Finally a beautiful day out where the roads were dry and nice enough to take the new baby out for a spin. Here's a few photos from after the ride.

Restoring this bike was an interesting learning experience obtained through facing a number of obstacles requiring patience, elbow grease, help from fellow forum members and some new tools.

My original intention was to "restore" it with all original components. Some of the original Dura Ace EX components were either expensive or hard to get, so I used a 7 spd 105 groupset from a donor bike - another winter project. I kept the original DA crankset however as I thought it looked much nicer than the 105.

As for the ride ... it was different than what I expected. The Apollo Imperial has a very stiff ride, which isn't a bad thing. At some points in the ride I thought that I was riding my aluminum Cannondale Caad8 R5000. I have other steel frame bikes. 4130 Cromoly and Reynolds 631, that each have their own personality, and again ride very different from this bike. I'm not saying that I don't like it ... just not what I expected. Conclusion - I'd ride this speedy bike with any group ride ... unless the route includes riding big hills. The lowest gear is 42:25 which is a tad high for me on the bigger hills around here.

All in all, a fun project, and probably the best bike value per dollar spent of any of the bikes I have.