Colnago C64 - Inside and Out

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MRM
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by MRM

Maybe it's worth replacing that steel piece with an titanium or magnesium milled piece for weight savings...? :wink:

by Weenie


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moonoi
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by moonoi

So the new CeramicSpeed T45 BB is now available on their website, nice to see there is no price premium for it over the other PF86 offerings as well

http://www.ceramicspeed.com/sport/produ ... %20Shimano

nickstea
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Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2018 7:15 pm

by nickstea

moonoi wrote:So the new CeramicSpeed T45 BB is now available on their website, nice to see there is no price premium for it over the other PF86 offerings as well

http://www.ceramicspeed.com/sport/produ ... %20Shimano

When did this come up on the site, I’ve been waiting for it...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

moonoi
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by moonoi

nickstea wrote:
Tue Mar 20, 2018 8:08 pm

When did this come up on the site, I’ve been waiting for it...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Popped up this week, I've been checking daily since it was announced since I'm building a Colnago Concept and fancied something completely unnecessary, just because I can :wink:

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micky
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by micky

If anyone is gonna purchase it, kindly take a picture of the tool they are giving with it.
It looks strangely similar to the Tripeak BB I purchased last winter, only the tube in the middle is different.

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Calnago
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by Calnago

Ok...over a month ago now, on February 9th, I had not laid eyes on the C64 let alone touched one. Then this thread happened. Short of cutting up the frame, I'm pretty much done going over the finer details, and kudos to those of you who read it all. You must be as detail oriented as me, or just curious. Either way, that's good in my eyes.

So, now that I've had a bit of time with her, what are my final thoughts...
I might as well say right now, after looking at everything, good and bad... I love this frame, and it is the only frame on the market that I currently lust after. Before I actually got my hands on one, I was kind of thinking well... it's kind of just a C60 with a facelift, and if I were to get one, it would be mostly just to get a size smack in the middle of my 59 and 61 Traditional frames. Really, I thought I was done lusting after bicycle frames once I built my Koppenberg, and then this shows up. My garage is full, yet the lusting goes on. I've gone way past N+1; I have to start the -1's at some point. But damnit, why must it be now.

I've always loved the traditional bicycle frame for what it is... level top tube, two triangles front and back, brought together in a perfectly simplistic yet structural masterpiece of engineering. At some point it just gets hard to improve upon. Many "gimmicks" come and go, or improvements that while theoretically able to be proven, have such a minimalistic effect on real word performance that, for all intents and purposes those "improvements" could be considered non-existent, at least outside of the marketing spiel.

Since GIANT introduced the "compact" road frame to the road world in the 1990's, a lot of things have changed. At the beginning, it was "Get your frame in Small, Med, or Large, then 'fine tune' the fit with different length seatposts and stems" was the thinking. That idea proved to be a bit too extreme and now we have a lot more sizes than just S/M/L, even in sloping frames. It was first and foremost a means of lowering production costs by being able to produce fewer sizes that fit more people. The marketing spin followed suit, with statements like it was stiffer, lighter, etc. Trouble was, when you inserted a broom handle of a seatpost it wasn't necessarily so stiff any more as a complete bicycle. Plus, there's much more than just "fit" to consider with a bicycle frame. There's handling characteristics. Too small and it's twitchy, in a bad way becasue the rider is simply too big for the frame. Too big, and it's sluggish for the opposite reasoning. There's a "jussst right" combination of fit and frame size that is much more achievable with more sizes, and one rider can often fit just fine on more than one size frame. Then it gets down to personal preference. Colnago has long been the provider of incremental sizing with arguably too many sizes which made it hard for customers to choose sometimes. I can fit several sizes of Colnago frames for example.

These days we have a third variable which is getting a lot more attention than it ever has... comfort. This is a whole new can of worms, because over the years frames have gotten incredibly stiff to the point that many are anything but comfortable and often harsh feeling. Every manufacturer has their own take on how they want to approach this. But I do believe that designing some give into the seattube/seatpost area is probably the simplest way to go about it, aside from simply tire choice and pressure. I'm going to give a lot of kudos to Trek here, because I think they are really the leaders at the moment for their designs. Not just the rear isospeed, but even on my Emonda SL, with no isospeed, I could feel some give in seat tube area simply due to a well engineered layup schedule and their "ride tuned" seatmast tech, which when you think about it eliminates a stiff seatpost stuffed half way down your seat tube, which in turn makes it easier to build in some compliance there with a well planned layup schedule. Basically, I like their approach best of all.

