The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

Di2 Back story

After we got back from the Danube I focused on riding and didn’t spend a bunch of time or money on bike projects. When the chain gauge said it was time, I took the Fuji and the Centurion in for seasonal tune-ups, without addressing the seized seat post on the Fuji. I bought a pair of Paul Component Engineering Touring Cantilever brakes for Odette’s Stellar, but I kept procrastinating on installing them. I kind of had this idea of a blog post poking fun at the MAGA / America First guys by describing my American-made bicycles – but somehow when I thought about it some more I realized that it wasn’t actually funny. Mainly I was just waiting – for the weather to change, for Amazon to deliver, for the bike shop to finish up, for Odette to agree to a ride, for every day to bring one more card.

The fall shaped up to be pretty uneventful, a trip to Long Beach (memorable mainly for squirrel bridges) being the only excitement. I went out to the garage on a Monday after lunch to put fenders on the Ibis. Odette likes to ride on Tuesdays and the forecast was wet. The fenders went on easily but at some point the bike fell over and although I caught it and it didn’t hit the floor, it did make contact with the stand. I finished the installation (stripping out the socket on the head of one screw on the front fork) and went for a ride around the block to prove that there were no rubs. And… the bike wouldn’t shift up. I kept trying and it “gave” – the shifter moved further than it should and then had no resistance at all. I got back to the garage and removed the hood – the cable was broken and the lever was no longer ratcheting.

I was really upset about this failure. For one thing, it was the fourth or fifth time the right-hand shift cable had broken on me and I don’t feel like I can ride very far from home for fear it’s going to break on the road. For another thing, we’d only ridden the bike two or three times since taking it in after the last failure. I don’t really blame the Polkadot guys but I don’t feel like they fixed what I asked them to work on. Finally, I was pretty close to getting the Di2 tandem and if I were to sell one of the three it would be the Ibis – only I can’t really sell it if it’s broken and I’m upset about spending money that I won’t recover on a bike I want to sell.

I spent a bunch of time thinking about options and preferences and decided that I’d take one of the handlebar sets from my bar-swap project and mount Rholoff twist-shifters on them. I kind of remembered getting a pair of twist-shifters in the process of converting either the Franklin or Ibis, but I wasn’t certain. If I already had the bars and the shifters I could probably hook them up myself, and if I needed to go to R+E or Polkadot it wouldn’t be for a big deal project. I was suspicious that the bars wouldn’t be the right diameter but I knew that I had mounted thumbies on them, and those ought to be the same size as a twist grip. I scoured my parts boxes and found some Rholoff parts, but no shifters. I figured that I could go to eBay or Amazon for shifters, but I’d need to know what else I needed to switch back to Rholoff. I spent some time online reading Rholoff installation guides and realized that it was probably beyond my level of competence. I also realized that the Rholoff twist-shifter moved the gears both up and down so that you only had one shifter, not a pair. I dug out those handlebars – butterfly bars and Velo Orange crazy bars – and remembered that I didn’t really like the way either of them looked when I had them on the Fuji. I remained upset and continued to try to figure out a plan.

On Tuesday (10/28) R+E was open and I needed to drop off the brakes for the Di2 tandem that had arrived while I was focused on the ibis. I stuck the brakes in my handlebar bag when I went for my daily ride and stopped at the shop on my way home. The Di2 bike looks great – they were done installing the Di2 hardware and said that they just needed the fork to finish it up. The battery mounts to bottle cage rivnuts on the stiffener tube. The wires are taped to the down tube and are almost invisible. The 40-T big cog in the cassette is huge. The BCD on the FSA crankset was too big to mount 50/34 chainrings so they went with 52/38 – and I’m guessing that a 38-40 granny gear will be fine. They had already taken off the chunks of housing hung on the brake cable to protect the top tube, replacing it with cable doughnuts. That’s probably a better approach than the housing liner I was proposing. They were familiar with the ProblemSolvers downtube shifter boss covers and offered to order them for me but I took them up on the offer to remove the barrel adjuster from the outriggers – I think that will be lighter and look just as good. I got to see the Zipp bars with no tape. Alder said that there was no need to update the belt drive until it broke. I asked Alder about timing and he said “a couple of days – maybe a week” which was pretty exciting news.

