Suggestion for a new bike

[Mauro69]

Hello to all,
I'm on the market for a new bike and I'd like some advice from you.

These are more or less the characteristics I'm looking for:
- all-round frame, with good climbing and descent skills
- effective (non UCI) tires clearance up to 28/30mm measured
- rim brakes, I would really appreciate the direct mount brakes
- relatively comfortable, also oriented to + 150km ride

Assumed that the perfect frame don't exist, I choose some one are closest to my geometry.
Between this models, if there's one with the mentioned features, i'll be happy to buy it.
For now I'm oriented to these models:
- Bianchi Specialissima, I tried it, it's really remarkable
- Orbea Orca OMR, I don't know nothing about the ride quality
- BMC Teammachine SLR01, tires clearance?
- Factor O2, the most expensive, an unusual brand (in my country), little bit low stack, the burned orange colour is superlative.
- Cervelo R5, exceptional bike, but I don't understand about tires clearance, factory say it fit 28mm, but nominal or effective?

If there is some one who can help me solve this doubts I would be glad
Thank you in advance

 

[Uawadall]

- effective (non UCI) tires clearance up to 28/30mm measured
- rim brakes, I would really appreciate the direct mount brakes

For any current models, this will be tough. Most new bikes with 28-30 clearance have disk brakes, disk brakes are even taking over the aero category... Based on your criteria, i'd say get a Cannondale Synapse, CAAD12, BMC Road Machine, Giant Defy. Something in the endurance category.

A bike can't be a good climber or descender, only a rider can. I can use my aero endurance one with $100 dollar wheels and climbs fast. On the other hand, I will get down a hill slow on my aero bike. It has to do with the skills of a rider, frame geometry doesn't mean much. If I were you, i'd look for a 2016-17 model of an endurance bike, they will be much more likely to have rim brakes. Slam the stem and make adjustments to get it lower and feeling more racier.

 

[Mauro69]

....................
Slam the stem and make adjustments to get it lower and feeling more racier.

Thanks for your suggestions.
In general, I exclude endurance geometry because they have a stack too high for me, but youi suggest me a good tricks ... hard to do but a good tricks

 

[cyclintom]

You're talking about a cyclocross bike with 28 mm road tires on it. And if you intend to go off-road you have a spare set of wheels with 32 mm knobbies on them. That also allows you to have a different gear for each but then you have to have a medium or long cage rear derailleur. Cyclocross bikes also have a more relaxed geometry. Perhaps you might want to look at a Ridley.

 

[Uawadall]

You're talking about a cyclocross bike with 28 mm road tires on it. And if you intend to go off-road you have a spare set of wheels with 32 mm knobbies on them. That also allows you to have a different gear for each but then you have to have a medium or long cage rear derailleur. Cyclocross bikes also have a more relaxed geometry. Perhaps you might want to look at a Ridley.

They've been pushing endurance bike to have that kind of clearance.

Thanks for your suggestions.
In general, I exclude endurance geometry because they have a stack too high for me, but youi suggest me a good tricks ... hard to do but a good tricks

How low due you need? You'd bee supposed how low you can get some endurance bikes. Is a disk brake option out of the question? Its seems like a older model endurance bike or a disk brake bike is the only way to get everything on your list.

 

[Mauro69]

I think that Cervelo R5 have a good chance to be my next bike, perfect geometry, good tyre clearance, amazing ride quality.

 

[Froze]

I'm going to say something completely off the wall, you may shout at me that's how bizarre this comment is, others here will stone me and I'll have to hide under a gord.

I think, and it's just my opinion...howbeit based on what YOU said!! You already found the bike you've been looking for, the Bianchi Specialissima, your words were that when you rode it it was remarkable. Don't start running off and trying a few thousand bikes, or getting millions of contrary opinions, you rode the bike, you liked the bike, that bike gets 4 3/4 stars in reviews, the color is that cool classic Bianchi color that it's known for, it has the famous Countervail anti vibration technology that stole the hearts of racers who rode with that technology on various models of Bianchi on cobblestones and you need that for long rides, and while it is a race geometry frame that vibration thing makes it feel like a century bike. You can read this review if you haven't already: https://www.cyclingweekly.com/reviews/road-bikes/bianchi-launches-new-specialissima-frame

Get this bike, you already love it's ride, don't get your mind twisted in a knot by searching till you gone completely insane, or lost what the Bianchi did for you and you get sucked in by some sales rep with knowledgeable sounding BS words who can sell an icemaker to an Eskimo!

