45kph Ebike Rocketship - Scott Solace eRIDE 2023

[OtterSpace]

A minor update today capturing some small parts:

I already described how high $/g drove me to not upgrade to dura ace shifters, fd, and rd. However, I am incorporating small changes when they are under $3.50/g or if they improve component performance marginally. After the mods decribed in this post and earlier the expected difference in weight between direct mount but otherwise stock Dura-Ace R9270 and my Ultegra R8170 shifters and derailleurs is only 65.12g at an expected delta cost of $857 if I bought used Dura-Ace and sold my Ultegra after taxes, fees, and shipping ($13.16/g).

The items that improve shifting component performance have all been covered above which leaves some small parts to change to Ti.

Shifter Clamps:

The stock shifter clamp assemblies for Ultegra are 34.30g (19.52g for two steel bands, 6.66g for two bolts, 2*0.99g for washers, 2*3.07g for nuts)
Dura-Ace shifter clamp assemblies are 21.77g (10.09g for two ti bands, 3.90g for two bolts, 2*0.95g for washers, 2*2.94g for nuts)
My modified Dura-Ace shifter clamp assemblies are 16.99g (10.09g for two Dura-Ace Ti bands and 6.90g for two aftermarket Ti bolts, washers, and nuts)

Generally you can find used Dura-Ace shifter clamps and bolts for around $60 after shipping and taxes but I harvested mine from my old commuter bike. If you are open to buying aftermarket parts all that you need from it are the Ti clamps.

I purchased the rest of the Ti parts from Aliexpress so prices will vary a bit but I paid 25.53 shipped for two sets of RT120 ($12.77 for each set).

Total weight for these aftermarket parts is 6.90g for the lighter of the two sets. The heavier set was a bit under 7g.

Some other info to share in the research for this is that you can purchase a 13g shifter clamp assembly personally made by a forum member SQUICCHI for 90 pounds + shipping.

Unfortunately the very light Schmolke carbon shifter clamps are not compatible with most of the latest groupsets due to being wider than can fit in the shifter body clamp cutouts. Klaster_1 has a great writeup on them here, here, and here.

More to come on the braking side:

[TLN]

What's your subjective opinion on bike? Considering getting same bike, even though I'm on the opposite side: 100kg on 61cm (58/XL in Scott) frame.
I'm also in Bay area, and it seems that bike like that will turn most "boring" rides into pretty fun.

[OtterSpace]

What's your subjective opinion on bike? Considering getting same bike, even though I'm on the opposite side: 100kg on 61cm (58/XL in Scott) frame.
I'm also in Bay area, and it seems that bike like that will turn most "boring" rides into pretty fun.

Performance ebikes in general are insanely under engaged with in the road community which is a shame because to me they make more sense for road than anywhere else. On MTB you have to worry about spiking power more due to technical trail features and also trail erosion which are not the case for road riding.

At a high level this bike is a massive game changer for me and I can highly recommend bikes like it to anyone in the USA, where they are not restricted, provided that you are fine with the high price point and are fine with the bike depreciating as new better designs hopefully are launched.

I have a few nice bikes that I love to ride but I have a habit of pushing myself too hard on them which isn't the case on an ebike so my base training is far funner and rewarding now in many ways.

edit: I almost always ride at max assist. Sustainably riding at somewhere around 9w/kg for an hour and a half is very addicting so I ride a lot more now. Howerver the max assist is the same for all frame sizes and riders so heavier riders benifit less than smaller riders in w/kg terms. I just wish the CdA of the bike was better instead of the aero brick its fork and downtube are.

When I compare lunch rides I basically can do my normal loop plus all the side stuff for an extra 5 miles but 2x the climbing height in the same time which makes for a far funner ride without beating myself up.

The only real negative I've found is that it doesnt reward you for sustained riding in zones 4-5 so I make sure to still ride once a week on my other high end non ebikes to continue to appreciate the difficulty of climbing that the ebike smooths over. A good way to think about it is ebikes are like training on an ERG smart trainer mode which is great for training general fitness does not replicate truely spirited riding.

Almost all of my rides are solo but when I ride with others I generally take other bikes. However when I bring this bike I generally ride with minimum support and dont push the pace.

