Specialized Tarmac SL6 S-Works Ultralight Rim 49cm - 5.87kg with pedals

[OtterSpace]

The chainset and BB are done. Expensive process that added weight to the bike but worth it for power, looks, and BB friction improvements that should help speed and bearing life.

I said previously I was not a fan of the look of a wide spindle crank on this BB30 frame.

The next day I bought a BBinfinite BB30-DUB-RD to move the bearings outside the frame and reduce the stack of shims.

Old bb on left (not including the tons of shims) and new BB on right.

I also dumped the Easton cranks I had from another build and went with red cranks like I do on all of my builds. I just havent found a better looking thin crankarm (unlike Easton and the Chinese offerings) at a silimar weight and price. I don't know why I'm so picky but big crank arms just dont visually match the tube shapes of any of my frames which bothers me every time I try any chunkier crankarms. As always I replaced the crap plastic SRAM preloaded with a metal preloader (BAI0030) that I bonded to the crankarm. I vinyl wraped the crank with 3M 2080 to hide logos, match the gloss finish of other crankset parts, protect the crank, and preserve resale.

Power wise I was up in the air between Sigeyi AXO (claimed weight 105g) and SRAM/Quarq DFour (166g). I really was 50/50 after reading around but decided to go with SRAM mostly becasue of better resale potential if I decide I dont like it. If this build was more weight focused I would have gone Sigeyi without a doubt.

All of that took the BB through the 3 stages from BB30 to new BB with Easton 30mm crank to Dub Red D1.

At a high level I'm preparing to compare RD direct mount hangers (Specialized: S182600004, Wheels Manufacturing: 603, and Pilo: D1263) I won't use a Sigeyi type hanger as they are too hollowed out. This is a place I am willing to add weight for a stiffer hanger.

I also likely will swap over my Dura-Ace RD cage from my ebike to this bike. I have been riding some rough stuff on the ebike that some extra chain tension might marginally help and the look and weight saving are a better match here. I also dont plan to ever ride this on rough stuff so lower chain tension is less of a concern.

Lastly I purchased some new aero focused toys that should be here in the coming weeks.

[reedplayer]

I have never heard of Sigeyi Powermeter, but i know, that Sram Quarq have excellent reputation in terms of accuracy. Would be my first choice next to Power2max.

The SL6 looks really nice, imo, it looks much more consistent than the current Sl8-version , but this is a matter of taste for shure.

[OtterSpace]

After some work this bike is at a point where I'll put some miles in while forming larger opinions.

Currently at ~6.5kg with the weight increase from the front wheel change.

The handlebars were changed to the narrowest lambda cross-wings (formerly x-wings) with 33cm hood clamp area, 40cm drops, and 27cm hood hand position currrently which is hard to show in photos. I've ridden 38cm since 2014, 36cm since 2020, and sub 36cm recently so I was well positioned for this change. I'm liking it currently but haven't put many miles in yet so will reserve judgement. I changed the stem from 90cm which was strangely short for me on this bike's normal bars to 110cm & I have a box of stems (kalloy uno 70-130cm) that I can swap between ready to go from past bike builds.

The front wheel is a debadged Mavic CXR 60 clincher (C) with a 23mm GP 5000 clincher, vittoria latex 47cm valve tube, with a 20mm vittoria valve extender. This wheel was designed for a specific mavic 23mm tire (Yksion CXR which likely has poor rolling resistance) and is a metal rim with a bonded carbon fairing and channels for a UCI illegal mavic CX01 blade that aerodynamically transitions from the rim to the tire. I have a 25mm GP 5000 TT TR on order that I can try if needed.

Basically illegally aero but heavy AF.

Berd spoke 55mm: 553g. Mavic CXR 60mm C: 877.3g + 2x CX01 blades: 49.5g. Delta: 373.8g not including tires & tubes which are also heavier. Debadged as mentioned before and I added stickers over the fairing to spoke interface as well. Required specific rare brakepads too which are consumable and might be impossible to find in a decade.

narrow handlebars:

At this point my main plan is to ride it more to see how things develop as the front position and components settle. I'm still interested in the delta front brake fairing, might double down on narrow bars, or hate the bars and go back to 36cm in which case I'd currently buy the EXS aerover 36cm.

