a local, bundled with a Choco handlebar,
which is a great bar to have on-hand. We'll see if the Choco bar gets used
when we get to section 4 of the build. The Ti BB (140g) uses the same
bearings and cups as the Steel unit that Riv sells. For Pedals I just
grabbed the lightest pedals I already have in my stable: Ultegra-level Road
SPDs (290g)
The rear derailleur is a short cage (GS) Rapid-Rise XTR M950 (210g) that I
removed from my Black Mountain Monster Cross, downgrading that bike to a
mere Deore XT which is 30g heavier. The single shifter will be an IRD
thumbie, built around a Silver that has been shortened and rubber tipped
(70g). That pair of shifters came out of my shifter box. Cables/housing
and chain will weigh what they weigh. I'll probably employ the
contemporary iBob trick to run one narrower generation chain (9sp) on my
8sp cassette. The 8 gears will run between 33 and 87 gear inches.
This minimalist drive train is extremely low-cost because of my repurposing
of parts I already have, and has built-in flexibility and expandability.
It is incidentally light because of its minimalist approach. There are
still a few "tuning" opportunities to shave a couple grams here and there.
Because of the tiny outlay of money thus far, I feel like I can afford to
do a few things when it comes to actually executing the build.
Furthermore, there is another easy 42 gram reduction available if and when
I decide to grab another Rene Herse crankset.
That's section 3. All we have left is Components and Accessories.
Bill Lindsay
El Cerrito, CA
On Thursday, November 28, 2024 at 10:49:20 AM UTC-8 Bill Lindsay wrote:
> Hi Joyce
>
> There's an immense backstory at every single piece on this build, and I
> was going to meter it out one section at a time for that reason. One of
> the fun backstories is that my old college roommate has asked me to set
> aside 2+ weeks in the Summer of 2027 to do a Loire Valley cycle-tour. He's
> not a bike person, but he does ride and enjoys riding. I resurrected a
> 1990s Trek Hybrid for him and that's his bike right now. This Gallop build
> will be somewhat similar to the bike he rides and likes. I'll do the tour
> on my Romulus, and he'll ride the Gallop. Between now and then, it'll be
> my flat bar "go fast".
>
> Moving to section 2: Wheel set, the whole idea hinged on Will Keating at
> Rivendell. When I was there visiting and test riding the Gallop, I visited
> Wills work station. He had a DT Swiss 240 hub on his desk. I picked it up
> and fiddled with the free hub, and Will joked "Wouldn't it be great if
> somebody used that hub on a Gallop?" That committed me to going
> double-barreled at my build. Earlier this year I pulled together a
> no-holds-barred build on a semi-custom Roadeo. The frame took nearly two
> years to come in, and that gave me a lot of time to "upgrade" my build
> spreadsheet. One of the big-ticket upgrades was a HED Belgium+ wheel set
> with their super fancy RA Black sidewalls. The anodized and textured
> pattern is purported to give ultimate braking performance and much longer
> rim-life due to abrasion from road grit. They were super expensive and
> pretty light weight, considering widish rims that I consider "bomber".
> When I tried them out on my Roadeo, though, they did NOT play well with my
> Rene Herse cantilever brakes. I ended up using a different HED Ardennes
> wheel set with similar HED Belgium + rims, but normal sidewalls. That
> wheel set came off my Legolas. I bought some sweet racing tubulars on eBay
> for the Legolas, making it a true Cross Racer, but I was left with an extra
> set of extremely fancy wheels. I was running them for a while on my modest
> road bike, a Black Mountain Road.
>
> In my Spreadsheet, the Wheel set category normally goes like:
>
> 2. Wheels
> A. Front hub
> B. Rear hub
> C. Skewers
> D. Front Rim
> E. Rear Rim
> F. Spokes/nipples
> G. Cassette
> H. Front Tire
> I. Rear Tire
> J. Tubes
> K. Rim strips
>
> When you deploy a house built wheel set product, that tends to knock out
> A,B,D,E,and F. Sometimes K and C. My RA Black front wheel weighs 661g,
> and the rear weighs 871g. I added a set of Control Tech 5mm Titanium
> skewers that I've had for ~25 years. I installed TPU tubes and a set of
> used Rene Herse Barlow Pass Extralight tires. My cassette choice is an 8
> speed vintage XTR 12-32 unit which weighs a respectable 240g. That pulls
> in the entire category at 2611g confirmed. That is a wheel set that I
> would be perfectly comfortable using with light touring loads. I would not
> have bought a $1400 wheel set for this build, but I had already spent the
> ~$1000 getting them on sale on a splurge. They deserve to be used. I have
> several bikes that can swap wheels, so even this is a reversible
> application.
>
> The teaser for the Section 3 Drivetrain is that the build will be a 1x8.
>
> Bill Lindsay
> El Cerrito
> On Thursday, November 28, 2024 at 10:13:10 AM UTC-8 JAS wrote:
>
>> Bill,
>> This series of build descriptions is of great interest to me and so
>> timely since my Charlie Gallup has been shipped. I appreciate your strategy
>> explanation and it's helping me think about my own new bike. I'll have my
>> LBS build it up; I'm consulting with them about parts on Monday. The goal
>> is keep it light though it won't be 19kg. I'm looking forward to your
>> Sections on wheels and drivetrains....write soon!
>>
>> I'm struggling to decide between the new Riv Silver hubs and White
>> Industries. The two Silver hubs weigh 122 grams heavier than WI and they
>> cost considerably less (though I love the highly polished look of the WI
>> hubs which I have on my Platy). One-quarter pound seems insignificant but
>> as you say, it adds up over the total build, I've only seen a couple of
>> comments about the Silver hubs; they were positive though lacking detail.
