Upgrading a new bike

Duckwah · #1 11-09.-2002

Hey guys i just bought my first road bike a new Giant OCR 3 and i'm wondering if i want to eventually upgrade parts of it where i am going to get the best value for money as far as performance is concerned. At the moment its stock apart from clipless pedals and computer and i was looking at whether or not to go to narrower tires for lower rolling resistance, new wheels, lighter fork etc. So far i have found the Sora groupset to be pretty good and i'm planning on running that till it breaks/wears out and then upgrading to 105. As far as what i plan to do with my bike, I'm going to be riding 5 or 6 days a week and plan to train seriously for some long distance rides/races. Even though i know its probably counter productive for becoming a good long distance rider i do a fair bit of heavy weight training as well so i'm about 92kg at 179cm Thanks in advance

Vo2 · #2 11-09.-2002

105 gruppo and carbon fork should make a nice difference.

bigringking · #3 11-09.-2002

OCR3...must weigh a ton. The most bang for your buck will be new, lightweight wheels. Rotational weight is more important than static weight. 23 tires are pretty much the clincher standard for road training and racing; smaller sizes primarily are used for TTs. You can lose significant weight with a carbon fork, but I haven't seen any integrated headset forks with a 1&quot; steerer offered by anyone; I suppose they exist, but all I've seen are 1-1/8&quot;. Lifting weights is good as long as they are cycling specific exercises, but don't overdo it. 92kg, sora drive train, cro-mo fork, heavy wheels...I hope there's no moutains where you live! Good luck and keep at it. If you get to where you can keep up on group rides, you'll be strong!

Duckwah · #4 11-09.-2002

The current fork is Cro mo, how much am i looking at for a decent carbon and how much weight will i save Also is it true that carbon forks dampen road roughness? and another thing, the bike is running 700x25 michelins running the max of 105psi and i seem to be squashing them a bit, will i get much advantage of going to 700x23s at higher pressure?

bigringking · #5 11-09.-2002

23s at higher pressure will be better; I run about 120#. But keep the 25s till they're worn out. At this point, they aren't the limiter.

Duckwah · #6 11-09.-2002

Thanks for the tips bigringking, i figure that it will be a couple of months before i do anything drastic to the bike. compared to my MTB the OCR3 is like riding a helium balloon! it too started life as a budget bike and over the course of a year turned into a custom beast, new pedals, fork, rims, brakes, handlebar, stem etc guess you could call me a chronic upgrader

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