Newcommer to cycling

[wowbango]

Hello! This is all brand new to me but I just recently took up cycling to get back into shape and get me away from screens/technology! So far I'm having a lot of fun. I recently bought my first road bike, and being the geek that I am, I'm already thinking upgrades.I purchased a 2019 Giant Defy Advanced 1.

Was wondering what you all suggested would be the first upgrade I should make. I was thinking the crankset, upgrading it to the Ultegra R8000 Compact crankset. It bothers me that it's not Ultegra like the rest of the bike. If I do purchase it, is there anything else I need to buy to make the swap? Thanks for your advice and please excuse my ignorance if any, I'm brand spankin' new!

 

[zipp2001]

A Wheelset would be your best upgrade to start.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

Sure...match up that crankset. I like matched components myself. That's not really a performance upgrade, but it is a good move for the aesthetics of the bike. And the Ultegra crankset is also a relatively inexpensive purchase.

Like Zipp said, a wheel upgrade is the best performance improvement you can make. Good carbon may not by cheap, but it will yield quicker spin up and faster cruising speed. Even a really good set of alloy wheels can be a quantifiable improvement in speed if you don't want to deal with carbon wheels.

 

[cyclintom]

Hello! This is all brand new to me but I just recently took up cycling to get back into shape and get me away from screens/technology! So far I'm having a lot of fun. I recently bought my first road bike, and being the geek that I am, I'm already thinking upgrades.I purchased a 2019 Giant Defy Advanced 1.

Was wondering what you all suggested would be the first upgrade I should make. I was thinking the crankset, upgrading it to the Ultegra R8000 Compact crankset. It bothers me that it's not Ultegra like the rest of the bike. If I do purchase it, is there anything else I need to buy to make the swap? Thanks for your advice and please excuse my ignorance if any, I'm brand spankin' new!

The crankset isn't very important. The Ultegra is simply lighter than the R8000. The important part is the bottom bracket cups. The Ultegra cups are as good as the DuraAce. They have slightly less friction than the cheaper versions.

As for weight - do NOT worry about weight at this point. Besides about the only way you could lighten that Giant is with ridiculously expensive parts. My riding time on my steel bike that weighs in 6 lbs heavier than my Colnago is perhaps 5 minutes on a 40 mile ride with over 2,000 ft of climbing.

 

[wowbango]

Sure...match up that crankset. I like matched components myself. That's not really a performance upgrade, but it is a good move for the aesthetics of the bike. And the Ultegra crankset is also a relatively inexpensive purchase.

Like Zipp said, a wheel upgrade is the best performance improvement you can make. Good carbon may not by cheap, but it will yield quicker spin up and faster cruising speed. Even a really good set of alloy wheels can be a quantifiable improvement in speed if you don't want to deal with carbon wheels.

Darn. I was hoping this wasn't the case but I keep hearing a lot about this. I did look them up and was floored to see what a decent set costs! I saw some that were $3k, holy smokes! Maybe I'll start off with a set that's around $1,000 and go from there. Thank you for the advice though!

The crankset isn't very important. The Ultegra is simply lighter than the R8000. The important part is the bottom bracket cups. The Ultegra cups are as good as the DuraAce. They have slightly less friction than the cheaper versions.

As for weight - do NOT worry about weight at this point. Besides about the only way you could lighten that Giant is with ridiculously expensive parts. My riding time on my steel bike that weighs in 6 lbs heavier than my Colnago is perhaps 5 minutes on a 40 mile ride with over 2,000 ft of climbing.

I think that's what I'd like to go for, more smooth and easy riding. I'm not trying to win the Tour de France or anything. Thanks so much for the input!

 

[CAMPYBOB]

Shop the English websites....Ribble, Wiggle, Chain Reaction, Evans, etc. $750-$1200 will buy a decent pair of carbon wheels. Wait for the Black Fridays sales if you can.

Look at the Prime wheels...they're good entry level or slightly better than that stuff.

 

[wowbango]

Shop the English websites....Ribble, Wiggle, Chain Reaction, Evans, etc. $750-$1200 will buy a decent pair of carbon wheels. Wait for the Black Fridays sales if you can.

Look at the Prime wheels...they're good entry level or slightly better than that stuff.