 

[cyclintom]

I'm going to say something completely off the wall, you may shout at me that's how bizarre this comment is, others here will stone me and I'll have to hide under a gord.

I think, and it's just my opinion...howbeit based on what YOU said!! You already found the bike you've been looking for, the Bianchi Specialissima, your words were that when you rode it it was remarkable. Don't start running off and trying a few thousand bikes, or getting millions of contrary opinions, you rode the bike, you liked the bike, that bike gets 4 3/4 stars in reviews, the color is that cool classic Bianchi color that it's known for, it has the famous Countervail anti vibration technology that stole the hearts of racers who rode with that technology on various models of Bianchi on cobblestones and you need that for long rides, and while it is a race geometry frame that vibration thing makes it feel like a century bike. You can read this review if you haven't already: https://www.cyclingweekly.com/reviews/road-bikes/bianchi-launches-new-specialissima-frame

Get this bike, you already love it's ride, don't get your mind twisted in a knot by searching till you gone completely insane, or lost what the Bianchi did for you and you get sucked in by some sales rep with knowledgeable sounding BS words who can sell an icemaker to an Eskimo!

You're probably right but I've always tended to shy away from Bianchi because the lower grade ones has the lowest grade tubing. Now that probably doesn't matter in the least since in riding tests of bikes built with Columbus tubing, Thron - or nearly the lowest level tube - always were preferred to the higher quality tubes.

 

[Froze]

You're probably right but I've always tended to shy away from Bianchi because the lower grade ones has the lowest grade tubing. Now that probably doesn't matter in the least since in riding tests of bikes built with Columbus tubing, Thron - or nearly the lowest level tube - always were preferred to the higher quality tubes.

I hear you but that particular bike is not the lowest grade, you're talking about a $5,000 (msrp) frameset, and if you buy it fully equipped from the factory it will come with Campy Record and will cost $13,000, that's a far cry from low end tubing or a low end bike, heck it's not even close to mid level! So not sure where you got your fear from on that particular bike frame, it doesn't make sense to me.

 

[cyclintom]

I hear you but that particular bike is not the lowest grade, you're talking about a $5,000 (msrp) frameset, and if you buy it fully equipped from the factory it will come with Campy Record and will cost $13,000, that's a far cry from low end tubing or a low end bike, heck it's not even close to mid level! So not sure where you got your fear from on that particular bike frame, it doesn't make sense to me.

I guess I didn't make myself clear. The Specialissima is the top of the line carbon fiber frame and fork. IF you can afford that and like the ride by all means buy it. There's no need to test all of the possible selections you could make. And you couldn't get test rides on most of them anyway. For instance - where in hell could you test ride a Colnago C64?

In the past when bikes were made from steel tubing Bianchi usually had Columbus Thron or lower grade steel tubes. But in all of the road bike tests of bikes with Thron tubing vs, say, SL, the bikes with Thron were always chosen in blind testing. The same with Reynolds with 531 usually being chosen over the 853. But there always seemed to be a lot of tubing failures with Reynolds so I stayed away from them.

But then French bikes never seemed to have name tubing and usually rode better than other bikes. The geometry on Italian bikes is usually pretty fast while on French bikes is more relaxed and it isn't as easy to dive too hard into a turn.

 

[Froze]

Cycletom I've never had a tube failure with any Reynolds, nor have I ever known anyone who has except you! LOL!! You're rough on frames, not sure what you're doing to break frames like that but I use to race non professionally and knew a few pro racers, we all raced on steel, and almost all if not all were on Reynolds lightweight 531 C and P and they never broke any either, I was on 531 cs and after 160,000 miles it's still a good frame...though the paint and decals are shot from the Southern Calif sun. I happened not to like the C and P stuff, it was to flexy for my tastes and since I was racing and training in the mountains I decided to find a frameset that wasn't so flexy and CS offered that at a slight weight penalty.

