[background music] Ollie: Welcome to Part 4 of my series in building
a time trial bike on a budget. In this video, I'm going to fit my new bigger, faster chainrings
I've managed to get. I'm going to sort out the cockpit. I've got some new trial bars
to go on there. Then, after all that, I was hoping to get out on a test ride for it outside,
but the weather is taking a turn. It's looking a bit crap, so that might have to wait, but
we'll see how it'll go. I'll get fitting all the bits first.
First up, the chainrings that I'm going to fit onto the bike. These are a used pair of
rotor chainrings, but there are noQ, which means they're standard round rotor rings,
they're not the oval ones that rotor are known for, which is what I want, I want round ones.
It is something that you can often get a good bargain for online as well, because chainrings
last a very long time. It is easy to see if you know what you're looking for, if they
are past the best and to be avoided. If they're really worn down on the teeth, they look like
shark's teeth and not really-- We'll just steer clear of them, but if you could still
get the ramping profiles on there as our knees, then they're perfectly fine to use.
This is an FSA Gossamer crank that comes with this bike. It's a pretty stock crank. You
find it on a lot of bikes. It's a popular what we call OEM component that's fitted by
manufacturers. That's for good reason, it's reliable, it's a solid chainset, but there
are lighter, stiffer and slightly more aerodynamic chainsets and crankarms out there that people
might put on really bling mega TT bikes. I would argue that in terms of bang for your
buck, that's quite an extravagant, very marginal improvement to the bike, and not something
that I would want to prioritize in a budget time trail build. I'm happy to stick with
these-- Also, the right length for me 172.5. Because I'm sticking with these, these chainrings
fit because this is a five-bolt crank as you can see. The bolt spacing is 110 BCD, which
means these will fit because this is also 110 BCD. Let's take off the chain, take off
the chainrings and get these rings fitted. Once you've undone all your bolts, you'll
find that your chainrings can just slide off. Something else that I should remind you all,
because I mentioned it, I think, in the first video in this series, but it was a while ago
now, is the reason why I'm changing the chainrings is that they are compact to 50.34 on there,
and they're just too small for what I want on a time trial bike.
Something else that's cool about these chainrings is that this outer one is solid. That's deliberate.
That's just to try and improve aerodynamics a bit as well. I've never seen any data actually
on this that's been done independently. I would imagine that there is some kind of aerodynamic
saving from having a solid ring. Not likely to be much. I mainly use this thing. It looks
cool. [chuckles] When you put chainrings on, this bit, [unintelligible
00:03:26] let me see that there, that goes behind the crankarm. It stops the chain getting
caught in between the crankarm and the chainring. Something I'm doing, as I fit these chainring
bolts, something I'm doing, which is a good practice today, is I'm putting them all on
loose, a bit secure, so the chainring is in place. Then, I'm going to use the torque wrench
to get them all at the same torque as well on each bolt.
Well, I've got my chainrings on there. It looks good though, doesn't it? I think that
chain looks really smart with this fellow. One thing I've noticed though, and this is
always a good thing to do whenever you take your chain off and you just have a free chainset,
is to give it a spin, because it gives you an idea of how free the bearings are. You
can see though that is spinning, that needs a bit of work. It's not as free as I'd like
it to be. It's spinning pretty well. I've seen much worse. It's not seized by any means,
but I reckon we can do better than that. What I am going to do is another job, which
is take off the chainset and then have a look at the bearings, maybe service them, or get
a new bottom bracket. The good thing is, this bottom bracket its easily replaced. It's threaded
into the frame, and it's an inexpensive one to replace. Now, the next thing I'm going
to do is replace the chain. The reason being is the previous one wasn't worn out, but because
I've gone up chainring sizes quite significantly, it will now be too short, so you need to have
the correct length chain. I've got a chain here that I'm going to put on. This has been
stripped, I've taken the degreaser off and I've actually put on the lube that I showed
you in the last video. I'm going to attach that now. I'm also going to show you how I
attach a chain and how I measure it and get it the right length, because I appreciate
some of you have done that before, and there's a number of different methods you can use
to do this. My favorite is the Sheldon Brown method. He
has this website, which is like the bible of bike maintenance, and is one of those websites
that existed before- when the internet came into being. He still has that same style and
aesthetic to it, like those old HTML pages. Now, the Sheldon Brown method involves putting
the chain on the biggest front sprocket and the biggest rear sprocket, and you don't thread
it through the derailleur at the back. You just wrap it around the two sprockets.
Bring the chain together around here, around the chainring like that, and then you overlap
it by a whole link. For me, that's that one there. I need to break this extra bit off
here, I don't need that. Then, I don't have a quick link on this chain, but I've got a
pin. I'm going to put the pin through that one and connect it there. Obviously, when
I do connect the chain back up, I will thread it properly through the rear mech, so it's
got the chain breaker. There you feel that snap, that's the link going through. We'll
get rid of the bit of chain I don't need. I'm using this master pin rather than a quick
link. I do think quick link, I just want to stress I'm using that because that's what
this chain came with. Quick links are a better solution, in my opinion. Onto this week's
biggest job, which is sorting out the cockpit. Now, I can't do the whole thing today because
I'm still waiting on a key component, which is a new base bar. I've got tri bars to go
on there, which are sorted, and I've got armrests as well.
