I spent today afternoon building up the Hunqapillar and fine tuning its fit. Pictures of the initial build are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orthie251/sets/72157627319515196/
I put 40mm Marathon Extremes as I have a set of 2.25 Nobby Nics on order. They ride extremely nice on the pavement; can't really tell them apart from the 50mm Supremes. Setup is as follows: - 58cm Hunqapillar frame - Mavic A719, 36 spoked, XT hubs wheelset built by Rich - 12/36 9 speed cassette - DuraAce 9 speed down tube shifters to try them out and make it easy to play with the cockpit to fine tune it. - 200mm Bullmoose bars with Shimano brake levers and Specialized XC grips that I'm going to try to wrap with tape and shellac to see what happens... - Polished Paul front Neo-Retro and rear Canti brakes - Black Berthoud Touring saddle - Front Nitto Mini Rack - XT Low-normal rear derailer - Microshift front derailer (only option at RBW) - Phil BB - Sugino XD2 crankset 24-34-46, 175mm - Shimano A530 pedals - Nitto S83 26.8 seatpost - Tange headset Initial comments: The bike feels just great riding near my house. I feel a bit stretched out on the bars but as I've fine tuned the saddle angle everything seems to be getting better; I'll have to try it on longer and rougher rides and may even decide to try the shorter 150mm Bullmoose bars. I've been surprised by how great the bars feel. I tried the bike at first with the Nitto Touring bars but it felt just like my Atlantis (great but I wanted to try something different). I don't think the Touring (Butterfly) bars are very good to go mountain biking with, and after playing with them for a while in the normal and rotated forward 180 degrees just to see how that felt, I settled for the Bullmoose which I believe are going to stay on it for a very long time, at least while I keep it as a mountain bike. The frame feels significantly less flexy than the Atlantis when wiggling the bars, which was to be expected. I tried to ride it no hands to see if it would shimmy like the Atlantis, but there was no sign. I know, different tires, no rear rack and no load, but it's a great initial impression. I'll try it on longer rides and commute on it to see how it behaves with the Nitto Big Rear Rack and the panniers. It might end up being my S240/touring bike (when I'm finally able to start touring...). It might be too redundant to have both the Atlantis and the Hunqapillar unless the Hunqa stays configured as a mountain/adventure bike and the Atlantis remains as my commuter and full fendered touring bike. We'll see, but I have to say I'm very happy with my bike stable right now. I may also try the Extremes on the Atlantis to see if the shimmy changes in any way, the 50mm Supremes or Big Apples on the Hunqa, etc. I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far, René -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