I have a friend who broke 2 Vitus 797 frames within 6 months of each other yet Sean Kelly who was supposedly a monster hammering on a bike never broke his, but my friend went on to Klien and broke a couple of those as well over a 5 year period, then he switched to Cannondale and broke those too! Of course those were all AL frames but the point is some people are for some reason rougher on frames then most others, not sure what attributes to that, maybe you can enlighten us why you think you break frames.

My experience with French steel frames was that they too were flexy, even more so than 531 c or p! French tubing has always been soft which does make them ride a bit more comfortable but I knew a lot of guys that broke those frames; not sure if you're breaking 531 why you weren't breaking the French stuff. When I use to race the word was that the French frames were noodles that broke after time. The Italian steel frames I can't recall any of those breaking either but they had some issues with their steel forks collapsing or cracking due to trying to make them too light, I don't recall any Reynolds or French steel forks failing.

Yeah, it's difficult to find a Colnago dealer not alone one that would have a C64 in stock to ride, then if they did would the dealer even take the chance of you test riding it? I never even test rode my last new bike, the Lynskey Peloton and it's been great out of the box, really was no need to test ride it first!

 

[cyclintom]

I have broken no steel frames at all myself. But I used to see them coming into my friend's shop all the time since he was also a frame builder and could repair them. Overheating the Reynolds 531 frames at the lugs would cause the steel to crystalize and break sooner or later and while that was a well-known failure this didn't occur much with Columbus tubing. Cheap French bikes broke. That isn't any revelation. They were made with cheap mild steel for TRANSPORTATION. But the higher end didn't. I suppose you could say that the PX-10 Peugeot's were flexible. But that is why Columbus kept making stiffer and stiffer tubing until arriving at SLX which cannot be called flexible. The only Vitus or Allan bikes I saw break had been in collisions. That is hardly fair to say that "they broke".

 

[Froze]

I test rode several PX10's over the years and couldn't stand them, I would crank on them hard and the ring gear/chain would rub, and rub hard, on both sides of the front derailleur, the back end would rub on both sides of the brake blocks hard too, even after the rep would open up the brakes a bit. Like I said before they were the noodiest frames I've ever rode, and those were the high end ones with some sort letter after the PX10 but I can't recall what those letters were anymore but supposedly they were the top of the line racing frames I test rode. Also the years I rode those was from the mid 70's till the early 80's when I gave up ever test riding another Peugeot because they were horrible for hammering but comfortable if just cruising.

I'm sorry I just never saw a Reynolds 531 fail at the lugs. I get if the brazing wasn't done right that could happen but that could happen to any frame regardless of brand, after all it's the builder that controls that.

The Vitus breaking example is the only Vitus I knew that broke like that, some years later I ran into examples of Vitus bonding that came undone after many years, but I think those were the early models, the later ones corrected the bonding issue from what I understood.

 

[cyclintom]

Well, most of the 531 frames also were flexible. That was why many touring bikes used the stuff.

It isn't as if frame or fork failures are that common and my failures I can point out to construction errors or crashes. And a frame or fork failing because of crashes or collisions shouldn't be counted don't you think?

But I have seen several failures like this: https://www.bing.com/images/search?...08003398370787724&selectedIndex=52&ajaxhist=0

Now these failures were all from the same company and I wrote it off to poor workmanship from overheating the lugs since there is so much brazing on this lug. I also saw rear dropout failures in the same manner since it is easy to overheat the small tubes while brazing in the dropouts.

I also saw quite a few Reynolds 531 frames bent from what I considered pretty mild crashes that other tubing manufacturers didn't seem to have trouble with. And Reynolds appeared to make 753 rather faster than you would have thought. So perhaps they were receiving the same reports.

 

[Froze]

Tom as always you go toward the drama side of the world and show one picture as if that will prove your point. Look Tom you've been around the block a few times, you should know that any lugged frame that was brazed using brass would overheat the tubing and could cause more problems then using silver because silver melts at a far lower temperature than brass and the tubing didn't get as hot and thus maintained the strength of the steel.