[TLN]

What's your subjective opinion on bike? Considering getting same bike, even though I'm on the opposite side: 100kg on 61cm (58/XL in Scott) frame.
I'm also in Bay area, and it seems that bike like that will turn most "boring" rides into pretty fun.

edit: I almost always ride at max assist. Sustainably riding at somewhere around 9w/kg for an hour and a half is very addicting so I ride a lot more now. Howerver the max assist is the same for all frame sizes and riders so heavier riders benifit less than smaller riders in w/kg terms. I just wish the CdA of the bike was better instead of the aero brick its fork and downtube are.

The only real negative I've found is that it doesnt reward you for sustained riding in zones 4-5 so I make sure to still ride once a week on my other high end non ebikes to continue to appreciate the difficulty of climbing that the ebike smooths over. A good way to think about it is ebikes are like training on an ERG smart trainer mode which is great for training general fitness does not replicate truely spirited riding.

Almost all of my rides are solo but when I ride with others I generally take other bikes. However when I bring this bike I generally ride with minimum support and dont push the pace.

Thanks for very detailed response, that sums it nicely.

At this point I got too many bikes, and I'd rather sell some before purchasing another one, but we'll see.
I'm not aiming at ultra-light weight (and there's no point with largest frame) but it's safe to say that I might get to 12.xx kg, with sub-1300gm wheels.

I'm not planning on selling my Orca and considering building Solace as "gravel" bike (but I was considering those LW wheels for "road" application). so I might add fat road wheels later on.

[Miller]

Regarding Garmin data overlay, I notice that the new insta360 Ace action camera can export footage with Garmin data overlay via the insta360 app.

[OtterSpace]

I completed my swap over to Campagnolo DB-F161 on my 12s Shimano hydro front.

This fork is a native 180 fork so I swapped over to a 180mm floating rotor too both of which I've been curious of as well for road riding with tons of spirited medium length high % active descents like we have in the bay area. However, I'll be honest I wouldn't have gone 180 initially if I wasnt forced to.

Why make this change at all? I just like tuning stuff to see what I like as a way of enjoying the hobby and as a way of keeping myself excited to ride more to test new things out. Performance on Shimano was fine but I've ran Shagura before (Shimano 11s + Magura MT8 FM) and I found it to be marginally better than stock Shimano 11s braking. While Shagura 11s performed better than Shimano 11s bleeding was trickier and Shimano increased their pad clearanace when they revised their design for 12s. I've always been curious if Shimano + Campagnolo would work given that so many people are big fans of Campagnolo calipers and they evolved from Magura MT8 FM and are mineral oil like Shimano.

The Campagnolo front caliper is nice because it doesnt require an adapter plate, and two additional bolts to fix it, like Shimano & SRAM which use "rear" 140 calipers for the front. It also is slimmer and more aero but you are a slave to your fork drilling which actually makes it impossible to use this caliper on a Tarmac SL8 or Aethos due to the non standard fork drilling on those bikes.

Also I couldn't just leave the caliper alone given it uses steel bolts without flow passthrough so the bolts connecting the two sides, the hose compression bolt, the fork attachment bolts, and the pad bolts were all swapped to titanium.

I have two "rear" 140 Campagnolo calipers (DB-EK140 which are the same as DB-R141 except for branding) too ready to swap over but decided to hold off for now until I make sure it rides well. These calipers would allow me to go back to a 160 front rotor as well if I find I want to swap that back. These were also bolt modded for the bolts that attach the two sides. The two bottom photos are of the two modded calipers while the top images are of the stock bolts that connect the two calipers halves and the titanium replacements (each caliper uses two bolts).

I'll report back after I have more miles on it and plan on making a dedicated post on the road subforum once I have a more settled opinion on it.

I am completely fine if this experiment fails and will be honest about the experience as well.

[maldock]

Fan of this thread as I love the detailed write up along with the attached pics.

I'm a fan of write ups and thought this ran similar to the lines of an aviation/ trip report thread I follow
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-re ... -jl-f.html
(Hope this doesn't get removed if it's deemed unrelated to cycling by mods)

Just thought you should know.

Anyhow awaiting new quality of life bike updates!

[jch3n]

While Shagura 11s performed better than Shimano 11s bleeding was trickier

What's tricky about the bleed? Got any tips or tricks?

(btw, I'm pretty sure I bought one of your MT4 calipers on eBay)

[OtterSpace]

While Shagura 11s performed better than Shimano 11s bleeding was trickier

What's tricky about the bleed? Got any tips or tricks?