As I got ready to leave I told Alder about my Ibis dilemma. He told me that he had a box full of Rholoff / Gebla parts because the Gebla-modified shifters broke a lot and a bunch of people ended up deciding to remove the Gebla and go back to straight Rholoff. He said to bring the bike in and he’d see what they could do. I told him that I was pretty sure I wanted to go back to the Rholoff twist-shifter that the hub was made for. He offered to order a shifter for me and said that they could fix me up with a doohickey. I said that I’d gone with Gebla to be able to keep the drop bars because I didn’t like the way the doohickey thing looked (that plus bad memories of twist shifters on cheap mountain bikes.) I said that I had a couple of sets of handlebars at home from a previous project and that I was thinking about mounting the shifter on one of them – and I mentioned the butterfly bars. Alder said that he also had a bunch of butterfly bars because people migrated to them when Gebla was an issue and then decided that they didn’t like that style of bars. He said that they often ran into issues of cable clearance between the bar end and the stem. I mentioned my other option and he pulled me over to see an extreme travel bike he was finishing up – S&S, Rholoff, heavy duty tubes – and a Jones bar. I don’t exactly like the dimensions of the Jones bar but it validated my thinking about moving away from drop bars. I told Alder that I needed to think about it some more but in fact I pretty much knew where I was headed and just had to figure out some details.

While waiting to go on my ride on the red tandem on Wednesday I took the crazy bars and held them up against the rando bag I use on the Ibis. They looked like they were made for each other and I knew I’d made my choice. When i got back from the ride I removed the bar tape and bar-end shifters from the crazy bars. (I dropped one of the bar-ends and didn’t get it back together right but it’s just going to sit in the parts bin for a while anyway.) I had to change stems because the one on the bike wouldn’t clamp down tight enough for the crazy bars. They are from the same manufacturer (Profile Design – the one from the crazy bars has a longer reach) and they’re supposed to have the same clamp dimensions, but only one of them works. The straddle cable attached to the bars was for a narrow 700C wheel while the Ibis has a wide 26-inch wheel. I had to replace the straddle cable to hook up the front brake, otherwise that cable was ready to go. The crazy bars were set up for a single bike and the cable for the rear brake wasn’t long enough. I had trouble getting the stopper out of the reverse lever and had to remove the pivot screw and take the lever out to remove that cable. The new one went in just fine and after some fiddling with the cable splitter I decided that it was good enough. I replaced the stripped fender screw and tried (without success) to manually shift the Rholoff into a higher gear. In order to make sure the cables got split I wanted to attach both pieces of the cable splitter to both cables – but they split in different places so I had one long and one short cable under the keel tube. I put a short cable end into the shorter splitter and then matched it with a very short cable end in the longer cable. I wrapped a piece of velcro around the tube to hold both cables in place.)

My plan was to take the Ibis (now sporting crazy bars with no tape) with me when I went to pick up the Di2 tandem. Despite the fenders I figured I would put it on the car because without a shifter it isn’t rideable. (That’s actually not true, I’ve ridden it home with a broken shifter more than once – it would be rideable, just not shiftable.) If Odette drove me over I could drop off the Ibis to get a doohickey and bar tape, have her take the parts that came off the Di2 bike and I could ride the new bike home. If I rode the crippled Ibis to get there I would just need a knapsack to carry the redundant parts home on the Taliani.

I wanted a quick lesson on Di2 shifting (somehow I’ve got to learn about automatic progressions vs. the left-hand lever, etc) and I needed to figure out charging and displays and probably ten other Di2 secrets, but I figured that I could ride it home more easily than I could connect with Odette on Ravenna – and maybe I could even sneak in a lap around Green Lake.

