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Collingwood awaits

by Matt Smith

September 16, 2011 - Filed under: Company

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It is now just a couple of days before the Collingwood/Blue Mountain Centurian. Hopefully my body will be in as good a shape as the bike as I came down with a mild cold at the beginning of the week. As Scott (who was on the Lake Simcoe ride earlier this summer) mentioned to me, who will also be doing the ride and whose legs I will always take pride in ripping off, my body should be back at its peak because it had just finished fighting off an illness. Let’s hope so. I don’t know if my legs will agree to that or not.

Thorben helped me glue back on the tubular which was a problem last Saturday. I adjusted the value and made sure it was holding air. A trick that most people won’t know about is to use plumbers Teflon tape on the threads. It is a very, very thin tape which plumbers will wrap around the threads of a pipe to help seal against leaks. If you use a little bit of this on the threads (the new Vittoria tubulars have a replaceable valve now which allows you to use the appropriate length value for the rim without having to use a value extender), it will help keep the air in the tubular.

Again, I watched in amazement just how easily he was able to put the tubular with glue on the rim. No struggle, no bother. Man, talk about pathetic pencil neck geek! I guess I will have to go down into the weight room and try to bulk up those spindly arms of mine.

Here are the final specs and weights for the bike build (beauty build that is AND please note the frame weight includes all the naughty bits and pieces, the raw frame weight can be seen here):

Component	Make	Raw Weight
Frame	Cervélo R5ca	779
Fork	Cervélo	363
Head set	Cane Creek	36
Handle bar	Schmolke	147
Bar plugs	Veloflyte	2
Crank	FSA K-Force Light	420
Brakes	THM Fibula	137
Chain Rings	Carbon Ti	102
Chain ring bolts	Carbon Ti	9
Front derailleur	SRAM Red	69
Rear derailleur	SRAM Red	146
Seat post	Schmolke	79
Saddle	AX Lightness	66
Pedals	M1 Racer	76
Cassette	KCNC	115
Shifters w/cables	SRAM Red	324
Cable housing	SRAM Red	187
Cable	SRAM Red	38
Bar tape	3T	40
Risers	Extralite Delrin	7
Chain	KCNC	257
Stem	Extralite	90
Stem top cap	Schmolke	2
Bottle cages	New Ultimate	26
Cables	Power Cordz/SRAM
Front rim w/tire	Reynolds RZR	508
Rear rim w/tire	Reynolds RZR	664

		4689 g
		10.3375 lbs

As you can see by the pictures above, the final weight when the steerer tube and cable bits and pieces are trimmed down, the weight is under the magical 10 lb mark, just. The only thing we had to change to make this happen were the pedals. We used the M1 Racer pedals which are essentially just the spindle. Also, the Reynolds RZR wheels come in a 398 g for the front and 552 for the rear. The tires are Tufo track tires. Yea, yea, I know, I know, not a road tire, but guess what, they are probably tougher than some road tires. This tubular saved my bacon three times in Europe in 2007 and are half the weight of normal tubulars. In fact, I have a pre-glued one I use as my emergency spare. It comes in around 135 g fully glued and saves me about the same weight over the same tire glued to the rim. So, in terms of this, we saved the weight of one tubular or about 260 grams.

The version everyone can see at the Cervélo booth in Collingwood tomorrow afternoon has the Vittoria EVO CX tires. I was using the Vittoria Crono tires but found that the tread on the rear was wearing very quickly. I presume that was why I was having puncture issues during the summer because of the tread wear. Other than that and the pedals, it is pretty much the same as with the beauty build and the Gran Fondo ride I did at the beginning of the month which Michael Barry was at. It is also 100 or so grams heavier due to the Garmin pieces as well, but, all told, it is in the high 10 lb range which is still pretty nice. If you are going to be at the Centurion tomorrow, drop by the booth and check out the bike.

You can receive instant updates on the Crazy Light project by following me at http://twitter.com/#!/cervelomatt

Also, to read the original blog series, you can check them out at http://crazylight.cc

1 response for this Entry

Matthew says:

September 16, 2011

It looks wonderful. Would love to ride such a machine (although I would be paranoid about getting dust on it!). The only thing I would change would be to paint the top cap on the stem with some matt black paint - the carbon weave looks a bit odd in contrast to the rest of the beauty (sorry, meant bike). Have a great time - enjoy the views and spend some time being amazed by the bike. I was out on a 125km ride with some friends last weekend on my 2007 R3 - still blows me away what an amazing bike it is - and good looking to boot.