Originally Posted by seedsbelize

You have one of everything, don't you Robbie.

Originally Posted by seedsbelize

Leave those bars right where they are; they're perfect.

Originally Posted by RobbieTunes

That should be a cartridge BB, and many Kleins have a press-fit BB that is simply not made any more.
If it's low mileage, you should be able to ride without worrying about it.
I upgraded this one to an FSA crankset, one of few good choices, because of the BB issue.

Originally Posted by Grad

Hopefully the BB will be fine for a long time since the bike is such low mileage. Still chomping at the bit to get it back from the LBS!

Originally Posted by mtnbke

Doesn't Phil Wood have a solution to replace the press fit BB bearings?

Originally Posted by mtnbke

Bike fit isn't determined by how the bike looks, but how it fits the cyclist riding it.

Originally Posted by RobbieTunes

Nice play on words. Then again, I had a 48cm Cannondale frameset (plus a carbon fork for it) that may have made most of us look "less than fit." I sent it to a fellow BF member here on C&V.

Originally Posted by mtnbke

It kind of was. I get it now. It wasn't deliberate. I wasn't making the point of one's fitness contributing to begin able to tolerate a more aggressive positioning and fit. I wish I had. Then I'd be all witty and stuff.

Originally Posted by mtnbke

+1000

There was pushback when Klein/Cannondale changed the paradigm. One day steel bikes were winning the Giro, Tour, and Vuelta and the next day every shop that didn't carry Cannonale and Klein was selling bikes that had a HUGE performance disadvantage, at least until the other makers caught up with Aluminum. Every distributor, shop employee, steel fanboy, and cyclist that had steel in the garage had something to lose in the paradigm change. You can find thousands of people that will talk about aluminum riding harshly, and very few have ever truly owned the Cannondale or Klein bikes they claim to have. Its a prejudice that is supported by the "steel is real" cult. The reality is that if you take someone that has a high zoot steel bike they love and built the exact same build (swap the wheels just to be fair) with same components, fit, fork, seat post, saddle, etc. they would be very hard pressed to have anything to say about a Klein or Cannondale except how freakin' quickly the thing climbs, how its a rocket bike on sprints, and how it corners predictably like its on rails.

Klein bikes in my mind are priceless. They are like the Stradavarius violin's of cycling. Years from now Klein frames are going to be very very expensive. Many of the valuable classic & vintage bikes that have value aren't really that good of bikes. They just had nameplates and a reputation. Klein bikes are from another planet. You could hop on a Klein and be competitive at ANY level of professional cycling. Those frames were that good.

The Klein catalog allowed for some 68-70cm frames in four models. I keep waiting to find one. I had what I thought was a 66cm Klein Quantum II once, and it turned out to be just like a Cannondale 63cm bike, 66cm to the top of the seat collar and misclassified in terms of size by the seller. The Klein Quantum II I had was beautiful, and I don't mean the paint.

The craftsmanship required and skill level to work aluminum is orders of magnitude higher than what it takes to either weld or braze steel. Steel is a beginners material and anyone could be building or brazing lugged steel bikes in a single day. You can take a frame building class and build your own steel frame in a week. The world is absolutely full of fabricators that can work with steel. Its a beginners medium. People that have survived the steep learning curve of working with Aluminum are very valuable in the industrial world. Cannondale and Klein both struggled to hold onto their skilled builders. Industrial/medical/military contractors were always throwing more money at competent aluminum welders. The first time some frame builder that only works with steel gets offered a job in industry will be a first.

The world class frames that Klein put out aren't going to be cheap forever. The difference is that unlike many other C&V favorites, the Klein's will appreciate because they legitimately are the best bicycles most people will ever ride. Plain and simple.