Fun times which is what its all about.

[OtterSpace]

Hood position is down quite a bit along with raising the seatpost more as I adapt to the narrow bars. Time to cut down the steerer too.

Unfortunately no new setup pics yet as I need to rewrap the bars to cover some exposed handlebar from moving the hoods.

At a high level I've been riding the bike quite a bit while my main bike is down for service and mid day temps are over 37C / 100F so I'm riding in the morning and not commuting by bike.

Strangely initially this bike didnt spark much joy after the rebuild and was I considering just flipping out of it in May-June. It worked well but was just kind of soulless and sterile with meh confort, which was likely fit related, if that makes any sense. With more riding and micro adjustment I'm starting to like it a lot more but its a distant 3rd favorite bike currently out of my 5 bike fleet.

Narrow bars are super awesome for me and open up more optimized aero hand positions while maintaining good wide positions when desending from the more aggressive flare.

Here is an image I put together to plan some optimizations. I'm a very visual person so putting together an image to help visualize optimization aids me in planning smaller changes better than the spreadsheet which helped me more for the initial rebuild.

I purchased the E1 crankarms, plan to change the seat to my prefered option now that I plan to keep it for for awhile, and will perform some of the setup micro savings. I am undecided if I'll revisit the PM, and doubt I'll further touch the RD (I swapped to Dura-Ace cage which isnt shown), FD, or pedals for awhile.

Shifting has been absolutely flawless. Pure Shimano HG+ with a short chainstay and good chainline is truely something else that everyone should try at least once.

Braking is meh as expected. At this point I don't like the extra noise caused by the braking track cutouts compared to my other rim bikes. Direct mount EE seems similar in performance to normal EE, requires more tools to setup correctly*, and has more hidden weight in the fork and rear frame mounting. I like the braking linearity at low to mid brake force but high braking force & fade is nothing like my 180mm front rotor hydro bike so I micro bleed speed a lot more & earlier than I would on my hydro bike on the same steeper descents. For less technical & sub ~12% descents this braking difference isnt exposed for my weight but I frequently ride roads which expose this difference.

Cost to weight and aero is great and why I will likely keep this bike for at least two years while the market settles. I should be able to get this down to 5.8kg at ~$5k with pedals & PM where a China build like a Tavelo at specs I like, given how picky I am, would end up ~6.6kg & ~$7k with terrible resale potential, a SL8 pro ~6.3kg & ~$9k+, and a SL8 S-Works ~6.05kg & ~$11k+ all of which are far slower up hill than my commuter ebike that I put most of my yearly miles into.

The future is now.

*For the direct mount EE you will need a long 6mm hex and a 13mm open end crowfoot to 3/8" drive, or similar, to correctly torque the individual arms. To me this is more faff than just correctly aligning and torquing a single bolt EE.

[gurk700]

If I could magically acquire a past bike again today to add to collection, it would be my SL6 Ultralight.
viewtopic.php?t=156162

[OtterSpace]

If I could magically acquire a past bike again today to add to collection, it would be my SL6 Ultralight.
viewtopic.php?t=156162

Thats fairly high praise for the SL6 given how many top end bikes I've seen you post. The more I ride this bike the more I like it although I wouldn't quite call it love yet which is where my continual tuning comes in.

I remember reading through your thread when I was researching all things SL6. In looking back your 54 frame was 762g while my 48 is 836g so 74g more for two sizes smaller. The SL6 Ultralight weight lottery really was nuts so I see why they no longer make road Ultralights.

Some of the residential roads near me were just paved. With that comes extra tar on the roads which has been sticking to my tires and frame so I cleaned up the bike today and took some updated photos. Three times now I've picked up leaves with the front tire that then get stuck in the rim brake which makes quite a noise until I pull over and remove the leaf. One of those ridiculous situations that just makes me laugh so I thought I'd share.