And now, Colnago has gotten into that game too, starting with the VR series and now being carried over into their top of the range C-series. With the C64, and I suppose also with the VR series, they are using the sloping frame design not just as a means to reduce sizes to fit more people, but also as a way to help fine tune the ride in a way that would be much more difficult to do with a traditional frame with horizontal top tube. I am very interested in actually getting a chance to test out this new C64. The geometry from a handling perspective is the same, so I already know it's going to handle very well for me. But I want to see just how much, or little, difference the whole new seatcluster and seat tube arrangement might make in the comfort/compliance area. With my Trek Koppenberg, the isospeed tech is hardly perceptible... I would ride the Koppenberg and my C60 on alternate days really trying to feel where the differences lied, and it was hard. And that was a good thing. I don't want a "mushy" feeling road bike. But if something just mutes a bit of the harshness from the road, then that might be nice. Versus having to put on a fat tire to do the same thing, which I have never thought handle as nicely as a firmer narrower tire on pavement. And I don't care what anyone says... fat tires at low pressures are slowwwer on good pavement than a firmer slightly narrower tire. I'm not talking 19mm or anything like that, but I'll take a 24-25mm tubular anyday over anything of 27mm+ on a nice road bike with decent roads. For me, at ~200lbs/90kg, I've settled on around 25mm tubulars as my sweet spot road tire. Anything substantially bigger than that would be only for really bad roads as they start feeling mushier than I like. As for clinchers, a 23mm tire on a "normal (~20-21mm outer width)" rim is a bit too skinny for me these days. But put those same 23's on a slightly wider clincher rim like the Shamal Ultra's with a 17mm internal width, or a HED C2 rim, and you've basically got the same volume that I prefer in my 25mm tubulars. That's my sweet spot for road cylcing.

So, while the new C64 may not exactly look like it's that much different from the C60... I think there are some really nice changes that once again... will prove to make the most current C-series Colnago, the most desired of all. Damnit. I'm tapped out as far as bikes go, and I'm not happy about it Image . On the other hand, I probably have more nice bikes in my garage than most people will ever own in a lifetime, so I've really got nothing to be sad about and am pretty happy overall Image .
Yet, the C64 is different enough that I want it. Damnit... I want it bad. Lol. I am hopeless.

So, as one last summary of this thread... let me try to recapture the highlights...
- Friday, February 9th... Official release and announcement. Ok... now let's wait a few months to actually see the thing.
- Saturday, Febrary 10th... What!?? The local shop actually has one on display... "Honey... I'm leaving and not sure when I'll be back. No, I'm not getting another bike, but I almost feel an obligation to at least keep up with what Colnago is doing. I'm sure it's nothing earth shattering... after all, the C60 is so good, what could they possibly improve".
- Ok... snapped a few pics with my lowly point and shoot down at the shop, I'm sure some folks on WeightWeenies might like to see them...
- Start a thread to show a few pics... then have this crazy idea to talk about every last detail as if I was actually about to build the thing up. What do I look at. What do I think about. How will things work with the new cable routing, etc. etc., and what about this new bottom bracket lug, and the built in cable guides. The cable port in the top of the downtube. The seatcluster lug as an integral part of the seattube. The funky shaped and proprietary seatpost. Sloping sizes only. Cutouts in the headtube and fork. And that Italian swimming pool of a waterbottle recess. Oh my... where to start.
Well, it was clear that I could muster up quite a lot to talk about, and hence the initial title "Colnago C64 - The Naked Build" came to me, where I would actually pretend to be building this thing up, but never actually hang a single component off of it. If only she were mine, for real. But alas, she was on borrowed time and I had to make the most of what time I had with her.

So, off I went in my own little world and posted up some pics and comments and one thing led to another and here we are... umpteen pages of interesting questions and commentary that you simply will not find in any magazine review. In fact, some of those cursory magazine "first looks" were so lame that it was clear in some cases that publishing deadlines were the priority and knowledge was weak. Lots of confusion surrounded the bottom bracket shell, so I hope I cleared a lot of that up in this thread. It's a brilliant design, and I would go out on a limb to say it's the best bottom bracket implementation out there today as far as modern framesets go, meaning wider, primarily carbon frames. And given the direction that bottom bracket designs have taken, I do believe that Colnago has really stepped up to the plate to make the best of this situation.

I get to work on some very high end frames, and I have to say, Colnago is still my favorite. I'm a bit like the character "The Soup Nazi" in Seinfeld, in that I can pick and choose the bikes and the people I want to work with. Ha, "The Bike Nazi" I am not a shop, although I possess probably more fine tools than any shop I can think of. I do it for fun, and out of a passion that I've had for bikes since I was a kid. At first I was a little worried about routing mechanical cables on this frameset, but after a brief mockup on my borrowed beauty, I have no doubt I could build this frame into as gorgeous a bike as I've ever built. I was also a bit perplexed at the recess for the downtube waterbottle, but even that came to grow on me after a while, since when the water bottle cage is actually installed, it probably looks a bit nicer from a profile point of view. It will collect dirt a bit easier, no doubt, but I'm ok with it at this point. It's funny how the initial change of something can be a bit offputting, then once you get used to it, you might even end up preferring it. I think that might be the case with the swimming pool.

There's nothing earth shatteringly different in this frameset... it just seems like it's being refined just that little bit more, as has been the case with basically every C-series Colnago since the C40. There've been some gimmicky things in years past for sure, imo, like the diamond cutout chainstays of my C50 for example. But by and large, things that changed have been a functional improvement over the prior generation. There were a couple comments in the thread to the effect of well, they haven't designed a completely new frame from the ground up like SoandSo has. To that I say, "Thank god for that". Don't mess with what works, and works very well. It sill looks like a bicycle, and I like that. I love a timeless classic design. This is modern, but it still seems like it will retain it's aesthetic appeal for many years to come, and hold up functionally along the way as well.