In reality, and frame builders will tell you this...there is NO difference between Reynolds and Columbus! Read this: http://davesbikeblog.squarespace.com/blog/2011/10/24/one-of-a-kind.html And 531 was used by the vast majority of frame builders in the world so with larger numbers of builders would obviously mean that Reynolds would have the same percentage of failure but not a greater percentage just more in number. And read this: http://midlifecycling.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-happened-to-708.html Also in the steel pro racing days more races were won on Reynolds 531 than any other steel.

 

[cyclintom]

Tom as always you go toward the drama side of the world and show one picture as if that will prove your point. Look Tom you've been around the block a few times, you should know that any lugged frame that was brazed using brass would overheat the tubing and could cause more problems then using silver because silver melts at a far lower temperature than brass and the tubing didn't get as hot and thus maintained the strength of the steel.

In reality, and frame builders will tell you this...there is NO difference between Reynolds and Columbus! Read this: http://davesbikeblog.squarespace.com/blog/2011/10/24/one-of-a-kind.html And 531 was used by the vast majority of frame builders in the world so with larger numbers of builders would obviously mean that Reynolds would have the same percentage of failure but not a greater percentage just more in number. And read this: http://midlifecycling.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-happened-to-708.html Also in the steel pro racing days more races were won on Reynolds 531 than any other steel.

I showed you an example of the sort of failure that I personally saw quite a few of. And it was a major brand that hopefully has changed their manufacturing process so I won't mention their name. I never saw Columbus tubing fail in this manner and as I said, I hung around a shop that did major frame repairs. Apparently you don't believe me so that's that.

 

[Froze]

I showed you an example of the sort of failure that I personally saw quite a few of. And it was a major brand that hopefully has changed their manufacturing process so I won't mention their name. I never saw Columbus tubing fail in this manner and as I said, I hung around a shop that did major frame repairs. Apparently you don't believe me so that's that.

Tom I didn't say I didn't believe you, what I said was any steel frame can break at the lug the way the one did in the pic you showed and for the exact same reasons you explained. Then I went on to show websites to prove that Reynolds was actually a bit stronger than Columbus and won more races than Columbus...not that any of that matters because any frame material will break regardless of what's it's made of.

Geez I remember when the bike world made a big deal out of Scandium alloy frames, that they would be indestructible, well they found out that they were actually quite brittle, and the only bike material that I ever owned that failed was Scandium after just 8,000 miles.

 

[cyclintom]

This conversation started with a man who decided to buy quite and expensive carbon fiber road bike. Then it wandered off into the "any material can break" realm. I'm probably a bit sensitive about that because a couple of years ago I swore off carbon fiber because of breakages but after a lot of study have decided that the real problem was the learning curve of manufacturers and the extraordinary lightweight of some of the latest and top of the line offerings. The Trek SL-9 is advertised at 10 lbs. I suppose that's a 48 cm frame but an XXL would probably only add a pound to that.

In any case I've acquired another CF bike and am in the process of building it up. I think that finished it will be about 16 lbs which is 2 1/2 lbs lighter than the C40 in the photo. The new bike also has all of the engineering techniques improved so that the points of failure I've seen have stresses greatly spread over a larger area. Fingers crossed but my hope is that this bike will last the rest of my life and I'm planning of getting into my 90's. Or maybe I'll take a shot at the 100 years old class hour record.

With my Basso Loto and Pinarello Stelvio I have worked out gearing etc. I have a suspicion that Campy levers wear in the right shift mechanism. So I put a new mechanism in the bike I'm building. After it's ready and tested I'll replace my picture

 

[Froze]

Tom, you seem from your previous posts on various topics on this forum that you break a lot of frames, is this true? How many have you broken?

 

[cyclintom]

Tom, you seem from your previous posts on various topics on this forum that you break a lot of frames, is this true? How many have you broken?

Well, it isn't clear to me where you got that idea. The shop I used to hang around all the time (until the proprietor passed away) was a frame builder and repairer so I saw broken frames a lot. Most of them weren't worth repairing. I probably know more about building and repairing frames than most of the shops around this area.