I ordered a Brooks Sprung Flyer for Odette and will hold off on a fitting. Amazon shipped the wrong saddle – a sticker on the box said “flyer with suspension springs” but inside was something with a short nose and no springs – so I filed for a return and waited for a replacement. The replacement from Amazon was also the wrong saddle – the same error as the time before. The leather on the side was stamped “B 68” so I assume that’s what got put in the flyer box. I returned that one too, but this time I requested a refund not a replacement.

It cost almost $50 more, partly because of shipping, but I ordered a flyer with suspension springs from Rivendale. After really unhelpful tracking information from USPS, the Rivendale saddle showed up two days earlier than expected – they got the right one and I’m confident that it will fit. Odette thought that the saddle on the Tuscany (that she doesn’t like) was a Brooks and we had a conversation about that. If she hates the Flyer there are several versions (carved, soft, etc.) that we can try which might make her happier. Meanwhile, it’s been over a week and Alder still hasn’t called to say the bike is ready.

I waited another week and then (11/11) called Alder to check in. He reported that the bike was basically done and I said I’d be right over. I grabbed a stuff sac / backpack and set off on the broken Ibis. I walked up the hill at 73rd and rode down the other side and around Green Lake as if single speed was the new normal. When I got to R+E I realized I still had the frame pump and the tool bag on the bike so I stowed them in the backpack and went on in.

The Ibis was dispensed with very quickly – “I want a doohickey and a Rholoff twist-shift and some kind of grips on the bar-ends.” Alder noted that the bar-ends had been cut down. I didn’t ask him to adjust the brakes, but they seemed to do just fine coming down the hill on 73rd. (I had a bag of Rholoff parts from th original conversion in my pocket but I forgot to give them to Alder – I expect that he already has plenty of them.) I also forgot to explain the cable splitter thing to Alder and I imagine he’ll think I clipped the two cables instead of opening the quick releases. .Without shifters to worry about I’m thinking about experimenting with other bars: (Rivendale Albatross or Choco or maybe Bullmoose would be interesting) or maybe going back to drops.

The Litespeed, however, was more complicated:

Taliani spec sheet: original vs. Di2

Here are some notes from after I picked up the Litespeed:

