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Old 10-22-07, 11:15 PM
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WheresWaldo
Ride it like you stole it
 
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Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Union County, NC
Posts: 4,996

Bikes: 2012 Cannondale EVO Ultegra Di2, Pedal Force Aeroblade, Rue Tandem

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Ah, here's the rub. Because of previous life style and not taking care of my body in the past, I am down to pretty much the lowest weight I can get to. December 2005 = 350 pounds, today = 202 pounds. According to my surgeon, I have about 5-10 pounds maximum that I can lose. Now the other alternative is surgery, with that the estimate is an additional 15 pounds over what I mentioned above, but it is painful, has a long recovery period, and my insurance carrier considers it entirely cosmetic. So although I appreciate the comments about losing weight on the body, and I have made them myself to others, it is just not practical.

I do not drink beer, eat sweets or any kind of dessert for that matter. I am just a fairly big person. So summing it up:

Wheels: I will look at the WI hubs, I have a set of Nimble Fly Carbon wheels for my single using WI H1 (no longer available as he now brought out the H2 hubs) and CX-Rays. As these will be event only wheels I might be able to get away with 32h also. I will look at the Rolf's, funny thing Rolf's get no love over on the Road Cycling forum. I'll look at the Topos also.

Fork: We do absolutely zero miles with anything on the bike other than ourselves, no loaded touring or anything more than a two hour ride. Of course that will change when we start training for Metric Centuries. I suppose then that I could ditch the front disk and go with some cantilevers instead, that would allow me to swap out to a carbon fork. Is that correct?

Seatpost: I have Thomson seatposts on both my daughter's and my single bikes, love them, fairly light, strong and would work with the tandem. I will need setback posts both front and rear, hmm. I am not a big carbon seatpost fan, not light, too much cash, I just don't get it.

Saddles: We had Terry saddles (Fly & Butterfly) on there originally, now with many miles we have found them to be too soft, and very uncomfortable after any amount of time in the saddle. I swapped mine out for a Specialized Toupe and Stoker is getting another Selle San Marco Aspide Glamour, maginally lighter but infinitely more comfortable.

Stem: Already have a Thomson in the front, I have never seen a CF stoker stem, can you point me to one.

Bars: Already fairly light AL bars, can't see saving much weight on bars unless I buy two more Zipp bars (already have on on my single). Can't see spending money like that.

Spokes: With the wider bracing angle I don't see any advantage to 14g spokes over a DB spoke as far as lateral stiffness is concerned. There is such a thing as stiff enough, and I think this is one of those times, sorry to disagree with you Rick.

Crank: Probably not a great place to save weight, more likely I can make a profound change in shifting performance by changing out the chainrings to something with better engineered ramps and pins.

Helmet: I was thinking about removing the straps completely just to save those few extra grams!
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