I'm going to get the position dialed in as the base bar won't change that, but the base
bar I've ordered is currently in the post, and it's one from Profile Design. It's this
one, we'll show it on screen now. I've been trying to get a used bargain, but I've not
been able to find one. In the end, I've stumped up the cash and got a brand new one, although
it's a relatively inexpensive based bar, costs around £60, £70. It's aluminum, not carbon.
We don't need it to be carbon. One of the best features about it, and why I've chosen
it, is because it's so narrow. You can get it in 36 centimeters, which is a really cost
effective way of reducing that frontal area on the bike.
The base bar, you don't really use it on a time trial bike, you use it at the start when
you want to get up to speed, but apart from that, you're not really riding any much. You're
on the tri bar, so anything we can do to make this smaller is good. It's a really good way
to make the front end of the bike more aero. I can't wait to change the cockpit on this
bike, mainly to get rid of all these minion bar tapes that's on there that is truly gross.
The biggest challenge here is to just swap the TT shift is from these tri bars onto my
tri bars. In order to do that, I've got to undo do the cables on the two derailleur,
and then pull the cables through the end, like you would on a conventional road shifter.
Then, once the cables are out, then I can take the tri bars off, pulling out these bits
of cable housing that go inside the tri bars. What you should do whenever you do this sort
of thing is keep these basic cable housing, because you know that these are the right
length. These are actually the factory installed ones.
This is how Cervelo would have sat up the bike. I'm going to use these as guides to
cut my cable housing, my new cable housing to the correct length. Do you know what? I
cannot wait to get my new base bar on here when it arrives, because it's going to look
so good. This one's just a little bit too wide for my liking. I just want to show you.
These- this is the tribe bar that's come off, its Profile Design aluminum bar. This is the
tri bar that's going on. With this one, you see the shapes quite look different, and this
can get my hands. My hands go here into a higher-hands position, which is a better position
for me. When we tested it outdoors, on the track, in the wind tunnel, loads of different
situations, it's been rapid. What I am now going to do is just to adjust
these brackets for the two tri bar extensions so that I can bring them in narrower. At the
moment, these bars are set quite wide, and so my arms are like this. I personally have
a position where I like to have my arms in quite a bit more narrow, it makes me faster.
There's something to be aware of if you do adopt that kind of position, is it can cause
your shoulders to jut outwards. Sometimes people find that if their arms are a bit wider
they can roll their shoulders in a bit more easily.
I'm just tightening these up by hand at the moment, because it's quick and I'm working
on it, and I'm going to be adjusting it. Whenever you finally tight anything on a bike, and
especially anything on the cockpit, torque wrench. These tri bars, in case you were wondering,
they're actually something that I'd had on a previous bike. I've managed to salvage them.
They are actually carbon fiber. You don't need carbon fiber ones like I've been banging
on about with all these other bits, but if they're there to be used, let's use them.
Now, I'm putting on the armrests. These armrests are something that I've got in my spare parts
bin which-- I say bin, it's not exactly full of trash. These are some AeroCoach ones, which
I used during the hour record. What I like about these is that they're really high-sided
here, and they're also angled in, which is really nice. I like the way that-- It means
that you can keep your elbows in. It holds your arms and your elbows in position.
The great thing about cockpits like this is how much adjustability they give you, it's
just loads. Really heavily integrated modern, super expensive time trial bikes, they look
really cool, and they are a little bit more aerodynamic, but you do often lose that ease
of adjustment and tinkering in fine-tuning your position, which is so important for aerodynamics,
but also ergonomics and comfort as well. How about that then? I'm pleased with that.
I think that looks smart with a new cockpit. When I get that base bar on, oh, it's going
to look good. There's a few more jobs I need to do on here, like, I need to get the bar
tape on, I need to sort that from breakout, I need to re-cable everything, I'm also probably
going to chop that. I'll have a look. I need to check out the position, and a few of the
little things. We'll see how that goes in the next video, because this is all I've got
time for today. It's taking me longer than I thought it was going to take. [laughs]
In the next video, I'm going to take it for a ride and, hopefully, pitch it against the
Orbea superbike TT bike, and we'll see how it goes down. That will be exciting. Before
that happens, I think, in it's current state as it is, I'm going to take it outside and
take a picture and submit it on the app, because I want to show it off, because I'm quite pleased.
I think it looks really nice, doesn't it? It shows how just a few things can make it
look good. Also looks good without cables, which is making me want to get eTap for it
now. I'll sort the cables out, I'll make them look
good. I'll tie them up with some zip-ties, as people suggested. This bar tape has seen
better days as well. I've realized, why am I bothering to take off the bar tape when
I'm putting new tri bars on it anyway? I'll use the bar tape and I'll use the tri bars.
[chuckles] It's been a long day. You can cut all that shit about the bar tape.
[00:14:26] [END OF AUDIO]