Since the last photo I went back to the Berd front wheel, swapped the seat, pedals, crank from Red D1 165mm to E1 165mm, RD hanger from Specialized direct mount to Wheels Manufacturing Direct mount, cage to Dura-Ace, chain from Dura-Ace to YBN as part of my normal waxing rotation sequence, changed some stem bolts to black, and significantly adjusted the hoods while cleaning up the cables as I adjust to super narrow bars.

Given I've been riding this bike now I'm fine putting a bit more money into this build to get it exactly how I want it. I will go delta aero cover but that part is currently being revised so I'm waiting on final fit and the new top cap to release. I think I want a different front wheel again but I cant find exactly what I want which ideally would be 28-30m wide external, 50-60mm deep, bladed spokes for aero (carbon prefered), while not beeing too much heavier than my very light 563g Berd front wheel. I am very happy with the rear Berd wheel so I would prefer not to have to buy the front as a wheelset.

Next plans are likely to swap from Quarq to Sigeyi AXO and decide which I want to keep for the SL6 while the other will go to my GF's bike where all my backup parts go into semi retirement. When I make that change I'll go from 50/34 to 52/34 as I already have that ring on hand but wanted to try full stock Shimano first to keep an eye on shifting changes. Some minor bolt tuning too for better smoother visual presentation (rear brake mount & EE brake pad bolts to black) or flushness (FD mount bolt).

Oh yeah need to finally go tubeless too I've been meaning to do that for ages now.

There really isnt any weight target or magic number I'm trying to hit for this build which helps. Main goal is just to have it be a very fast bike for hilly solo rides.

[gurk700]

If I could magically acquire a past bike again today to add to collection, it would be my SL6 Ultralight.
viewtopic.php?t=156162

Thats fairly high praise for the SL6 given how many top end bikes I've seen you post. The more I ride this bike the more I like it.

I remember reading through your thread when I was researching all things SL6. In looking back your 54 frame was 762g while my 48 is 836g so 74g more for two sizes smaller. The SL6 Ultralight weight lottery really was nuts so I see why they no longer make road Ultralights.

Whoa that is a wild difference indeed. I remember that drama as well but didn't think it could be that much difference. FWIW though the reason I miss SL6 isn't weight related (I had a supersix that was 4.99kg after all)
But yeah give that bike a chance for sure.

I WILL say I did eventually swapped EE's for the porky duraace 9100 brakes and OH MY GOD... stopping power pretty much doubled lol.

[OtterSpace]

I WILL say I did eventually swapped EE's for the porky duraace 9100 brakes and OH MY GOD... stopping power pretty much doubled lol.

Yeah Dura-Ace BR-R9110-F or BR-R9210-F (which are the same thing just different labels) are on my list to try already especially now that I don't have a specific weight target.

High force braking is really the only negative I see with this bike currently other than finding a goldilocks front wheel balancing aero, tire width, weight, and braking which is hard to do for rim brakes as the tech focus and new products have almost universally moved on to disc. Both of the front wheels I have already fall to much into one end of that spectrum.

I find that compared to my 180mm front rotor road bike I have to bleed speed earlier on the SL6 rim as I don't trust the high braking force performance. However, I've been super focused on braking performance recently with my Shigolo experiment so I am extremely picky now to the point were no off the shelf bike meets my standards now. With that said I'm fine and already accept that the SL6 will never have as good braking as a 180mm disc.

edit2: updated with actual weights now that I'm testing if Shimano brake are worth the weight penalty starting with the front.
Weight penalty is 59.47g from EE G4 to Dura-Ace BR-R9210-F (front)

Image below was from before I had actual weights which I'll add in a future post. The image I provided of EE G4 was missing the top cable preload assembly as well.

edit2: the 59.47g delta will go down to 54.63g if I can use the EE shoes and bolts.

[OtterSpace]

Tons of updates on the small parts I ordered coming in the next few days as the last order should arive today.

For now I'll cover the computer mount.

Currently and for the near future I plan to use a standard stem. In the future I might go extralite but that would only be after getting fully settled. I have a carbonworks computer mount on another bike that I would buy again but I dont want to invest in something like that yet given that the stem bolt type and spacing could change.

