Chipping away at the 420 here, mostly held up due to waiting on cabling to come in. The shift cables came in today, and the Ice Grey looks fantastic. Perfect for what I was going for in breaking up the mass of black. Thankfully, the shift cables need to be run first on these new-era STIs, so they're all done and I'm waiting for Friday's delivery of the brake cable kit.

I was able to find a 11-32T 8-speed cassette to replace the planned-to-use-it 11-28, and this was primarily to give near 1:1 low ratio (same as my 620) on this (sport) tourer. Put the chain on, shorted it 1" (after a little bit), and tuned it. Rear derailleur tuning was pretty much first shot. Front derailleur tuning, with the long arms and different cable routing, took more, but we have it now. I'll have to confirm via road testing (versus awkward hand angle stand testing) the amount of increased lever effort to shift to the big ring. It's definitely more than my 620's Dura-Ace 9000 shifters, as it "should" be due to the 620's better cables, housings, and the Dura-Ace's shifter and derailleur engineering. Sometimes "advancement" is really a step back. And since I never minded Shimano's externally run shift cables, 9-speed Sora (3400 generation, which I've had on a previous bike years ago, and recently was reacquainted with recently) shifted as good as anything, every time. The under-the-bar-tape routing has brought forth stratification. At least the hood/lever bodies are more supportive (especially in non-ideal bar setups). Rear shifting is really nice though.

As pictured, with heavier pedals, the bike is at 24.25 lbs (11 kg), with brake cables, housings, and bar tape to go. That won't add much weight, but what will is non-performance tires of larger diameter. We should be sneaking up to 25 lbs by the end of this. I am looking forward to larger tires visually anchoring the bike's proportion. Tan or black wall, I'm still open to either as I like both on this bike. The 420 continues to look good and I hope to have it on the road as soon as I can cable the brakes up. I will be doing some local bar taping (at the shifters) to gauge comfort and to assess the bike's characteristics, allowing for a full sneak attack into my small two-bike (permanent) fleet.