Felt F5 2013 - barely into its stride, but...

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FishNo6
Posts: 30
Joined: Sun May 08, 2022 10:29 am

by FishNo6

Hi all,
I bought my Felt F5 new 9 years ago. My sedentary, overweight, middle-aged thinking stretched to: "I want a road bike, this looks fast, and hey, it's been heavily discounted, so it's a bargain". No experience, no bike fit, no LBS, no riding friends, no clue. 3 or 4 rides and less than 50km later I gave up. I couldn't cope with the bike geometry, even with a flipped stem, the saddle hurt like hell, I could barely get up the first hill, Staple Lane, that I met, and the 2nd, Guildford Lane/White Lane, was an insurmountable wall. I left the poor bike unused and unloved for 7 years.

I dug it out of the garage in August 2020 during the dark days of UK lockdown 2 and we're both now coming up on 19,000km with 240,000m of climbing. Most of my riding is up, down and around the Surrey Hills area of the UK, so lots of short, sharp hills and ropey road surfaces. I'm not fast, I don't race, but I've completed my first hilly audax and sportive events this year, and I'm inching towards my OFFICIAL 100Climbs No14 Box Hill target of 7 minutes. To get the weight weenie stats up front, the bike as new was probably 8.2+kg without pedals and is currently just under 7.3kg including cages, phone mount, bell (very important) and pedals.

IMG_20221010_144753.jpg
My first 'upgrade' was purely for survival; switching from the original 11-25 cassette to an 11-28 and shortly thereafter to an 11-32. That helped. Next up/sidegrades continued the comfort/fit theme: tyres from 23's to GP5000 25's, a new 120mm stem (up from 100mm) and carbon handlebar, seatpost and saddle with cut-out (bliss!). The Kalloy Uno 7 stem, Toseek 'Super Light' carbon bars, and Elita One saddle and offset seat-post, all recommendations from here, sent me down the AliExpress rabbit hole for the first time. With the weight weenie bug just beginning to bite, in came Ali carbon bottle cages.

By that stage I'd decided that the original Mavic CXP 22 rimmed wheels must be holding me back, so built up new ones with Kinlin XR31T rims, Sapim Race spokes & Miche Primato Syntesi hubs. Thanks to Malcom Borg for his advice on this board and his thecycleclinic.co.uk site and my apologies for not buying the parts from him. I almost wore through the rear rims in under 1000km; I've now learnt to use the front brake more and to check brake-pads before every ride. A 2nd Kinlin took a nasty gouge from a pot-hole strike, giving me more re-lacing practice, but the wheels have been true and trouble-free for over 15,000km since then. They've trimmed about 400g from the bike, though they're still a relatively meaty 1710g.

The bike came with a Shimano 105 5700 10-speed groupset. Replacing the brakes with on-sale Ultegra R8000 dual-pivots (and Koolstop Salmons) dramatically improved my braking and descent confidence. At which point I had my first and so far only "over-confident but under-skilled" accident. Lots of missing skin, finger-nail pulled off and a broken rib. Bike was fine. I'm back to being a slow and cautious descender.

Next up, with mechanical quickly going out of fashion, was to fit bargain half-price R8000 shifters and derailleurs. They're awesome - it's such a treat having the bike change gear whenever you ask it. Only drawback: the gunky coating on the inners - it's going to be uncoated, shiny, polished stainless from now on. The new group-set also meant a new cassette and chains: SROAD SLR2 lightweight monobloc all-steel-cogs 11-32 cassette and 4 KMC X11-EL's in rotation. A perfect time to jump on the chain-waxing band-wagon. A slow cooker, plain old food-grade paraffin wax, nothing added, nothing taken away and 300km or so between chain swaps, giving me a chain-wax day every 5-6 weeks. The cassette and the 4 chains between them are at 8000km, looking and feeling good. And, oh the joy of clean hands, and the quiet but deeply satisfying sense of schadenfreude at friends' grubby mitts, jerseys, bibs, handlebars, shifters, keys, front doors, dogs, children & partners when they drop chains.

