lol, that was about how long i could go before snapping a paddle when I ran rival 10s

no, i do housing annually.

lol, same

Yea like Mikey said it's super quick, and it gives me a reason to look closely at the housing. The terrain around here is consistent only in its inconsistency, even uphill the gradient is constantly changing. I've had to change my rd cable after ~3k each time, not because i was being cautious, but because they were fraying up near the head.

Honestly I found tubeless worked quite well for cross. You need to have a good tire/rim combo, but these days there are lots of those. I was able to run Specialized Terras below 19 PSI on Pacenti SL23 V2 rims and it was fine. My problems with tubeless have been more long-term maintenance of pressure. Burping and in-race reliability wasn't an issue for me. I ran a tubeless front tire for most of the season after I got sick of replacing flatted Clement MXPs in late September.

That said, tubeless isn't a full replacement for tubulars. You can still run lower pressures and get a better ride and traction with tubulars, so instead of using tubeless as a backup, like I did last year, I got another set of tubular wheels. So now I have an all-rounder/dry conditions wheel/tire set and an all-rounder/mud conditions wheel/tire set. Pretty exciting.

I find this very strange. I've had no major issues with Sram drivetrains, and we've been through 8 set ups on 10 bikes. The oldest is a set of Red shifters from 2008 that I still run. They work fine. Been crashed several times too.

The only issue I really have is one of the derailleur pulleys on two Red RDs cracked, and I wore out an old Red FD. Replaced it with a Rival and everything was golden.

Non S-Works, 105 group with no wheels. $1550 locally (very local) from a bike shop employee. I'm probably passing unless you tell me it will change my life vs my Cervelo SLC.

Dunno. 3 rear shifters, one front shifter. I even snapped a cable head off in the rear shifter last fall, which is the only time i've ever heard of that happening with sram.

Well, it's not super quick trying to fish cables out tiny holes in the frame with magnets. Idk, maybe I'll try it this week and see how long it takes. I've only done it myself 2 or 3 times.

Oh...yeah...that would be annoying.

Tarmac has pretty stellar internal routing. No fishing for cables or magnet use required!

FYI the new Shimano shifters have an access port for removing the heads of decapitated cables from the belly of the shifters. It is is located where the bottom of the shifter body meets the bars.

yeah i was freaking out yesterday until i realized that.

they were blowing out some frames a year ago...really good deals. specialized was sold out of that color way, though.

sounds like a good deal but if you already have a good bike, unless you were in love with the paint scheme i wouldn't bother.

if someone is in need of a bike, though, that's a great deal/great bike.

if that paint scheme fell into my lap i'd be stoked.

I have a perfectly good Caad 10 that I frequently race on. If I had one complaint about it, it is that the toptube is very wide, and because I ride with a lot of setback, the rear brake cable rubs against my inner thigh, and if I'm not paying attention, I sometimes bang my knee into the toptube. (It's one of the older ones without internal routing.)

I am now thinking of buying one of those Allez Sprint frames just because I like the color scheme.

the other day i raced with a dude who had a gold -- GOLD -- allez sprint. it actually looked pretty great in person. he was commenting on my venge and we got to talking about his bike; he had the same concerns when he ordered it -- namely that it would look way to bold/garish.

he liked the bike overall.

I've seen both the silver and the gold allez sprint in the wild and they are both fantastic looking bikes.

Yeah, I almost bought the Gold/Red frame a couple weeks ago from a guy selling it online. I ended up passing. But for 2017, they have a Purple frame with a Zebra print fork (reminiscent of Cippolinni's Team Zebra kits) as well as a neon green/yellow (I can't tell if its more green or yellow) with a black fork.

The Purple is kind of awesome in its ridiculousness. The Green is sweet looking, and would match my team kits, but is less out there.

They also have a hot Pink frame with a leopard print fork that my wife really wants, but she isn't getting a new bike any time soon, unless its a mountain bike.

Where are you seeing these bikes?

Here: Specialized Sprint for 2017 info from my LBS - Weight Weenies

I confirmed the color schemes with my LBS. They are in the system, but not available for order. They asked if I wanted to backorder one, which would put me on the list to get one first. They apparently sold out pretty quickly last year.

Cool. I was really into the photo that has the "specialized" graphic reversed but then I realized it was the photo that was reversed.

It does appear the complete bikes will be 105/Ultegra mixed at the top end which I guess is in keeping with the "working race bike" ethic but honestly I'd think there would be plenty of demand for higher end components, especially given that every single one of these bikes I've seen in real life (which has always been at races) has had fancy expensive wheels on it.

that purple and zebra bike is next level.

or at least have a frameset option.

right now the retail site is incomplete -- some bikes that are typically available as frame sets (e.g. SW crux) are not shown.

since this is a bike that sells out you would think a high-end option would be even more profitable.

a few years back specialized made an XTR hot rock.

My understanding is that the Purple, Pink, and White bikes will be special edition framesets only.

Di2 soldering question:

my road bike is internally routed, but not Di2. i'm thinking of splicing two cut cables and solder them back. The trick here, of course, is that the soldering has to occur while one part of the cable is within the frame.

if anyone have experience doing this, i'd like to hear more. I'd presume that one needs to clamp the frame to a bike stand and have a workstation setup nearby to do the actual soldering. In terms of ease, is it better to do the soldering closer to the rear derailleur or closer to the bottom bracket? I'd guess the latter would be preferable since the soldered portion can get tucked into the frame?

if you're talking e-tube and your bike handles internal routing, i'm not sure you'd have to do any soldering.

i've soldered 7970 wires before; it's trivial. did we go through this dialogue a few years back? the individual wires are really fine. it's not hard and you can even do it as a first project--but you probably should practice a bit on something else. at the time i wanted to extend some wires and there were NO long 7970 wires available; cat V wiring is a good alternative, and replaceable.

watch a couple youtube videos on soldering if you are unfamiliar. i'd highly recommend heat-shrinking each of the 4 internal wires AND putting heat shrink over all that as you are essentially breaking the weather seal. the problem with this is that unless you've drilled out your internal guides, you'll have a hard time stuffing that back into the frame, unless you've been very creative.

if you do it right you will never have to access the soldered joint(s) again, so where you put it should be immaterial. ideally you allow for extra slack so you have room to work and then just have that stuffed into the frame, but if the guides are entry-to-exit, you can't do that.

if your bike is set up for internal mechanical, you need to think about how you will handle an internal battery.

really long e-tube wires are available, and with the smaller connectors on the end (5mm diameter...the same as brake cable outer housing) there's a really good chance you should not need to cut anything open.

thanks for the reply. the issue here is how do you get the head of the e-tube cables through the exit ports designed for inner cables. The diameter of the head of the e-tube cables is about the same as that of derailleur cable housing, which get stuck (as it should) and can't move into the chain stay. I now need the di2 cable to do just that; it's not the cable, per se, that's the issue; rather, it's the head.