I've been doing a lot of my shopping on Chain reaction, I've only found one thing cheaper elsewhere than there, great deals. The issue I'm having is that my current setup is tubeless, and I'm having a hard time finding a good tubeless set. Prior to this, I've only ever had a Hybrid bike, so this is all brand new. If the wheels are traditional (clinchers?) it's just a matter of swapping out the tires as well correct? That and they have to be Disc Wheels.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

BikeInn probably has the best prices. There are two caveats shopping with them: Their selection isn't as large as the other major European-based outfits and shipping is about a week to two week longer. Still, not a scam outfit and I've received everything I've ordered.

I just searched and...not much going down as far as wheels go: https://www.bikeinn.com/index.php?a...ort=score+desc,product(tm4,dispo)+asc&start=0

Yeah, you can swap tires, but it's probably better to buy another pair for your lightweight 'let's go fast' wheels. That way, you can use your OEM wheels/tires for rough roads, bad weather, etc. and use the light weight wheels for heading out on good roads, fast rides with friends, etc. Good quality carbon wheels can suffer through some abuse, but they are more fragile than a set of good aluminum wheels. And, of course, more expensive to replace if you trash one slamming into a nasty hole or such.

Competitive Cyclist has Mavic Cosmic Pro's on sale right now for $900. I really like these wheels. A friend trains on them and they've held up well over the last two years for him (150 pound rider, very strong, but treats his wheels well). With the aluminum rim they are great as far as braking goes and handle high pressure settings well. With the bonded carbon shell, they are still very light and the aero numbers on them are darned good.

https://www.competitivecyclist.com/...QIENhdDpCaWtlIFdoZWVsczoxOjM6Y2NDYXQxMDA0NjM=

 

[Froze]

You want the truth, you can't stand the truth! Seriously, I would NOT upgrade anything on that bike until something failed and it cannot be repaired and then only upgrade one level up. In fact because that bike came with Ultegra there is no reason to go to DA if you're not racing (but I know guys who are racing on 105 and Ultegra so really Ultegra is fine to race on), and the weight difference is not that huge of a difference to make it worth the huge money difference. Also lighter wheels does not mean more durability, it usually means less durability which don't work well on surface streets being used everyday, I would just stay with those wheels until they wear out or get damaged; now unless you decide to take up racing then at that time you may want to consider lighter wheels to be used only for racing events and save the old wheels for training. If you want to lighten your wheels cheaply then get lighter tires, those current tires weigh around 350 grams each, you could get (after your original tires wear out) a pair of Specialized Roubaix Road or Tangente RT28 that will save you about 50 grams per tire.

You can go upgrade nuts and spend enough money you could have just bought another new bike! Not only that after you spent all that money on upgrade you don't get the weight loss you thought you were going to get, and in a lot cases your reliability got reduced.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

https://www.excelsports.com/main.as...Wheelset&vendorCode=REYNOLDS&major=13&minor=1

 

[Froze]

I forgot to mention something, the one thing about most fancy wheels is that if a spoke breaks or a hub needs to be replaced or a bearing set needed, you can't simply go down to your LBS and use off the shelf parts that the LBS stocks, nooooo, you have to special order if from the manufacture of your wheel assuming it's even made any more for your particular wheel, you then have to pay a lot more for the proprietary part then you would for a off the shelf part, then you have to wait weeks for the item to arrive. Something to think about, that's all.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

A lot of the 'boutique' wheels ship with skewers, a wheel bag, brake pads and one each (or more) of the usually 3 spoke lengths needed. Mavic even includes a spoke wrench for their proprietary nipples.

Rolf will nick you $28 for a spare spoke set (includes alloy nipples, etc.). But, after laying out $2,000-$3,000 for a pair of wheels and probably the highest zoot tires you can find...what's another $28?


Cartridge bearings are easily replaced by I.D., O.D. and width. Sealed, shielded or open. Applied Industrial, Grainger, MSC Supply, McMaster-Carr all stock the popular sizes...uh...other than that ******* 'thin' UltraTorque Campy uses on their Super Record models! And they could even order it in steel or ceramic if I wanted to order them.

Any freehub body is going to be proprietary to the specific hub.

Ordering wear items (Mavic polymer freehub bushing for example) online is dead nut simple. Same with spokes. Measure your broken or unbroken spokes and online ordering is easy. I had spare Sapim CX-Ray's in hand before my LBS did when one of my Bontrager front spokes popped.