The F5 was shipped with FSA's inaccurately titled Gossamer crankset. I finally managed to snag a lightly used SRAM Red Exogram BB30 crankset on Ebay, and because it's a rather lovely carbon thing, I also invested in a chain catcher. 250g (well minus 6g for the chain catcher) saved. Swapping out the chunky original QR's, headset expander, collar & spacers, and the seatpost collar with suspiciously delicate looking AliExpress substitutes brings us nearly up to date. None of these was anywhere near the lightest to be found, but the titanium QR's and the single-bolt seatpost collar in particular leave me a little nervous, though they've survived their first 200km. Most recent change was much-needed - wrap some light Cinelli Cork bar-tape.

If you got this far, then that brings us up to date. A rather handsome (I'm biased), reasonably comfortable but old-fashioned, non-aero, mechanical, externally cabled, rim brake 7.267kg bike that I thoroughly enjoy riding all day and that I can easily maintain & service for myself.
Felt F5 weights 10Oct2022.png
Weaknesses? Tyre clearance. I'd love some more grip, a bit more pot-hole resiliance and a bit more comfort. I have a 28c (measures 29mm on a 19mm internal width rim) up front, but even the 25c I have at the back shows some sidewall wear and a 28c would only have 2.5mm clearance.

What's next? Can I safely and, well, frugally, get below 7kg for a ride-every-day bike? And will that get me up Box Hill 14 seconds faster? (No). I've ordered Xpedo single-sided RF-S1 SPD's from AliExpress as potential replacements for my Shimano PD-M780 double-sided SPD's. There are lighter options out there, but none near the £30 of the RF-S1's. If I can get the hang of single-sided then they'll take 99g off. I'll also look at some of the light-weight outer cables next time I need to re-cable.

Beyond this, my options for safe and budget-restricted weight reductions are narrowing down. I'm 80kg on a good day, I'm nearer 60 than 50, I ride in a hilly area with plenty of free pot-holes, and I've discovered that it really hurts when you fall off.
  • Brakes: EE G4's are too rich for me - real ones go for £400+ used on Ebay. I'm tempted by the July 21's, but I don't think they'll do as good a job as my Ultegras, and the current UK price of £160 is expensive for an experiment.
    Lightweight tpu inner-tubes: I could save 100g's compared to my Continental Race Lights, but @alanyu has frightened me off the RideNow's.
    Wheels: these might be the next mini-project. Find a moderately priced, well-reviewed set of 26-28mm wide, 35-40mm deep, hooked rims with a high-temp resin & water-clearing brake-surface cuts, pop them onto Bitex RAF/RAR12's with some Pillar wing spokes and brass nipples and I should have a sub-1500g winner. Would need to work out whether I can go 24 rear (triplet lacing?) & 20 front. Even as summer/dry wheels, they'd need to be nearly as bomb-proof as my current Kinlin/Miche/Sapim wheels though.
And nagging away at me: maybe that's as far as the F5 should go. Maybe I could find a cheap, light, comfy, sturdy, 'lightly-aero-at-most', BB30, disc-brake, probably-open-mould frame with ports for an externally cabled cockpit, a conventional seatpost and 32-35mm tyre clearance, then transplant the shifters, derailleurs, cranks, seatpost, saddle, stem & bars, lace up some mid-section carbon wheels and pop on some Juin Tech GT-F's.
Last edited by FishNo6 on Tue Oct 11, 2022 7:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

by Weenie


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MrCurrieinahurry
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by MrCurrieinahurry

Nice!! I'll look out for you around the Surrey hills/lanes. Do you ride for a club? I'm with Kingston wheelers

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tarmackev
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by tarmackev

Very enjoyable read. Very cool bike as well. I had an F4 that I loved.

jurez
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Joined: Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:50 am

by jurez

nice description and a fun read.

facelessfools
Posts: 149
Joined: Sat Jul 24, 2010 12:11 am

by facelessfools

I actually ordered the AliExpress EE Brakes... They arrived in the official packaging too .. only 150usd for the pair

I did also get some ridenow tubes. I've had the tubolite for a while and once patched they seem fairly worthless. So I got a few of the ridenows. So far so good but you could always go tubeless with your new wheel setup.