(btw, I'm pretty sure I bought one of your MT4 calipers on eBay)

Nice.

The bleed on MT4 has two issues one inherent in the design without a flow cutoff port and the other comes from the bleed kits. Some people get lucky with the bleed kit they have so they dont run into the second issue.

For the flow cutoff you just have to bleed in a way where you can remove the bleed adapter and hose from the port on the caliper without introducing air. Fairly standard but annoying stuff just move the caliper to the top of the system before removing the bleed parts and attaching the bleed screw.

The bleed kit is the bigger issue. Most kits do Shimano parts well enough. However from what I experienced the Park Tools universal bleed kit is trash for Magura. Their bleed port adapter only has a few threads of engagement and an O ring and would leak terribly. The solution for that part is simple use the correct bleed port adapter sourced from Magura. If you were the one to buy mine I included the magura bleed adapter. In general I've learned that you should always try to start off using the recommended manufacturer bleed parts as I've tried more vendors calipers. The syringe and hose from the Magura kits work well but you could use others. On the Shimano end use whatever you have used for bleeds before as that end isnt changed.

However the Magura bleed block is trash and the worst I've ever used. They literally call it a transport device instead of a bleed block and it has no good cutouts for the pistons and is just a small amount of plastic. Camapagnolo makes the best one by far (their blue one) but I don't think the top part fits in magura even though the width will. Campagnolo uses Magura style pads, maybe the older version would work with Magura but I wouldn't risk it. Therefore for Magura I'd recommend using a universal solid plastic block to avoid the pistons pushing out too much during a bleed and overfilling the system.

Regarding barbs and olives I'd recommend using Shimano for your shifters. Either work but the Magura parts are longer and therefore harder to remove from the shifters if you use the Shimano compression shifter bolts from personal experience. I dont think everyone agrees on this point however so make your own decision. I've never had leaking issues on shigura.

edit: got home and checked Magura with the Campag bleed block. It fits and the pistons are smaller than Campag 2nd gen Calipers so the Magura pistons fit the machined cutout in the Campag bleed block. I tried taking a picture of this but just cant show it. I havent tried bleeding this combo but expect it to work very well. Also the Campag bleed block is non magnetic so you dont have to worry about the Magura magnetic pistons attracting to the Campag bleed block.

Fan of this thread as I love the detailed write up along with the attached pics.

I'm a fan of write ups and thought this ran similar to the lines of an aviation/ trip report thread I follow
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-re ... -jl-f.html
(Hope this doesn't get removed if it's deemed unrelated to cycling by mods)

Just thought you should know.

Anyhow awaiting new quality of life bike updates!

Thanks for sharing I'll give it a read when I get a chance.

More to come in a few weeks. Most of my bike tinkering attention has been on my SL6 rim rebuild as of late. The next steps on this bike are to add the campag caliper to the rear, now that I've spent enough time with the front caliper and know I prefer it to Shimano, and finally go tubeless. I keep puncturing in ways tubeless would help mostly from small sharp metal on the side of roads with multiple lanes that get a lot of cars stirring up debris. This example from just yesterday. Tubeless should be easy on this bike but I early adopted tubless for road with 25mm tires pre Covid and didnt have a great time and then went back to tubes so I've been late to the party.

[RyanH]

I've been using the Campagnolo bleed kits with Magura and haven't had any issues.

[OtterSpace]

I've been using the Campagnolo bleed kits with Magura and haven't had any issues.

Good to know I'll make sure to capture that info when I type up my Shimano + Campag caliper experiences in the road forum.

----------

Spring is fully in the air here in the Bay Area of California and there are tons more people out and about. I love this time of year.

Additionally this week local schools are off for spring break and I ran into a zoomer bike gang on hilly roads for the first time.

I saw them coming up a big hill that I was heading down and they grouped together to go bomb some single track in a sleepy neighbourhood of 4-8 million dollar houses. I looped back around as part of my normal hilly 21 mile (~34km) hour & 10min lunch ride.

They are faster than you and will eventually be riding some of your local roads too. It might not be this year or the next 5 years but they are coming and they are faster than you if they are on an ebike.

Personally I love to see people out on bikes so I think the future is looking bright. At the top of the hill I said to have a good ride, they asked if I was on an ebike, I said yes, and then they complimented my TT helmet.

But as an FYI you might start to see more of this in the coming years.

[OtterSpace]

edited: double post