Therefore, I decided to go the cheap route instead and got a mount off of aliexpress that looked modifiable. Given how cheap it was I bought three hoping to yeild 1 or 2.

As usual for an order from aliexpress the part that arrived was only vaguely like the listing but that was expected. Compared the to listing image the mounts I received are matt instead of gloss, the logo in a different place, no threaded inserts for the garmin to go pro mount, and a much larger and heavier go pro mount. Thankfully the mount I got with my Lambda bars had the narrow style go pro mount which is much ligher. All of the other changes from the Ali listing were either positive or neutral for what I wanted.

I sanded off the logos, dremeled down the mount, and chamfered the edges which only removed like 3g of carbon weight but also helped aesthetics. The thickness of the carbon plate is about 4.6mm and the narrowest width is 4.8mm vs 6.2mm thichness & 4mm width of the metal mount so the modified part should be more than sufficient to hold my Garmin 130 plus even with the cutout. The bigger risk is if I mount my lower camera (cycliq fly12 sport) but that camera lives on another bike. I also had to ovalize the garmin mount holes as the lighter go pro mount was 20.8mm between the holes vs 21.8mm for the Ali mount.

Overall the savings from the tuned part is 12g but the stock Ali part was 1g heavier than the metal mount I already had so net 11g savings.

This was the first one I modified so I have two extras. I'll likely modify two more to keep around for other projects as I like this style more than outfront mounts that clamp to round bars. This mount type frees up the ability to use the mount with any bar type and keeps the bars cleaner too while having adjustable mounting bolt width to work with many stems.

The mounting spacer washers also are ~5mm ID to work with the steel 4.8mm OD bolts. However, I ordered some Ti bolts which have an OD of 5mm so I used a 5mm bit to open up the mounting spacers to ~5.1mm ID. The two lower Ti bolts will save another 5.65g.

Edit: I decided to drop the go pro mount so I used steel M3 x 0.5 nuts to fixture the steel garmin mount bolts. Here are the weights:

I'll make a second one without the cutout that I'll mount the gopro adapter to. The second mount should be around 10g heavier. The third will go on my GF's bike to replace a 48g k-edge that clamps to round bars. Edit: Completed. Very happy with them as of now.

[OtterSpace]

Crankarms today. Visually there is no change but there are some details to cover that I haven't seen fully captured elsewhere yet.

I "upgraded" from SRAM Red D1 165mm to E1 165mm on July 15th and was able to make a small profit on the D1 sale before it heavily depreciates.

Stock vs Stock including factory grease: D1 = 336.06g & E1 = 305.97g.

I hate the plastic visually bulky and cheap looking SRAM preloader ring that is easy to damage so I always replace it with a metal Cane Creek #BAI0030 which adds a few grams. They have other colors too and the inner silver ring gets bonded to the spindle with a green Loctite 638 unlike the SRAM ring which has no retaining compound.

All of that is fairly standard stuff. However, I also removed the drive side self extracting cap which I'd classify as a forbidden upgrade that I wouldn't recommend for the average user. In practice the cap is used for crank removal. With the cap installed as the main bolt in unscrewed the cap is pressed against which removes the drive side crankarm. Also the crank looks ugly without the bolt but that moves onto the next point. The removal tool is from Abbey Bike Tools but there also is a collab version SRAM sells which is red in color & do note that the cap is reverse threaded to 14 Nm so if you are putting a lot of force on it while removing you likely are going the wrong way.

As a quick aside the cap has factory blue Threadlocker 242/24200 for E1 to help it from shaking loose like some MTB riders have reported historically. Also I can confirm this tool works with C1 Red (Red22 BB30) on my Izalco Max (4.77g removed) & likely C2 even though C# are not Dub spindle.

Any day I can justify an Abbey Bike Tools purchase is a good day.