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febake
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Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2022 1:45 pm
Location: Epsom

by febake

Awesome. I'm struck by how similar my own tale is: nearer 60 than 50, living in Surrey, started properly in lockdown, etc. Plus, my first road bike was a Felt f5. Very similar spec, too.
I upgraded to a whole new bike after the Felt seemed old and sluggish (bought a Domane SLR, then a TCR Advanced SL) and relegated the frame to the turbo. After a while, I realised that - actually - it was a responsive, fun ride; so when spring came around, decided to put it back together as a daily beater.
At that point, it dawned on me that the Felt was better than that. It was light (sub 900g for the frame, IIRC) and snappy, fast uphill, planted on the descents. So, I thought: let's have a go at making it as good as possible.
That's where I am now. A winter spent on eBay means it's got a lot of bargain Dura Ace 9100 - brakes, shifters, crankset, front mech. There's an Ultegra GS rear mech, so I can run an 11-32. Giant Carbon SLR bars, a Hope seat post. Selle San Marco Mantra Superleggera saddle. Mavic R-Sys wheelset, with Pirelli P-Zero Race tyres, 26mm. It does have ridenow TPU tubes - I've also heard the warnings, but am convinced that careful braking and avoiding dragging should see off any issues.
It's totally old-school: external cabling, traditional geometry, mechanical groupset - but it's fantastic. It's light too - last time I weighed it, it was 6.67kg
20220615_195608.jpg

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MrCurrieinahurry
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by MrCurrieinahurry

Love it!! And great weight

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FishNo6
Posts: 30
Joined: Sun May 08, 2022 10:29 am

by FishNo6

Thanks everyone for the kind comments.
febake wrote:
Wed Oct 19, 2022 10:29 am
Awesome. I'm struck by how similar my own tale is: nearer 60 than 50, living in Surrey, started properly in lockdown, etc. Plus, my first road bike was a Felt f5. Very similar spec, too.
I upgraded to a whole new bike after the Felt seemed old and sluggish (bought a Domane SLR, then a TCR Advanced SL) and relegated the frame to the turbo. After a while, I realised that - actually - it was a responsive, fun ride; so when spring came around, decided to put it back together as a daily beater.
At that point, it dawned on me that the Felt was better than that. It was light (sub 900g for the frame, IIRC) and snappy, fast uphill, planted on the descents. So, I thought: let's have a go at making it as good as possible.
That's where I am now. A winter spent on eBay means it's got a lot of bargain Dura Ace 9100 - brakes, shifters, crankset, front mech. There's an Ultegra GS rear mech, so I can run an 11-32. Giant Carbon SLR bars, a Hope seat post. Selle San Marco Mantra Superleggera saddle. Mavic R-Sys wheelset, with Pirelli P-Zero Race tyres, 26mm. It does have ridenow TPU tubes - I've also heard the warnings, but am convinced that careful braking and avoiding dragging should see off any issues.
It's totally old-school: external cabling, traditional geometry, mechanical groupset - but it's fantastic. It's light too - last time I weighed it, it was 6.67kg20220615_195608.jpg
@febake, That is a bit spooky, and I guess it shows what a great bike (and upgrade candidate) the F5 was and is. Getting it down to 6.67kg is a good effort though and probably beyond me. It's also fascinating to hear your comparison with the TCR as that's on my very tentative potential replacement list. I'm really interested to see how you get on with the Ridenows - I ordered 4 + a patch kit about 4 hours before @alanyu posted his dire rim brake temperature warning, so haven't dared fit them. I try not to drag brakes, but I'm definitely on off, on off for a couple of minutes descending in the wet - so, for most of November to February - on hills such as Crocknorth, Whitedown & Combe Lane. In the meantime, the bike's about to go into Winter mode with the addition of Flinger Race Pro's, so I'll try to leave off on weight-weenying for a few months.

