The Litespeed upgrade project is finished! So far so good, I took it out yesterday on a 100 mile ride (I finished it Sunday) and I absolutely the cassette ratios. I got the record 13-26 cassette which has titanium gears for the lowest three, and the rest of the gears are closely spaced (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21ti, 23ti, 26ti). Rode all flats yesterday so I couldn't really test out the lowest gearing (34/26) but this has to be a big improvement over the 39/23 I was climbing the hills with before. I'll attach a ridewithgps map of the weekly Friday afternoon rides we do, I really needed the help there!

What was upgraded? New front compact carbon chorus crank, new record cassette, record carbon med cage RD, record brakes, carbon record brifters, and I installed a BBB aero carbon handlebars (the old easton round bars made my hands numb on longer rides). I am surprised how easy the entire job was, everything went pretty smooth. Then again I did buy a few tools but really I don't think I spent more than $300 on tools (except that I did buy a maintenance stand that came in around $170).

Here are the pics. Again, thanks for all the advice and links to parts. Ribble worked out perfect, the cassette took about a week to my door and I found it in the mailbox without any import tax issues.



http://ridewithgps.com/routes/1309915