Third Time's a Charm: Litespeed T3

[sychen]

I've had a cracked bearing in the pedal that sounded like it came from a bb shell. Drove me up the wall.
Just in case.. You using the same pedal for all the bb/ crankset rebuilds?

Great build by the way.

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[sawyer]

RyanH - really nice bike ... forgive me I haven't the entire thread ... re the BB, have you looked at C-Bear?

When I was putting together the Focus a bit of research threw up their PF30 as the best solution to avoid creaking ... as I'm using Campag UT cranks I needed a 25mm axle BB, so the OEM Token 24mm had to go in any event, but the creak-free ceramic C-Bear PF30 solution works a charm

[muffinman]

dude ryan just close your ears and no more creak !

[PinaRene]

The quiet lasted for about 10 minutes...I'm hoping a fresh new BB will resolve the issue. Couldn't get it to creak at all with the crank off though.

Chainring bolts - remove them - put a little bit of carbon paste on them and try again. Could be your problem with the creak, have seen it before.

[RyanH]

This is meant for the Crumpton but that's still a few more weeks out (getting refinished) so might as well see if it works fine:



Finish and craftsmanship seems a little nicer than the Mcfk stem. More polished and refined I think.



Weight is also better for a 120mm than my last mcfk stem.

On the Litespeed:



I did the yank hard on the bar test with the Kalloy and then this, couldn't really tell a difference in deflection which I think is an improvement over Extralite. I recall I was able to tell a slight difference with Mcfk last time I did this but that was against a Zipp stem. I'm thinking this is satisfactory for stiffness. I'll report back once I get a ride in.

[Mr.Gib]

Re your creak, what you describe sounds like a headset issue. I know it shouldn't be considering the parts involved, but when you twist the bike by pushing on the crank area, other then the wheels, the only other assembled parts that can move and make noise is the frame/fork connection - the headset. Re and re the headtube/headset/fork before you get crazy with other stuff.

[RyanH]

I already thoroughly disassembled that and regreased the headset but I'll keep the in mind. I'm still pretty sure its the BB. I went to my friend's shop and we installed the Wheels Mfg BB. He was helping me and unfortunately didn't torque the BB to spec so when I headed out, it was worse then before. I torqued it to the correct spec but broke the Loctite bond. It quieted down to what it was like before. I have primer coming this week so I'll clean it and redo it on Thurs and this time not ride it before it cures.

[Nefarious86]

I hate to say it but it seems like there is a crack hiding somewhere in there.

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[RyanH]

I nearly pulled the trigger on a T2 Disc yesterday. I'm trying to resist the urge so I figured I should go ride some of the dirt trails off Mulholland (Fryman) to hopefully stave off the desire for a bit longer. The 27mm Vlaanderen at 60/65 psi performed admirably, very comfortable. I had to walk in a few spots because 34/25 wasn't enough to do seated and I lose my momentum. There was a quarter mile descent down a 12% grade that would have been much more pleasant on disc but I'm not sure I would've been willing to go much faster without significantly larger tires (like MTB).



Still dry at the moment:



Coming back up:



Oops:



And then it started to rain:



Coming back it started to rain. Brakes didn't want to work initially as they were full of sand but once that cleared out, I remembered how wonderful Boras are in the wet. Other than a slight delay in braking of maybe 1 to 2s, they handled all hard braking as if they were dry. Braking from the hoods was less than stellar though.

And the Ax stem? Initial impressions is that it seems to perform well. Can't really tell a difference yet. Granted, that's a little hard since I've been riding around with 3cm more drop on 38cm bars (Classic) so handling felt weird for most of the ride but out of the saddle climbing felt fine.

[Clean39T]

I’d want Nemesis hoops in those conditions

They performed admirably for me on a couple miles of rolling gravel last week - and the Roubaix 25s held up fine too.

[tonytourist]

It's dirty, time to replace it!