febake
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Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2022 1:45 pm
Location: Epsom

by febake

@FishNo6 - Same hills as me! I've been up and down all of those, on the ridenows - and I've had no issues so far. Whitedown is the fastest, I guess - you just have to make sure you're in a position to brake hard enough just past the pill box, so you don't wash out on the hairpin. Same as Crocknorth really - anything faster than about 55-60kmh, and it's way too hairy for me. But the tubes have (touch wood) been fine. I have Carbon rims on the TCR (Roval CLX 50's) and Mavic R-Sys on the Felt. Tyres are the same (Pirelli Race P-Zero's) so it's safe to make comparisons, and the Ridenows haven't shown any signs of failing. That includes some seriously fast rides down Coldharbour, where the Wahoo showed I went north of 90kmh. Seriously, never again!

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MrCurrieinahurry
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by MrCurrieinahurry

(I'm a Kingston wheeler so may see you guys around the surrey hills sometime)

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spokenwords
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by spokenwords

Thanks for sharing your journey and future goals. Sounds like youre having fun. Also pretty cool that u got some other WW's around you too! Keep it up!
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basilic
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by basilic

hey FishNo6, stylish write-up, thanks.
You could lose a lot of weight on the wheels. Farsports carbon tubulars will be close to 1100g for not a lot of money. For steep hills, tubulars are safer than carbon clinchers, and lighter. Use tape (I use Caden) to glue them on, works fine.

FishNo6
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by FishNo6

What the hell?
With much reduced mileage over a wet and miserable Winter and early Spring, I'd put on an entire Felt F5's worth of weight - twice as much as the previous two years. But what's 7kg of extra body weight when I can maybe work it all off again by October and still trim 500-600g from the F5? To that end I've made a few cunning (or not) purchases over the winter, so these have gone onto the bike.

Mr Control July 20F brakes: Warning - do not read if you're susceptible to weight-weenie single-pivot rim-brake set up flashbacks. I suspect I grabbed Bike24's very last set of New Very Old Stock. These are the same as the 'not-as-famous-as-the-CNC-ones' forged Planet X brakes - so cheaper and 30g or so heavier than the Mr Control July 21 / Planet X CNC / Fouriers BR-DX001 calipers, but supposedly with a slightly better geometry for the cam. These are finicky little so-and-so's. Don't get me started on the crappy 'Cable Mangler' (Trade Marked) cable clamps. I had a particular struggle getting the rear caliper to stay centred as the brake outer cable pushes it off centre after each application of the brakes. Carefully trimming back that outer has helped and the brakes work well with Kool Stop Salmons on the 25mm wide Kinlin alloy rims. Not as stiff, so a little spongier than the Ultegra R8000's they've replaced, but not bad at all and they save 110g.

Xpedo single-sided RF-S1 SPD pedals: I'm still struggling to flip the awkwardly weighted pedal to get the 2nd foot in, so traffic lights are a bit embarrassing, but it is improving, they were comically cheap and I've saved 90g over the Shimano PD-M780 double-sided SPD's. They haven't received the 'bearings that last a 1000 years' love of the Shimano's and I do miss the no-look stomp on the Shimano's.

Minor stuff: Stone 14 tooth pulley wheel, replacing the 11 tooth Shimano tension pulley original. Saving: 0g. Absolutely Nothin' (Say it again), but it looks nice. MI.XIM BR-M590VC brake shoes. They're a pretty anodised red and save a princely 8g compared to 4 R8000 brake shoes or July 20F shoes.

