Decisions, Decisions – Part 5

No new news, but we didn’t really expect any. I knew that Brent was going to show some stuff, including a new Mountain Bike frame at Interbike in Las Vegas. I am sure he has been busy, now I hope he will get started working on our tandem.

Decided not to use the Easton bar on the tandem and instead put it on Nicole’s single bike. In the mean time there have been a few other upgrades to some of the existing selections.

KCNC makes some interesting aluminum bits and pieces for bicycles and one that will not only save a few fractions of watts but also looks good too is their ceramic bearing jockey wheels. They are available in a variety of colors and spin very smoothly. If you look carefully at some of the pictures of pro TT bikes you will also notice that some of them are using modified rear derailleurs that have larger jockey wheels. This is an effort to reduce drag and stress on the chain. With that in mind we have installed a 12T in the top pulley position and a 13T in the bottom. It did require that I make a small modification to the pulley cage that will not affect performance.

There was also some bolt tuning done on some of the drive train parts. Bolt tuning refers to replacing some of the heavy steel bolts with lighter alternatives such as Titanium, Aluminum or Nylon. Some of the bolt tuning also makes maintenance a bit easier, for instance, I routinely replace the limit screws (Philips head) with socket cap screws so that I do not need to carry a screwdriver or screwdriver bit in my saddle bag. Water bottle cage bolts are replace by aluminum ones, they are strong enough to hold a bottle and much lighter than the steel screws usually supplied. A gram here, a gram there and pretty soon it adds up. We are after all looking to make this tandem light, fast and reliable, within reason.

The crank set situation is not exactly decided but there is the Calfee branded carbon tandem crank set. It is an ISIS standard crank set and is supposed to be fairly light and stiff. I was contemplating an Octalink compatible crank set but found it near impossible to find good bottom brackets as Shimano is the only supplier. ISIS is still widely available and can be had with Titanium spindles and ceramic bearings making it one of the lightest, yet stiffest crank offerings around. We are still looking at the FSA SLK carbon crank set also. The advantage to the FSA is that since it is an external bearing design, the actual bearings are larger and should hold up longer than ISIS. The problems with external bearing designs is that the bearings are external and usually have less sealing against the weather and that they usually come with an increase in the Q factor over internal bearing designs.

Handlebars have been finalized. FSA makes a carbon bar, the K-Force that is available in both a compact and larger ergo bend. We will be using the compact bend in the rear and the larger ergo bend in the front. Thanks to Bicycles East of Matthews with the selection of the bars.