>> Have you used them? Any thoughts that might help me decide?
>>
>> Will you tell us what you're choosing for your Charlie's wheelset or will
>> we need to wait for the final build reveal?
>>
>> Happy Thanksgiving to all!
>> Joyce
>>
>> On Thursday, November 28, 2024 at 8:48:47 AM UTC-8 Bill Lindsay wrote:
>>
>>> There's another thread on how I'm going to take a run at a <9kg Gallop
>>> build. I've started this thread to lay out exactly how I plan out all the
>>> builds in my workshop. I'll apologize in advance for the long narrative,
>>> but hopefully the few of you who poke around on Thanksgiving Day are
>>> looking for something to read...
>>>
>>> My freshman year of high school, in the Fall of 1983 (Troy High School,
>>> Fullerton, CA) I took a typing class as an elective. It made perfect sense
>>> to me as preparation for taking a computer elective the following semester,
>>> ha ha. We had a project in typing class to type up a formatted outline,
>>> following all the rules of categorization with the indents and headings
>>> just so. Each student had to come up with their own content for the
>>> project and type it up. In the Fall of 1983 I was a habitual cover to
>>> cover reader of Bicycling and Winning! magazines. I was obsessed with a
>>> Bruce Gordon Chinook in one of those magazines, and I used the build list
>>> for that bike as the content for my typing project. From that moment
>>> forward, every build fits into the same framework. Every build is
>>> comprised of five categories:
>>>
>>> 1. Frame set
>>> 2. Wheels
>>> 3. Drivetrain
>>> 4. Components
>>> 5. Accessories
>>>
>>> I throw every build into a spreadsheet in those five groups. It serves
>>> to organize my thoughts for every build, and as a checklist before a build
>>> begins, and sometimes helps me pull the build together mentally to
>>> anticipate the places where a nuanced build might have places where I could
>>> paint myself into a corner. Sometimes, but not always, I'll use columns
>>> for each line to list the weight and/or the price of the stuff I'm pulling
>>> together. By filling out that spreadsheet exhaustively with best guesses I
>>> can get into the ballpark on total price or total weight as a preview. As
>>> guesses become certainties, the numbers come into focus. As I've gotten
>>> older, most of my builds have targets that have nothing to do with price or
>>> with weight: they are more about how exactly I want to experience cycling
>>> on that particular machine. The term I use to capture that relationship
>>> between the build and its target is the "build concept".
>>>
>>> So, let's start running through the build for my Gallop: Section 1 is
>>> the Frame Set, which has three main parts
>>>
>>> 1. Frame set
>>> A. Frame
>>> B. Fork
>>> C. Headset
>>>
>>> When I get my frame set, I'll remove the fork and weigh the fork with
>>> the fork crown. I'll pop out the headset cups and weigh the headset minus
>>> the fork crown. I'll remove the pre-installed bottom bracket and weigh the
>>> bare frame. Then I will remove every bolt that is screwed into the frame
>>> and weigh that collection of bolts separately and re-weigh the completely
>>> stripped down frame.
>>>
>>> The Riv page for the FSA Headset claims it weighs 93.8 grams. That's
>>> very light. 100g is the typical placeholder for a headset when I'm planning
>>> something out. Over 100g and I could substitute something lighter. Under
>>> 100g is pretty good. If it's really ~94g I'm keeping it.
>>>
>>> The bolts gives the opportunity to do some gram-chasing. Big picture,
>>> bolts are always steel, there are ways to make those steel bolts lighter.
>>> They are:
>>>
>>> 1. Air is weightless. Can you live without that bolt? If so, consider
>>> leaving it out. That's free and totally weightless
>>> 2. Plastic is almost as light as air, and is very cheap. Plastic metric
>>> bolts in all sizes are made. They weigh almost nothing and cost very
>>> little. If you don't need to bolt anything to that threaded hole, but want
>>> to plug the hole, consider plastic and screw it in with just your fingers.
>>> 3. Aluminum is 1/3 the weight of steel. Virtually every high end
>>> mountain bike has aluminum water bottle bolts. They break sometimes, but
>>> 19 out of 20 times they break, it was because the person holding the wrench
>>> over tightened them. For low-stress bolt on applications, aluminum is
>>> great. They are not free, but if you buy them in bulk, the per-bolt cost
>>> is not that much. If you bought them a while ago and they are just there
>>> on the shelf, it feels like they are free.
>>> 4. Titanium is half the weight of steel and nearly as strong. Pretty
>>> much anything steel on a bike could be done in Titanium. It's a bit
>>> lighter and is really expensive.
>>> 5. Shorter steel bolts are lighter than longer steel bolts. Sometimes
>>> water bottle bolts are 16mm long when 10mm bolts still have 100%
>>> engagement. Swap 'em out if you have them laying about.
>>>
>>> A gram or two doesn't make any difference but if you look for a gram or
>>> two everywhere, they can add up. You eat the elephant one bite at a time.
>>>
>>> The last consideration in this first chapter will be steer tube length.
>>> If the final build has me slamming my stem, then that will signal that I
>>> don't need that much steer tube. Typically Rivs come with ~30mm of headset
>>> spacers. If I can pull the spacers and cut the steer tube down 30mm,
>>> that's more free grams. 1" steer tubes weight almost exactly 1g/mm. If I
>>> want to keep the extra stack of the long steerer and spacers, then I'll
>>> keep it.
>>>
>>> That's section 1 of my upcoming build. Section 2 is wheels, and that's
>>> the only section that is 100% complete right now. I'll get into that
>>> later...
>>>
>>> Bill Lindsay
>>> El Cerrito, CA
>>>
>>>
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