WheresWaldo

The pic is so small curveship that I need a magnifying glass to see which one you are. So to appease x43x I willshow him a picture of me riding my RS, here you go.







Best I could do on such short notice. Please disregard how slow I was going, this was a shakedown ride after the rebuild. I didn't realize how nervous I would be on the first few descents, especially after crashing, but I think I am over it now.

curveship

Well, it's probably not worth the trouble, but here's a slightly different link that might work: https://jjakucyk.exposuremanager.com/...507/dsc_076146

zimbo

I got several comments and questions about my PedalForce RS while standing in line waiting for the race to start. Those who spoke up really liked the carbon weave.

PedalForce RS FOR THE WIN!!



--Steve

x43x

Sweet! I am appeased. Nice Whole Foods sponsorship Zimbo. I always go there hoping to spend a certain amount of $, but always end up spending way more. Wait a minute...thats just like my RS build! I guess food and cycling are my two biggests vices.

dgasmd

I love those carbon aero wheels WW. Too bad they only come in shimano compatible hubs. They even refused to try to do them in campy ones too. In general, it seems you can find fairly nice, light, and affordable wheel, but they all come in shimano compatible only. I realize they are the cheapper alternative (not insinuating they are less quality), but the choice would be nice to have for those of us that have or want campy components.

On a general note, I can't possibly understand why anyone here would pick a certain bike as the best one. They are all different and they all have a very nice distinction and personality. I think it would be difficult to find a single person that would say that they would ahve built their bike with the exact components any of these bikes here have. That is what make them unique I guess.

By the way, I am too new to this, so enlighten me and tell me what the heck is trail. Can you define it for me? I am a little lost.

WheresWaldo

Trail is the distance between the bottom end of a line drawn through your headtube to the ground, and the point where your tire contacts the ground. In general to make the bike handle well, it's a good idea to have some positive trail. This means the line through the head tube ends up in front of your tire patch. Too much trail and you get excessive fork flop, not enough, and the bike is too twitchy.



Note that trail is not the only thing that effects a bike's handling. The head tube angle, wheelbase and well, pretty much every other aspect of the bike effects how it handles. Your job is to make a series of compromises to get the bike that does what you want it to.

Dubbayoo

I hold in my hands the last piece of the puzzle - a new 2006 FSA K-Force compact crank which, courtesy of Team Performance sales and points I got for < $350. Hopefully I'll get home in time to take everything to the shop for final construction...looks like I'll be riding Saturday.

curveship

I just noticed something VERY interesting. I happened to be checking out Kuota's website and looked at the geometry specs for some of their frames.

THE RS HAS THE EXACT GEOMETRY AS THE KUOTA KREDO.

Exact. To the millimeter. Compare the charts and they're dead on in every size. Not only that, but the weights are virtually identical too, with the RS sometimes 20 grams lighter, sometimes 20 grams heavier depending on the size.

They're obviously not the same frames, of course, but there's no way this is a coincidence. The Kredo has very different lines and styling (and FWIW, I prefer the RS ). Maybe the RS was a prototype for the Kredo, or maybe ADK "stole" the Kredo's geometry when designing the RS. Anybody know if Kuota has the Kredo manufactured by ADK? For reference, the Kredo is Sierra Nevada's race bike this year.

Oh there is one big difference. MSRP on the Kredo frameset is ... $2500.

WheresWaldo

Kuota is made by Martec but it's not in Taiwan. To be exact it's manufactured at their facilities at mainland China.

curveship

I read on the ADK website that one of the founders was an R&D engineer for Martec. I wonder if that's the link?

Dubbayoo

First pic of the completed build. I haven't ridden it yet. Quick and dirty bathroom scale test = 15.6 lbs. That's almost 4 lbs less than the Flyte and 5 lbs less than the custom steel I was on this time last year. I don't care enough to find a real scale. I would have been happy with anything under 17.5. Because of my long torso I went up a size to get an extra cm of top tube, which is why I don't have much seatpost showing. If I could have gotten a custom I'd want a 51cm ST and 54cm TT. Visually I prefer the Forte Alpha bottle cages but I heard they weren't durable. Other than that I am extremely happy with the looks of it all. I just need to get in a few climbing rides to decide if I want to wrap the bar tops. The only other change coming will be a Garmin Edge 305.

sshakari

Finally Dial_Tone, great build. I like the wheels without decals.

blandin

Congratulations Dial tone. Your blue theme is looking very good.

WheresWaldo

DT, what is with the bar tape on the left side? Otherwise great build.

Dubbayoo

I bought a 34.9 Clamp-on Adapter from Professional Cycling Discount but whatever they sent me didn't even come close to fitting. The shop had to use a Shimano one to get the build done today. I'm not pleased but not sure it's worth returning.

WheresWaldo

How is this related to the bar tape?

Dubbayoo

I ended the wrap oddly. It seemed like a rhetorical question. I probably won't leave the tape there anyway so it didn't matter that much to me.

t4mv

+1 But your use of blue contrast is

Also, is your seatpost really a 31.6? They're not all 27.2 or whatever?....

the beef

Nice, Dial_tone! That's a light bike. Get 'er UCI illegal!

FrankBattle 

Vewy vewy nice Dial_Tone. Now get out there and raad that dar horse.

shabbasuraj

left side bar tape is an issue...

...so minus ocp style points for this build.

zimbo

Sheesh, rough crowd.

--Steve

sjumper

I don't see SRAM Force... I do see Rival.

Bike Lover

Okay, so after many, many delays, I am about to release pics of my build. But before I do, I want to comment that the theme was supposed to be a white/silver on black build. Unfortunately, the bonus wasn't as good to me as I expected so I'm now with a white/silver/red on black build. I figure eventually I'll change out the saddle and get some "real" pedals (instead of the free pedals I got from the donor bike from Bikes Direct), then I can remove the wheel stickers to get me where I want to be.

So without further delay:






I'm a little disappointed in the left side tape job, there's not enough black showing the right seems to be evened out a bit more. Perhaps I'll re-wrap it when I can get it home. Oh, also the pics aren't the best. My bike's at my friends house until I can break it to the SO that I actually have it and I used his bitty camera that only had enough battery for 3 pics.

Bike Lover

Oh, and the bar tape was originally going to be black with whit stitching but I saw this when ordering and was kinda talked into it and, I have to admit, I was really curious about it. It seems the black with white stitching would probably have worked a bit better. I figured tape is cheap and easy to replace though...