Alder says not to worry about synchronized shifting – people always come back and have it removed because you have to shift all the time in very small increments.
You need to charge about every 150 miles or once a month – there are lights on the battery to show that it’s charging and lights on the front stem that show how much battery you have left. (Those are the only displays on the system.)
The battery should be half way charged coming out of the shop. I left it plugged in for three or four hours and the lights didn’t seem to change.
I forgot where the charger port was (but figured it out the next morning.) I pushed the shift button to see the battery light, and learned that the shifters move even when the bike is hanging on the wall. I never did figure out how to interpret the battery light.
They installed a body float which I wasn’t expecting. The thud buster on the red tandem was always set in the lowest position and it looks like the body float on this bike will similarly be as far down as it can go.. (If it doesn’t work I’ll put it on another bike and we’ll start the process of getting a version of the Brooks saddle that she likes.)
The body float works with springs and R+E says it’s better than polymer discs. I adjusted it down to the lowest possible position and the distance between the center of the crank bolt and the nose of the saddle is about the same as on Odette’s Stellar. That means it can go up by at least the distance that it compresses. so there is a little room for adjustment.
One of the cantis was stuck to the post when they went to replace it, so they replaced the post, too. Evidently the posts screw in.
I didn’t get the old free hub body back – oh well…
The chainrings are Specialties TA rings (130 BCD) 52/38. They couldn’t use the rings that were on the bike (FSA 53/39 because the big one was too big for the Di2 presets.)
Alder warned me to be careful about shifting in the front until I’m experienced with it: it will shift even under load and you may be in a situation where you don’t want to shift up.
R+E felt that I needed wider brake pads than what came with the neo-retros.
I needed to get the bike on a scale before we weighed it down with stuff – Odette got me a new battery for my portable scale and the Taliani weighed between 30 and 31 lbs with saddles & pedals. After I weighed the bike I removed the body float for a net weight reduction – maybe as much as a pound. Cutting down the steerer would reduce weight a little and the charger and front wheel stabilizer strap were on the bike when I weighed it – so 30 lbs is probably about right.
As I mounted the new pedals I noticed that the cranks are 172.5.
R+E didn’t see a serial number (but they weren’t looking for one.) I need to give it a good going over, maybe with a pencil to do some rubbings. Then we’ll think about paint remover.
The shifters have two narrow buttons – the lower one seems to shift up, the smaller upper one shifts down. Left is front, right is rear, just like on a mechanical bike.
Shifting too fast seems to cause the chain to grind. It only happened once (while starting out across Aurora at 83rd) and I’m not really certain why it happened.
I’m not sure what to do about the steerer tube – I either want to raise the bars or cut off the excess tube because the stump on top of the bars isn’t a good look. First, it appears that putting the stem at the top of the stack would be about the same height as the red tandem; as they came from the shop they are about the same height as the litespeed classic. Second, it appears that only the front brake is going to be an issue (i.e. it looks like there is enough slack in the rear housing.) There is likely enough extra inner cable on the front brake so that I wouldn’t need to replace the cable, and with a double-ended ferule I ought to be able to add three or four inches of housing without unwrapping the bars. (I would still have to undo the brake and reset them afterwards.) I’ll probably live with it for a while and maybe wait for the first tuneup to fix the steerer.
Alder asked what I intended to do with the parts that came off and I told him about the Tuscany. (I’m not sure if he was just curious or if he was interested in some of them.) My current plan is to do the cassette first (like, right away) and then the derailleur, followed by the brakes on the Stellar. I’ll replace inner tubes (at least on the Tuscany) while I’m at it. I would like to have both bikes done before R+E finishes the Ibis. Then I’ll take the Litespeed to Recycled Cycles for a seasonal tuneup and somewhere in the process I’ll need to clean and lube the bikes I’m riding in the rain.
I shifted way down to climb the hill on 83rd (but I don’t think I went all the way down) and it felt like I had lots of room. We’ll have to see how it feels with Odette on the rear.
Based on my ride home, triple vs. double won’t be an issue. I want to lay out a traditional gearing chart comparing the blue and red tandems but that will mean taking the rear wheels off to count teeth on the cogs in the cassette and that will need to wait for a day when I’m not nursing road rash.
Dan Toole recognized the Ibis (and said that he was just looking at a photo of it) and then went to interview a cleaning service, saying that he had many fewer workers and that they didn’t have time to clean like they used to.
I need to experiment with the carbon saddle I mounted. Maybe we won’t do a fitting, but I need to fiddle with saddle height both front and back. I’ve got to figure out what saddle will work for Odette (probably not the Sprung Flyer) but after discussing it with her we’ll start out with that raggedy padded Serfas. I kind of hope she ends up liking the Flyer – if that h happens I’ll get myself a B-17 or something and a Brooks saddle bag, and cosmetically the bike will look better.
Should we move to different bars for Odette – upgrade the Prima TTT 220 bars on there now? Maybe a Rivendale Wavie (or maybe those cut-off FSA Wing-pros?) or some bullhorns would work better than the drops.
I wonder if hanging it up by the wheel is a good idea with the carbon spokes. (It seems to make contact with the hook on the rim only and it doesn’t touch the spokes at all.)
Eventually I will want to replace the blackburn bottle cages with something sexier. I know that there are bottle cage mounts for mini-pumps that might make the battery look more symmetrical.

Odette agreed to a short ride on Wednesday to try out the Taliani. Then, after breakfast, it was raining and we blew it off. This was the second time we bailed out on a ride around Green Lake on the new tandem – we talked about it the day before I first took the bike in to R+E but ended up deciding not to ride then, either.

After lunch on Thursday I swapped the rear derailleur and cassette on Odette’s Tuscany for the titanium parts that came off the Taliani. The exchange was uneventful – the chain from the tandem needs a quick link so I kept the chain from the Tuscany and it seemed to work fine. I needed to fiddle with the barrel adjuster to get it to go into the largest cog but no real problems. The inner tubes I got have a 42mm valve stem which turns out not to be long enough for those deep-section rims. I ordered some more with 60mm valves and will use the others on the Stellar.

