Cervelo Soloist Carbon

[zerogravitas]

Hi weenies. I'm Gabe. I'm here thanks to my friend who you may know as Craciunptr - he has played a large part in turning me into a bike obsessive in recent years and recently switched me on to this amazing community - I've been lurking and browsing with great interest (and lusting after some truly exceptional bikes of course)!


Here is my recent Cervelo Soloist Carbon build. Hopefully its a little bit interesting as you don't see so many these days!

The frame is vintage 2008/9 I believe. It was an eBay acquisition from an amateur racer and had been sitting in a cupboard for a few years before I picked it up last November. I made it my winter project to repair the badly scuffed paintwork, carefully gather all the components, and get it built up...

Its my first build from frame up so I'm sure there are improvements I can make. After riding it every weekend through the summer I am pretty happy with the fit and general setup - I may change the stem and tweak the bar angle a little but overall it is a crazy fast bike and better than I am.

All up weight is 7.1kg. Next build I'll weigh everything as I go, I promise!







Frame is 56cm. The group is Sram Red 10spd w/ Gore cables. Internal routing with this frame was NOT fun!
Bar is a 44cm 3T Aeronova Team. Stem is 3T ArxII, 90mm. Bikeribbon Drops bar tape.
3T carbon bottle cages - I find them practical but might change them out for something a little more elegant soon.
Romin Pro saddle. Look Keo2 Max Carbon pedals.
The wheelset is a pair of FFWD F6R clinchers in carbon/alloy with Continental GP4000 SIIs. They add some weight but I decided deep sections were essential for this frame and I've been super impressed with their performance so far.

[Frankie - B]

Wow, loving this one!

[martinko]

After finding and completing my SystemSix, this one is another on my radar from the same era (2008). Yours is beautiful.
But, wouldn't the build be more accurate with a Zipp wheelset?

[craciunptr]

Welcome to the forum Gabe! The bike looks awesome IRL and I can tell you he even has colour matching kit ) Looking forward to using your amazing crafting skills to take WW to the next level

[ianeire]

Any before/after pics of the damaged paint and what you did you improve? Looks flawless in those photos.

[alpinestar]

Looks great!! I had a early s2 before and I agree, the internal cabling is a pain in the A.. to work on! Really bad design!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[havana]

One of the greatest frames of all time IMHO!

[zerogravitas]

Any before/after pics of the damaged paint and what you did you improve? Looks flawless in those photos.

I didn't document it that well sadly!
There were numerous chips and scrapes all over and in fact my original plan was to completely respray the frame. In the end I decided to go for a restoration which was probably more of a faff!

Here is the frame as I received it, complete with much grime and earth tape holding the brake cable guide insert on!



The major damaged areas were the big scrapes on the driveside chainstay, pitting from chain slap and big wheelrub marks on the inside of both chainstays. The manky old frame protectors also came off and I found the adhesive on the big one behind the crank seemed to have damaged the paint there so I ended up spraying almost all the red around the BB on the driveside. Luckily the black and white banding gave some logical masking lines, but there were several areas I had to do several tricky masks, spray, flatten, repeat and lacquer to get an acceptable finish.

Here we are partway through, demasked to check, pre relacquer.




I also replaced the cable guide which was worn out- the bolt for it screws into an insert under the BB shell but this had corroded and the bolt just spun freely, so it was out with the Dremel, and off with the bolt head! I remounted it with a washer and nyloc inside the frame, held very delicately in some tiny pliers which were the only ones I could find that fitted through that tiny cable hole.

If/when I have to redo the cabling I will definitely invest in a magnetic probe to pull cables through the frame - once they are inside your access is limited to that tiny hole under the BB so fishing them out is a complete nightmare!