[pdlpsher1]

I got a new bike this year and I wanted it to be versatile in terms of tire clearance. I didn't want disk brakes. But I want the ability to use 32mm tires for occasional gravel and fire road riding. I found the key to tire clearance is the rim brake mounting height. Since my bike is a custom bike the clearance on the rear is easy....I asked my frame builder to mount the brakes (Shimano 9100 direct mount) to be as high as possible for maximum clearance, and have the chainstays be wider at the point where the tire is. As for the fork the key is the crown to axle length (the longer the length the more tire clearance) and the brake mounting height. After some research I found the Trek Domane SLR fork with DM brakes to be a perfect match. It's a great fork weight wise (350g uncut) and the price ($300) is cheaper than an Enve fork, and it has WAY more tire clearance than the Enve due to the longer crown to axle length (380mm vs. Enve's 367mm). Below are two photos to give you an idea of the enormous tire clearance. My everyday tire for the front wheel is the Conti GP4K 23mm which measures 25mm actual width on my 17C Campy Bora wheels. My gravel tire is the Panaracer 32mm GravelKing which measures 30.5mm actual width on the same Bora wheels. With the 30.5mm wide tire (actual width) there's still 3mm of clearance on each side. In the last photo you can see that the brake pads are almost at the dead bottom of the brake arms. This means that the brake mounting studs (DM brakes have two studs) are designed to be higher, thus positioning the brakes higher for additional clearance. Forks that aren't designed with tire clearance in mind have the brakes much lower, with the brake pads roughly in the middle of the adjustable range. In a nutshell one doesn't have to go disk to get superb tire clearance. The Trek Domane rim brake model is a good example. Although in the case of titanium one probably has to go custom as the rear clarance would be a limitation on a stock bike.

[4ibanez]

Nice stem. It's something that's quite hard to give much of a review on IMO without proper data (e.g. Fairwheel tests). Nevertheless I enjoy your write-ups, so interested to hear your opinion when you have more miles on it.

For me, there seems little difference between the AX and the solid aluminium stem on my other bike, a 3T ARX Team (both -17°/120mm). A 50g difference in a stem is quite a lot, but the only "sacrifice" is that it feels like there's a barely perceptable little extra give - like 5% or something. On the plus side it seems a fair bit less harsh, which is probably a side-effect. Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[RyanH]

I can't really tell, which is more or less a good thing. With the Extralite stem, I could definitely tell and it was to the point where the bike became nervous on fast straight descents. I recall deciding to sell my Xicon because of that stem, only to try a 3T a week after I bought a new frame to find that the problem went away. It's been damp yesterday and today so I've been running the Boras with tires at squishy PSI. Saturday I'll know whether or not the stem is noticeable when I put the Lightweights on and do my usual hammerfest ride.

[RyanH]

@pdlpsher1

Thanks for writing that up, especially the tip about where to get a bigger clearance fork. Muffinman has a CAAD that clears 32mm actual. His tires looked...laughable...

For me, 27mm tubs handle fire roads really well if they're relatively hard packed. Things get sketchy on sandy sections, which is more common than not. That's where the volume game wins but I don't think 32mm is enough for sand. We don't really have gravel out here though, and from my understanding that varies a lot. Imaking20 is running 25s on gravel up in Oregon. I rode some loose fill gravel (man made) the other day on 25s and had trouble keeping the bike upright.

Then there's the braking aspect. What I'd like to be able to explore (and what is available) typically involves >10% grades. Descending on that gets sketchy with rim brakes.

I'm trying to rationalize this and appreciate that there's the right tool for a job and what I want to go ride on more or less should be done on a MTB or maybe a CX type bike with knobbies. I could get an OPEN Up with 650b and 47mm WTB tires but my typical road gearing is most likely going to make things less than pleasant and running a pizza cassette is going to make group road rides awful. So, I'd have a jack of all trades and master of none, right? On the plus side, it would make the 6 to 12 miles on road there and back more fun than a MTB; on the downside, I may not get to enjoy the dirt as much (or if it's easy trails, maybe that's opposite?).

All in all, I'm trying to convince myself that a road bike with 27mm tires covers all situations that a road bike should be asked to, which includes some light off road duty while 25s cover most situations but enhance the road experience...then there's 22/23 which can be awesome...and can be unforgiving depending on where you end up. Anything beyond light road duty should be handled by gear better suited for that otherwise you end up compromising your road riding, right?