Colnago C50

[Tom Kunich]

It rained yesterday morning and the roads were wet until late in the afternoon. So rather than take the ride that would complete my first thousand miles of the year, I worked all day on my C50.

As I have said before, I have been using Centaur levers. Lou seems to not like the fact that the sweat and pressure from your hands wipes the name of the lever off which is merely painted on rather than etched. Well, I agree with him but the Carbon levers on the Athena 11 speed rather rapidly degrade and the finish starts flaking off. For my money I would rather the name wipe off than the entire finish on a carbon lever.

I talked to a real mechanical engineer and not a pretend one like Frank, and he told me that he had been running mixed groups since the 11 speed came out and that he never trusted for one second the claim of Campy that the high end components aren't compatible with the lower end. He says that is simply an advertising load of crap to sell more groups than components.

I installed the Centaur silver levers on the bar and discovered that I had enough leftover outer cables from previous builds to put the entire bike together instead of opening a new Campy Cable package. I sonically cleaned the new chain and waxed it and while it was cooling installed the new ultra torque cups and the Chorus 11 speed crankset. I then installed the levers which have returned to 6 mm hex fittings for the locking screws. For some reason new levers come with pre-threaded shift inner cables so all I needed were new brake inners which I had a set of.

It took me half an hour to complete the assembly and to have the bike shifting and braking properly. At that time I had another attack of dizziness that I will have to discuss with my neurologist next Wednesday. I think that the medication doesn't enter my system in a steady amount but occasionally has a strong spurt. This stuff is toxic so it can cause effects like this.

My cat advised me not to work on the bike anymore, so we went into the house and made a quick supper of chicken and rice for me and the wife.

Today I will have to cut the inner cables to the correct length and install the ends and wrap the handlebar tape to finish the bike. Thursday, I will complete a test ride of the bike. I normally do a flat ride for the initial test. After I had gotten dizzy, I installed a Garmin mount so that I can also test the Version 9,26 firmware addition while I'm at it. Since the description of what the revision was supposed to fix was exactly the problem I was having I expect to no longer have any trouble with the Garmin.

As for the handlebar tape - it includes those cheap garbage silver plastic bar end pieces. I have some lock-ins but they don't fit inside the ends of the integrated bar. So digging about I found a set of deep rubber bar ends that should work.

I thought long and hard about getting a set of Chorus levers but in the end decided that since I have no problems using the Centaur, getting more expensive levers simply to be able to shift down three gears at once rather than simply pushing the release 3 times was rather foolish.

I had been about to use a set of Bontrager aluminum wheels on the bike but then changed my mind and installed my Superteam 50 mm deep clinchers with an aluminum braking surface. This gives me the best of all possible worlds. My plan is to keep the Trek Alpha and the C50 and sell off everything else if people have any money to buy something again after allowing election fraud to place Biden in office.

Though a little off subject, we've seen Russia grow its own Hitler attempting to commit gynecide of an entire country. I wonder how long the people of Russia are going to put up with this when they see how weak the Russian military is. Even if they have no feelings for the gynecide in the Ukraine, their sons and daughters being murdered in a senseless guerilla war bound now to last forever is going to make them wonder about what Putin actually thinks of the worth of their own lives.

How many other Russian satellites will now see it is time to rise up?

In the meantime, I'm too old to do anything myself and will ride my C50 come hell and high water.

[Tom Kunich]

Oh, wait, "come hell and high water" will be interpreted by the morons on the left as me believing in man-made global warming. Since they know not the slightest thing about science they are sucker enough to believe in those lies that are generated purely to control them. They are freakishly happy to be controlled so far be it from me to contradict their ideas. But I know differently. When during the "hottest year on record" the arctic ice sheet is larger and deeper than most years on record one would think that proof alone that they have been led by the nose. So I guess they like the feel of a fishhook and leader. This will give Russell who is some sort of idiot, the chance to quote Dr. Michael Mann about how we are burning up.

He will of course ignore Climategate showing that they purposely altered the climate record to make these false claims but then Russell has never been very bright. Nor has Jeff and Flunky: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/?sh=491cf4aa27ba

[Tom Kunich]

On Wednesday, March 16, 2022 at 9:00:35 AM UTC-7, Tom Kunich wrote:

Getting ready to put the handlebar tape on the inside diameter of the integrated bar is only 16 mm in diameter. This means that most of the bar ends won't fit. So I had to order a set that will arrive Saturday. This won't stop me from finishing it but on the test ride I will have to be careful that I don't drop the bike. Well, that rarely occurs on flat rides so I'm not going to worry about it.

[Tom Kunich]

Well, sort of a nasty morning so I didn't get out until 10 AM. I had intended on doing a flat 30 miler but the bike rode so well, I went up Niles Canyon and onto Palomares Canyon and after that with some in town climbs I got almost 2,000 feet of climbing and 38 miles. At one spot I thought my heart was beating too hard so I stopped for a couple of minutes. But felling the vein in my neck I was surprised that my heart was almost at rest rate. So I took off again and didn't stop again. There is a farmhouse in several places on the steep part of the descent and the people that live there when they are occupied don't look when they pull out into the narrow street. So I have to be careful through there. So I only hit 34 mph. I was in no hurry and tried to do most of the climb in the 28 and only grab lower gears when my speed got too low. For the life of me, now I can't remember how I did that entire climb in a 39-25 I must be getting old.

[Tom Kunich]

I have a guard to protect under shifting when downshifting and throwing the chain onto the bottom bracket and chipping the paint. The diameter of the tubing of the C50 is slightly larger than 1 1/8th and smaller than the 1 3/8ths for this type of guard. The standard screw that holds it on wasn't quite long enough to get it started so I went down to the hardware store and bought a long size 5 mm cap head. This easily allowed me to start it and slowly tighten it down but it took a lot of fiddling with to get it into the correct position. So that allowed me to loosen the lower limit screw a bit so that in low-low it doesn't make a scrapping sound against the inside of the front derailleur. It appeared to look like I had threaded the front derailleur cable into the correct position (inside of the lock screw and not outside) but the FR appears to also allow you to put the cable outside. Or perhaps some people want to wrap the FD cable all of the way around the screw which would greatly lessen the cable torque necessary but also make it very hard to adjust. In any case, on the work stand it doesn't scrap but only a hard climb can tell.

I also picked up some 6-32 nuts and bolts and reconnected a cabinet door hinge in the garage that the cat had managed to break off since before it had wood screws.

I didn't sleep well last night since I had drank a large amount of V8 and was getting up all night. Does anyone know about these aquablation treatments for prostate problems? The treatments I've heard of before ranged from removal of the prostate so that you had to wear a bag to my brother having the passageway reamed out which left him in pain for months. Seems to be that they should have gotten something better than that.