I vinyl wrap the crankarms to preserve resale and match the look of the Shimano bike. This covers the ugly bolt and also helps prevent minor scuffs but is a wear item. Thankfully covering the E1 logos is much easier than D1. I just use the crankarm to trace a patern on 3M 2080 then trim as needed with the paper backing still on before applying it over the outer face with no need for added heat. After placing the wrap I cut out the holes for the pedals but this can be done roughly because a pedal washer can cover any over cuts. However, you dont want to under cut which would add wrap in the pedal threads. Here are the patterns I used for D1 vs E1:

Overall weight of this modified E1 is simlar to stock but looks way better for my specific crankset and has a much better preloader ring.

[OtterSpace]

New full bike pic weight up from 5.87kg to an estimated 5.93kg but likely a bit less from other minor changes that I'll capture in the next post:

I've been very focused on braking this year with my disc build so unsurprisingly the braking of this setup was meh at best compared to a 180mm front disc rotor. I was already considering giving Dura-Ace a go given I'm always playing around with builds until my focus shifts elsewhere but gurk700 gave me the push to go for it sooner.

I WILL say I did eventually swapped EE's for the porky duraace 9100 brakes and OH MY GOD... stopping power pretty much doubled lol.

Weight is up but a little less than expected at 137.13g up from 77.10g = 60.03g stock to stock.

Front only change for now as I assess and tune it before trying a rear which I also have ready to swap over. The rear should gain less weight as I should be able to drop the metal spacer required for 54cm and smaller SL6 to fit the EE. Also as posted earlier I plan to try out the EE brake shoes which can drop a tiny bit of weight.

Only two rides in now but yeah way better. Way less audable and stronger braking that I trust more so I dont have to bleed speed as early on braking limited descents. Much better and very noticeable upgrade. Currently it doesnt seem rear braking limited but more riding to do and I'll likely at least try the rear Dura-Ace at some point to see what I think. For one of the two rides I was stuck behind a car while descending a sustained section at speed on a non braking limited section and it was very easy to follow at 30 MPH without pedaling a descent I would usually actively ride at 35-42. EE would likely handle this fine but would be way more audible at points.

Usually I try to go used when I can but I didnt this time because for direct mount Shimano brakes they seperate when you dont use the provided tools and stickers pictured above so they are easy to scratch. For 9200 most say Shimano only made aesthetic changes but after buying I saw a post that linked a Japanese review which said the roller is better on 9200. The 9100 roller is audibly louder and very slightly rougher so confirmed to some degree.

I bought a 9200 front (BR-R9210-F) and a 9100 (BR-R9110-RS) rear so here are some images showing the roller and finish difference.

Stock to Stock the Dura-Ace seems to have less tire clearance as expected so I don't know if I can go up a size over my 28mm marked 30mm WAM tires. Maybe the EE shoes can help as it could be more of a rim clearance and not tire clearance issue but I haven't checked thoroughly yet.

Also the Dura-Ace caliper sticks out from the frame a lot more and moves the cable out into the wind. Could be a problem if I go with the tririg aero delta cover I pictured earlier and still want to deploy eventually.

Even if I go full Dura-Ace braking I plan to hold onto the EE brakes in case I decide to move on from the bike as I think it would sell better with the EE brakes.

[gurk700]

Even if I go full Dura-Ace braking I plan to hold onto the EE brakes in case I decide to move on from the bike as I think it would sell better with the EE brakes.

Yeah. "brakes amazing" is not as sexy as a low weight number on for sale ads, unfortunately

But yeah knowing what I know today, if I ever built a ww rim brake bike again (not gonna happen), I wouldn't touch anything else than 9100 brakes.

You'll hate hearing this but I was shocked how good THM brakes were on my supersix evo. They SUCKED to center and setup perfectly (partly due to weird supersix cable routing in the rear) but once I did, they were shockingly strong. I'd say almost DA level.

But again, if I ever built a bike like that again, I wouldn't drop that much money on brakes. Rim stuff has seemingly no resale value.

[OtterSpace]

Yeah. "brakes amazing" is not as sexy as a low weight number on for sale ads, unfortunately

I'm very aligned to this view but then again there are a lot of braking limited descents around me. Its even odder to me on the disc brake side with a ~500g system weight increase over rim strangely many won't throw an extra 100g at it for much better disc braking. And I'm a tiny guy there are many people twice my weight out there riding in conditions much worse than sunny California.

