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R5ca - The Build

by Matt Smith

August 11, 2011 - Filed under: Company

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Well, I finally got ahold of a scale to use for the initial weigh off thanks to Chris. He included his scale when the dropped off the glued wheel.

Even before we could get a weight, we knew we wouldn't be near the weight we want to be at due to the older wheel set I have. They are a great wheel set, don't get me wrong, but there are now lighter wheel sets out there for the taking.

As you can see in the second picture, we came in at 4.82 kg or 10.62 lbs. Our in the box weight was 4.96 kg or 10.94 pounds which makes sense as we cut the steerer of the fork, dropped a few chain links and trimmed the excess cable.

This isn't the über light build with the Becker saddle and the M1 Racer peddles. I suspect that when we get the new wheels we will be down near our goal of 10 lbs or 4.53 kg.

As for the first ride, I haven't been able to get out there yet. Chris dropped the wheel off at my place Tuesday night and the concierge crew forgot to tell me it was there for me to pick up so it sat there all day yesterday. I just finished getting the cassette on and put together over the lunch hour so the first ride is still to come. And, at the moment, it is blowing outside at 55 km/h (32 mph) which is not my idea of a controlled first ride especially with a new brake system.

So where is the extra weight you ask. Basically in two places: the fork and the crank. The fork is much heavier due to the extra requirements we have with regards to safety. All our bikes meet the CEN standards which are pretty thorough. We kick some of the tests up a notch or two. One of them is the front impact test which is a more strenuous test then the CEN test suite. We also impact and fatigue the steerer which is not part of the CEN tests. As a result, some additional carbon layers are necessary in the forks to make sure the forks meet our test requirements.

The second is the crank. Given the current crank on the R3-SL is the THM Clavicula which is $1,210 (Fairwheel Bikes) or 918 € (starbike.com) and the crank here is the FSA SL-K Light which is $560, you can see that you will pay for the lighter component. There is about a 120 g difference in weight between the Clavicula the SL-K Light. THM haven't come out with a BBright version of their cranks and there is no adaptor for it either. As they say, it is what it is.

With at least 150 g of extra weight in the components alone, this is a really good weight for the bike. This pretty close to the weight I had when I did the Giro di Lombardia at the end of 2008.

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