To the OP - The reason that bike probably hung immediately after the original purchaser bought it is a constantly repeated story. Most Local Bike Shops are predatory, and do a very poor job of bike fit. They want to sell you what they have in stock. Even the supposedly scientific Fit Kit was required by shops to normalize the fit numbers to provide a "range" of fitting sizes. Shops didn't want the customer to know that in reality the appropriately best fitting bike is within a 1cm range and less than that on the top tube. You could put the same customer on three different brands of, say 56cm bikes, and its possible that two of them wouldn't be a good fit because of the top tube length. The idea that road bikes can be fit by a couple of inches of stand over is idiotic.

How you stand over your bike, next to your bike, hopping on one foot near your bike, or on your head in the other room of your bike doesn't correlate to how you fit ON THE BIKE.

That Klein looks really really small. Properly sized and with good fit, you should be able to do at least 50% of your mileage in the drops. Most cyclists ride "too small" frames because they look aggressive, and they think their size is right. Most cyclist are wrong. They are riding on the hoods 99% of the time because they are riding bikes that are multiple sizes too small. In fact top tube size correlation has kind of accommodated this. If you try to put a cyclist on almost any brand of bike that is properly sized, the top tube will inevitably be too long. Manufacturers know that the public sizes to the hoods, not the drops.

I don't know the OP height, flexibility, or pubic bone height, torso length or arm length, but that Klein looks very very small and I'd assume it wouldn't fit 95% of the folks around. Which is exactly why the original purchaser probably didn't ride it. He thought having a sore neck, having sore wrists and elbows was just what road riding meant. The LBS sold a nice bike, but they lost out on the lifetime cycle of customer purchases because they sold him an improperly fitting bike. In my mind, the LBS usually gets what they deserve.

That looks like a Syncros classic seat post, and if so those are very very nice. I have several and I like them better than my Thomson posts. Essentially the same seat post but only with a much more sophisticated and elegant clamp. Makes my Thomson post's clamps look like the stamped garbage they are. I'm getting sad because eBay and collectors are making classic Syncros seat posts very expensive of late. I've been going with my cheapie Thomson craiglist finds instead.

If it fits, ride the snot out of that Klein. If it really is a marginal fit or is too small you can do what I do (all bikes are too small for me, I'm 6'7") and use a quill stem extender. That way you build up the cockpit of the bike to properly fit you and get the handlebars up to a comfortable saddle height, or slightly higher. Only competitive cyclists like the aerodynamic advantages of the negative bar to saddle drop. Even old pros like Andy Hampsten don't look for an aggressive fit like that after their pro days are over. The only ones trying to "look like the pros" are the ones that never were. Get that bike properly fit to you, get yourself comfortable on it, if you can, and ride the snot out of it.

Believe it or not, that's a better bike than 99% of the bikes you'll ever see or pass on the road, and I'm including many high zoot carbon and titanium bikes in that as well. You can make carbon cheaply in Taiwan. You can't EVER recreate the handcrafted highly skilled US made works of art that were coming out of Klein and Cannondale in their heyday. It would just be too expensive, as it was proved.

Attached pic of quill extender if you need one.

Originally Posted by mtnbke

There is a 61cm Klein Quantum on eBay right now and the seller has it listed for $199 or best offer. That makes me sick to my stomach. Sometimes, I hate all the cyclists who can find grail bikes in their clown sizes with ease. Someone is going to pay WalMart prices and end up with a better bike, imo, than a bunch of folks on $7000 carbon.

Originally Posted by Grad

Hopefully the BB will be fine for a long time since the bike is such low mileage. Still chomping at the bit to get it back from the LBS!

Originally Posted by embankmentlb

This is a Klein I built over the winter. I mostly use it ti commute to work. An excellent riding bike. The frame is on the small side with a short head tube.
I however made it work!

Originally Posted by embankmentlb

This is a Klein I built over the winter. I mostly use it ti commute to work. An excellent riding bike. The frame is on the small side with a short head tube.
I however made it work!

Originally Posted by DiabloScott

What's taking so long????

Originally Posted by embankmentlb

Grad, Athens Ga? I am up the road in Gainesville.