This is all very well, but as a few people have pointed out, the 1710g Kinlin wheels are now the big weight saving opportunity.
.
IMG_20230502_140010.jpg
These are Light Bicycle AR36 rims with grooved graphene tracks, a satin 3K finish to best match that of the F5 frame, 24 & 20 spoke holes and with no spoke access holes for added lacing fun. They came in at 877 for the pair, so 3g underweight. The hubs are Bitex RAF/RAR12's, which at 316g were 15g overweight, and the spokes are CX-Rays & CX-Sprints (the beefier ones are for the rear drive-side). Nipples are Sapim aluminium, which may come back to bite me, but these will be Summer 'nice day' wheels only, until they aren't.

Many hours of magnet, thread & nipple wrangling later these were looking wheel-shaped, though not yet dished, trued, tensioned and stressed. 1413g takes 297g off the bike.

.
IMG_20230503_012644.jpg
And here they are a day later still, tastefully posed in the previously tranquil, bluebell-carpeted woods of Holmbury Hill.
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IMG_20230504_151923.jpg
I'd also finally switched out the Continental 'Race Light' butyl innner tubes for RideNow TPU's. 140g replaced by 76g for a handy 64g saving. One more change: I meant to buy a set or three of the well-reviewed and pleasingly cheap Lifeline Blue Carbon brake pads, but they've been out of stock for several weeks, so I've gone with Clarks equally blue carbon brake pads. All in all, the bike weight, including pedals, bottle cages,phone mount & bell is now 6648g, according to my trusty kitchen scales.

How does it ride? Very well, though I honestly can't feel a whole lot of difference. I had accidentally mounted a GP5000 28, rather than a 25, on the rear wheel and my poor thumbs hurt too much to contemplate removing it - with a WAM of 28.8 it left a whopping 3mm of clearance to the seat-stays. With the lower pressure that did feel a little cushier. How ear-drum piercingly loud is the screech of the Clarks pads on the Light Bicycle rims? Holy kittens of mercy, it's very loud indeed. It was so embarrassingly loud that I dismounted for the last 100m of the sharp descent into Peaslake rather than risk it. It did gradually improve over the course of a very hilly 85km, partly because I learned to brake up to the screech-point. I think and hope that the problem was because I hadn't cleaned the rims after finishing the build; there must have been a little oil transferred via me from the nipple threads to the rims. At least, I hope so, and will find out tomorrow. Otherwise no more carbon-rim cycling until I get some proper pads. The good news was that even with repeated 'feeble braking nearly all the way down' descents the RideNow tpu's didn't melt, which was nice of them. Hopefully that was the biggest test they'll ever face.

jadeptryx
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Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 1:41 am

by jadeptryx

Nice work FishNo6. This is the sort of bike I love to see here!

FishNo6
Posts: 30
Joined: Sun May 08, 2022 10:29 am

by FishNo6

An update on the Light Bicycle AR36's, the July 20F rim brakes and the £6 a set Clarks carbon brake pads:

After 200km and a fair amount of fiddling around to get just a hint of toe-in on the pads, braking is much improved. Could be just the brake pads/rim surface bedding in, removal of probable oil contamination, the pad alignment/toe-in or a bit of all three. The brake screeching is almost gone and I feel much more secure on descents. The geometry of the July 20F's cam is not ideal for 28mm wide rims - it was better with my Kinlin's 24.5mm rims; a very minor 'wide rim' redesign of the (replaceable) cam would be a wonderful thing for the 3 of us still on rim-brakes but not rich enough for EE G4's. Anyway, the brakes are now good enough to keep. Part of today's ride was in the rain, and the braking was not noticeably inferior.

I was less happy with the rear wheel's really low NDS spoke tension, so have tweaked everything up a little, nudging the drive side up closer to their limit, before applying threadlock. If I had my time again, I would lace the wheels 2:1.

There shouldn't be many more weight-saving changes. Just some Litepro 'Super light' cable outers and FSA 'SL' alloy headset bearings when it's time for replacement, and some Ti stem bolts; the existing steel ones have a little rust. Looks like the 28mm rear tyre has just enough clearance, which is great, so that will stay, and I'll also go from 25 to 28mm up front at the next change. All in all, weight will only come down another 50-80g or so, hence 6.6kg looks to be my limit.

by Weenie


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