Originally Posted by
whitemax
CDM, thanks so much for taking the trouble to do that. My mph for those gearings were just like yours so I imagine my power is pretty close to what you are showing give or take a few watts. I'm pretty happy with 288 watts for 30 min. especially not having actually ridden a bike (road or mtn.) in over 4 months. Now I have a point of reference and can hopefully increase my power a little while waiting for the spring to get here.
On a side note, it looks like you have Nokon cables. How do you like em? Thanks again!
As I mentioned in my comment above I think that my power numbers are very rough. I think that borrowing a PowerTap wheel or having a friend try a powermeter equipped bike would be the best way to "measure" your trainer. Just to give you an idea I was absolutely anaerobic hitting those numbers and I struggled to hold the camera steady because I felt like I was being asphyxiated doing the efforts. The lens also got foggy from my hands.
Nokons - I got them because I had to turn my bars a lot to get the bike in my car. I blew out Campy shifter housings within a few months, maybe 50-70 total trips. After I blew out a second set of Campy housing I decided to get a segmented housing made from solid cylinders of metal. THe Nokons fit the bill. The early versions, from the mid 2000s, had finish durability problems, but the ones now I've been using for a couple/few years and they're good.
Quick advantages:
- cable housing can't blow apart and in fact the segments basically don't wear unless they're rubbing something like your frame.
- housing doesn't compress at all, although you have to "seat" the housing initially (meaning against themselves).
- you can lengthen housing if moving cables to a different bike or if you're installing a different bar or stem.
- lighter (although it's not much)
- you can seal most of the housing (I run the liner for most of the cable so the cables aren't really exposed to moisture)
- very flexible so you can do some crazy tight turns with the housing.
- reusable (the blue I got in 2010, black in 2011, silver ones under the tape I got in 2007?).
- easy to get even lengths, just count segments. I do this for the shifter housing from the lever to the downtube.
- reparable since you can replace one segment if necessary. I have all my extra segments in a small take out container with a lid.
Disadvantages:
- cost more - typically sold for brakes only or derailleur only, so be careful if you see a good price for "a set".
- requires 1.1 mm derailleur cables (skinny)
- doesn't hold shape as well as regular housing due to the incredible flexibility of the set up.
- if you are tall or have full length housing (like internal top tube brake cable or disc brakes) then you may need to buy additional segments. I've bought 3 sets over the years and I use most of them on two shorter height bikes. Black one has full length internal brake cable housing. Both bikes are longer, 56.5 cm top tubes, so about the same as a 56-57 cm frame. If you have a 60 cm or size XL then you're realistically going to be very short on the segments.
Some thoughts on Nokons.
A picture from my set up before I dropped the clamp point by 3 cm. Note the front brake cable housing curve, which is much worse now that the tops of the bars are 3 cm lower. You can see the transition to black near the tape, and under the tape I run my very beat up silver housing. I also run the silver inside the top tube.