I have to agree that if I were touring in East Gugundi it would be 32 or 36-hole, J-head D-T Swiss Plain 14 Gauge 3X for me. Even then, I would carry my own spares. For 'round the hood, who doesn't have a spare set or two of wheels ready to go or a spare bike?

More of a concern to me is just plain old trashing the wheel. Cracked carbon isn't any more difficult to lace up than bent aluminum if that's the case.

 

[Froze]

The Reynolds Assault wheels mentioned by another person uses off the shelf parts, however I did find this:

The Assaults do not have an alloy braking track which many of their competitors do. This helps the Assaults stay light, but this also means that you will need to plan your braking in advance and be especially mindful in moist conditions. The deep rim and aforementioned high spoke tensions also mean that the Assaults transmit a lot of feedback from the road to the contact points on the bike. Again, this is not a surprise, but there is no getting around this compromise if you were to use the Assaults in general duties.

When they say it transmits a lot of feedback from the road, that's the politically correct way of saying the ride is going to be rougher.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

The lack of an alloy braking track has been no detriment to me. Like any material they lose grip in the wet, but run the right pads, keep your calipers adjusted and your rims clean and they stop just fine. Buy decent carbon and the brake tracks are not affected by the descents found in Ohio. While I don't use mine as daily drivers many guys do just that. Got to be a little more careful hitting RR tracks fast. Other than that, anyone that actually looks where they're riding...no problems.

A 40 MM rim height and 20/24 spokes should NOT yield an overly stiff wheel. Radial and 2x/2x??? Stiff? And that 'high' spoke tension is subjective. Carbon rims run lower spoke tension than alloy to avoid pull through damage. If anything, my complaint about some carbon wheels I've tried is flex. (Note: Not with my reference tires and mostly with unknown pressures, but just pushing on the rim gives a decent gage of how it's going to react).

And with 25 MM wide tires (or wider as some folks seem compelled to run 28's on what I consider to be decent roads) at 90 PSI and less? Well. anyone claiming to get "a lot of feedback" never spent 46 years on 32-spoke alloy wheels with sew-ups and 23's at 105 PSI. It's a racing bike, not a recliner chair. That's all I'll say about that.

No upgrade to a bike yields as much speed and acceleration as a decent set of carbon aero wheels.

 

[wowbango]

I'm having a good time trying to follow along with all the cycling lingo which means absolutely nothing to me...HAHA! I'll get there! Thanks for all the discussion! Researching all of this has been fun, and confusing at times...but I clearly did not pick a cheap hobby! The wife will be thrilled.

 

[Froze]

While cycling is not cheap you can make it cheaper by finding heavily discounted sales or closeouts sales. there is a slew of ways to save money from clothing to components to whatever. One way is not to replace ANYTHING unless it breaks and it cannot be repaired; you mentioned replacing the crank, well that's not a good idea financially to replace a perfectly fine or rebuildable crank and since there is a very tiny fraction of unnoticeable improvement going from say Tiagra to 105 to Ultegra to even DA cranks.

Of course if your very wealthy then I'm not sure why your wife would care what you spend on cycling, so this kind of hints that you're probably not among the top 10% of income makers if your wife is having fits, so you may want to consider on how to spend money without making your wife mad. Mad money, you know money that your wife has no clue that you have, saves a lot of various wife emotions when you approach her saying you need X amount of dollars for something. I always have about $200 to $500 hiding in case I can't approach her with buying something with her knowledge, this saves me from hearing her go into why we don't have the money right now routine. Yeah, she does the books because she's better at it then me. I just recently bought a set of SPD pedals for my touring bike without her knowing, this sort of thing she has no idea what pedals I had before or after I replaced them, and thus it's easy to hide the details from her without her knowing I have money somewhere. I also bought walkable shoes to go with the new pedals, she sort of noticed the shoes and asked if they were new, I said no I had them for a while just don't wear them much! LOL!! She was fine with explanation, never said anything more about it! The shoe thing did press my luck a bit but I won. Technically I wasn't lying to her when I said what I said because once I bought the shoes they were no longer new, and having them awhile could mean anything for a day to years, and I hadn't worn them much maybe a couple of times! LOL!! Anyway that's one way of taking care of the wife having issues with money being spent. My wife is tighter than I am and I'm a tightwad, so to avoid conflicts I go by the old saying that what the wife doesn't know won't hurt you, and thus there is peace in the house! LOL!!