But yeah knowing what I know today, if I ever built a ww rim brake bike again (not gonna happen), I wouldn't touch anything else than 9100 brakes.

You'll hate hearing this but I was shocked how good THM brakes were on my supersix evo. They SUCKED to center and setup perfectly (partly due to weird supersix cable routing in the rear) but once I did, they were shockingly strong. I'd say almost DA level.

I love details as you can see from my verbose write ups. I had written off THM brakes as from the little I saw there were a fair number of complaints; also cost but more on my thoughts on that below. Good to know THM treated you well if I see a pair show up I'll consider getting a set for my super weenie 4.4kg Izalco max build with pedals that I've considered moving to R9100, that I already have, but it would get too close to 10lbs which is a magic number for that build.

But again, if I ever built a bike like that again, I wouldn't drop that much money on brakes. Rim stuff has seemingly no resale value.

Many bemoan the lack of resale for rim but I love it. Discs are just better and even the super weeinies are finally coming to that realization especially as composite advances can claw back some of the platform weight disadvantages compared to older rim frames. Also discs will continue getting better while rim will mostly remain frozen in time.

In 2024 I view rim builds as a future classic car or retro computer kind of hobby that I engage with on the side near the max depreciation window so its much cheaper to have my tinkering fun on this platform using top end stuff. I'm fine if I never get my money back on this build but I haven't spent much and I expect that once pickings get scarce and nostalgia kicks in there will be low demand sure but even lower supply of the top rim stuff of yesteryear for vintage builds. Most rim stuff will go to 0 but I could see the SL6 rim being worth something 10 years from now as a niche cafe bike kind of like a Voodoo 5500 or a Honda S2000 to pick less crazy examples.

Disc and groupset standards also are not done advancing at a rapid rate. Rapid advances are great but the progress bus leaves many at the station and I think many current top end disc builds wont age very well going into 13s let alone my against the current status quo thoughts on ebikes.

[gurk700]

Didn’t realize you are in my neck of woods!
As much as I’m all disc now, I enjoyed many years of coming down Umunhum / Hicks, Hamilton, Kings, OLH, Hwy 9, Page Mill and so on with rim brakes and carbon wheels.
When a lot of “life” happened in 2020-2021 and I went from 142lbs to 170lbs, I didn’t enjoy as much.
Now that I’m back to 150’s I bet I’d like rim brakes again but it’s too late for me now that all gear is “modern”

I will also say I have grown more risk averse in my now “mid-life” age

[OtterSpace]

Didn’t realize you are in my neck of woods!
As much as I’m all disc now, I enjoyed many years of coming down Umunhum / Hicks, Hamilton, Kings, OLH, Hwy 9, Page Mill and so on with rim brakes and carbon wheels.
When a lot of “life” happened in 2020-2021 and I went from 142lbs to 170lbs, I didn’t enjoy as much.
Now that I’m back to 150’s I bet I’d like rim brakes again but it’s too late for me now that all gear is “modern”

I will also say I have grown more risk averse in my now “mid-life” age

Yeah the riding around here is mint and many of the non car non A-B routes are braking limited while being steep but short compared to pro tour stuff. The heart wants to do the super steep & sometimes private road stuff more than the legs can. I like to ride where the super rich people live like Bohlman / On Orbit, which fittingly for the difficulty begins and ends at a graveyard, and the hills overlooking the Lexington quarry (Aztec Ridge & Maya Way) but that just takes me push too hard every ride so instead of doing it less often I daily ride up that kind of crazy stuff on an ebike now and am lucky enough in life to be able to commute some of it.

For the less crazy stuff like the Shannon & Kennedy rim isnt too limiting in the dry but its always a good idea to be over braked.

Currently this bike is more a hit it and quit it weekday lunch ride bike to smash it for an hour or so then get back to work. The braking limited stuff it sees frequently are Santa Rosa Dr, Sky Lane, and Top of the Hill RD in Los Gatos.