Fork - Litespeed 650c fork, used with drop bolts to make the brakes reach. Wheels are 451 for the slight higher gearing. Handlebar is a plain bullhorn, but I sawed off the curved rising bit at the tips - I don't like them and the bars look too big/clumsy to me. Gear shifters are Dura Ace barend shifters, and the brakes are Tioga crosstop levers; that combination allows both brakes and barcons to be mounted together. Normal TT style lever plug the bar up so you can't use barcons with those.
Like that the bike weighs about 8.5kg. Since that phot was taken I have ditched the Tioga Spyder saddle in favour of a Brooks. Front derailer is Ultegra, RD is XT shadow. That curving stem riser is a Bagetta recumbent stem. I reamed the stem clamp to accept 26mm bars. The bike is now very close to being perfect; I am wondering if I should go drops with brifters but I like the setup as is.
Thanks for the detailed reply! That does seem quite perfect (I like drop/brifters the best but bullhorns are my 2nd favourite). Nice find on the fork - I'm guessing that's one of the biggest weight savers available? I would love to get mine down to 8.5kg as it would then be lighter than my (full-size) road bike
I think it will *just* reach on 406 rims if you use the "rare earth magnet on your pedal spindle" trick for the cadence sensor part instead of the included magnet on the crank. My new Swift just arrived yesterday and I'm planning to use the same sensor. I have 406 rims too.
Confirmed. Cadence/speed work fine with Garmin GSC-10 sensor. You can adjust the "reach" of the speed sensor arm (small Phillips head screwdriver) - I tilted mine in a bit to make sure it was closer to the wheel magnet, and this allowed me to tilt the whole unit out a bit to catch the cadence magnet. I don't have any rare earth magnets but I just grabbed a standard wheel magnet off a currently unused bike and unscrewed the plastic part off. The round magnet sits fine behind the pedal spindle in the crank (my pedals use a hex to attach so there's space there for the middle pin of the round magnet).
I just took my Swift for it's maiden ride today (only a quick mile). This is what I ended up with:
406 wheels, Capreo cassette/rear hub, 20x1.1 (28-406) Duranos
9-speed Tiagra RD and right brifter, drop bars. (no FD) This gives a gear range from about 35 to 100 with reasonably sized gaps. Quite a bit lower up top than my 50x11 on my road bike (~120 gear inches), but I enjoy not having a FD/extra shifting.
Stock 50t chainring/170mm crank with chainguard. Candy pedals and Nashbar R2 saddle (supposedly < 200g) taken from another bike.
I need to get a shorter stem as I think I measured wrong but otherwise I'm loving it so far and I think it'll be the ideal bike for most of my riding (which is 20mi/day commuting) and a great bike to take with me when traveling. I love climbing so the 406 wheels should be fun for that, and as for descending, I don't go much beyond 40mph on my 700c bike anyway.
I do have a couple questions for fellow Swifteans. Apologies if they're in the thread elsewhere... a lot of pages to sift through.
- Do you change how you corner compared to your road bike? It feels a bit different from what little I've ridden so far but I haven't figured out how to adjust my technique.
- How do you keep the seatpost height correct when folding/unfolding?
- How does the stem length affect the handling? I think for the right fit I'll need a pretty short stem (<80 mm) which makes me wonder if the handling will be weird.
I'm ~174cm and 64kg. or 5'9" / 140