Just the sheer interest this thread has garnered says something very special about Colnago as a brand. Sure there is the heritage. Sure there are countless victories atop their framesets. Sure the likes of Merckx, Sarronni and others have all served to add to the lure of the brand. And to this day, Ernesto himself, is still at the helm at 86 years of age. What other bicycle manufacturer can claim all of that.

But all the heritage and palmares aside, I hope if nothing else, this thread served to show that sound design and craftsmanship are still alive in at least one manufacturer's mind. You need look no further than the crown jewel of this frame to see that... the bottom bracket. In a world of throwaway, out of tolerance carbon holes that seem to pass as acceptable receptacles for the main energy transfer center of the bicycle, it's nice to see that at least one manufacturer went the extra mile to ensure that despite what pressfit option you may choose to go with, that the frame holding it in will be remain sound for a long time to come.

And with that, I think it's fitting that I leave you with the very same picture that I opened this thread with....
Image

Thanks for following along... I think I'm done.
Cal
Last edited by Calnago on Sat Mar 24, 2018 12:33 am, edited 3 times in total.
Colnago C64 - The Naked Build; Colnago C60 - PR99; Trek Koppenberg - Where Emonda and Domane Meet;
Unlinked Builds (searchable): Colnago C59 - 5 Years Later; Trek Emonda SL Campagnolo SR; Special Colnago EPQ

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guyc
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by guyc

Well I’d like to say thank you.

I may well be collecting mine today. This thread played a large part in making my mind up.

Kudos Cal. The detail was incredible.

fromtrektocolnago
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by fromtrektocolnago

you're not done until you give us that ride report. :D
Colnago C-59 (Dura Ace)
Firefly(Ultegra)
Colnago C-64 disc(ultegra) with Bora 35 wheels

lwk
Posts: 85
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by lwk

fromtrektocolnago wrote:
Sat Mar 24, 2018 9:32 am
you're not done until you give us that ride report. :D
Well, it would first need to be the build report :beerchug:

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Calnago
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by Calnago

@guyc: what size is yours?
Colnago C64 - The Naked Build; Colnago C60 - PR99; Trek Koppenberg - Where Emonda and Domane Meet;
Unlinked Builds (searchable): Colnago C59 - 5 Years Later; Trek Emonda SL Campagnolo SR; Special Colnago EPQ


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Calnago
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by Calnago

Damnit!!!! That’s my size. So jealous. Looking forward to your thoughts.
Colnago C64 - The Naked Build; Colnago C60 - PR99; Trek Koppenberg - Where Emonda and Domane Meet;
Unlinked Builds (searchable): Colnago C59 - 5 Years Later; Trek Emonda SL Campagnolo SR; Special Colnago EPQ

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guyc
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by guyc

I have it.

I'm a little speechless so far. The build has been beaurifully executed. It's so well done. They've really done it well.

But. It has to go back on Tuesday.







For some Bora Ultra 50's to be fitted. The Mavics just aren't special enough for it. So until then it's under wraps.

People can freak out about running Campag wheels with Dura-Ace in the meantime. They just looked 'right'. And oh those hubs...the shop had 3 Ottantas in and we tried both the 50's and 35's from one of those and another C64 being built. For the riding I do (rollers in Hampshire/Wiltshire/Surrey and no mountains or big climbs) it doesn't make much difference but for the 56" the 50's worked better visually. I'm also 184cm and 84kgs so the extra stiffness won't hurt!

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Calnago
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by Calnago

Fair enough, don’t worry about mixing the Boras with your Shimano Group. The Boras are simply hands down my favorite wheels bar none at any price.
Hell, look at my Koppenberg... the frame is plastered with big SHIMANO logos yet I’m running full Campy (except for pedals) on it.
My jaw dropped when your wrote “But it has to go back on Tuesday...”. I thought “oh no, what went wrong?” Glad to hear it’s just to put some better shoes on. Hell, maybe it will stay there till Friday and they can put full Campy on the thing, you know... to go with the wheels and all. Lol
Colnago C64 - The Naked Build; Colnago C60 - PR99; Trek Koppenberg - Where Emonda and Domane Meet;
Unlinked Builds (searchable): Colnago C59 - 5 Years Later; Trek Emonda SL Campagnolo SR; Special Colnago EPQ

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guyc
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by guyc

Calnago wrote:
Sat Mar 24, 2018 5:14 pm
Fair enough, don’t worry about mixing the Boras with your Shimano Group. The Boras are simply hands down my favorite wheels bar none at any price.
Hell, look at my Koppenberg... the frame is plastered with big SHIMANO logos yet I’m running full Campy (except for pedals) on it.
My jaw dropped when your wrote “But it has to go back on Tuesday...”. I thought “oh no, what went wrong?” Glad to hear it’s just to put some better shoes on. Hell, maybe it will stay there till Friday and they can put full Campy on the thing, you know... to go with the wheels and all. Lol Image
:lol:

I have no money for about 3 years now

by Weenie


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