I took a day off after hitting a pothole in the rain and messing up my face. On Saturday it was still raining and I didn’t feel like riding so I installed the Paul Components Engineering touring cantis on Odette’s Stellar. The install was easy and the brakes are much easier to set up than the Rodriguez “big squeeze” cantis that I’m used to. (I don’t have the hang of the eccentric washers that you use to adjust the toe-in and pad angle, but trial and error got me close.) I replaced the inner tubes on that bike with new Continental 650C tubes so the bike should be good to go. Those 42mm valve stems really don’t work very well with my floor pump. (I exploded one tube probably by trapping it under the bead even though I manipulated it all the way around before pumping. )

Here are the details on Odette’s bikes:

I spent the afternoon cleaning and organizing the garage. and really didn’t make a dent. I found some more Rholoff parts – including a shifter. I discovered that I have a lot of old cantis. I found some smaller outriggers and I may try to combine one of those with a light stub. I didn’t find a side-loading mini pump bracket. I wasn’t able to rotate the right hand shift lever on the Centurion, but it still works despite the crash and actually may not have been twisted at all. I still need to swap out the front derailleur on my Litespeed for the one from the Taliani and clean the three bikes with fenders.

Tuesday I swapped the front derailleur on my Litespeed Classic for the one that came off of the Taliani. I think that I need more tension in the cable but it shifts up and down and doesn’t make any chain noise while on the stand. (I’m not certain that the old one was broken, but it was way out of adjustment and I couldn’t seem to get it back in range.) I found the springs for the body float and spent a little time trying to figure out how to replace them. I finally gave up and downloaded their instruction sheet.

Early in the morning before a ride I changed the body float springs to two purples. The procedure was not as easy as I was led to expect and the instruction sheets were not exactly clear, but it seems to only go together in one way and it compresses like it is supposed to. Odette can straddle the frame with both feet flat on the floor but if she sits on the saddle she can only touch with her toes – so as far as she is concerned it doesn’t work. I mounted the sprung flyer and we took our maiden ride – a couple of laps around green lake. We came back to the garage and adjusted the nose of her saddle so that it didn’t point down quite as much and we raised my saddle a couple of inches (and moved her handlebars up as far as they will go on my seat post. ) The second two laps felt a little more comfortable so we did two more. Climbing up the hill on 50th with Odette on the back feels remarkably like it does on the red tandem. I’ve got to get the saddles sorted out (that carbon Selle Anatomica isn’t a long term solution.) I need to raise the front bars and I need to find a set of stoker bars with more rise. I need to order bottle cages and set up a tool kit. Otherwise, the Di2 bike is coming together.

After Odette got me more new batteries, I measured the clamping diameter on the rear stem on the Taliani and got numbers that didn’t make any sense at all. I finally figured out that it helps to zero out the caliper before measuring and determined that I need 26mm bars. I need to order a set of inexpensive bullhorns and we’ll take it from there. I finally got 650C inner tubes with a 60mm valve stem and I installed one in the front of Odette’s Tuscany and put the other one in her saddle bag. I replaced the carbon Selle Anatomica saddle on the front of the Taliani with a beat-up old Selle Italia, (a Mundialita, I think.) I don’t know where it came from but it must have been on some bike that I got used, probably the Centurion. That will hold me until Odette figures out whether or not she can live with the Flyer. Ordering the bottle cages means a call to Peter White and I’ll deal with that in the next few days.

I raised the front bars up to the top of the steerer tube and I’ll figure out where I want them before cutting housing or cable or the steerer. I figured out that what determined the length of the housing was the position of the hanger, meaning that if I left the hanger the same distance below the clamp I wouldn’t have to add any housing. I end up with a hanger that is really too high and a long exposed cable segment, but it will work for now. The first time I have it serviced I’ll need to cut the tube or add some housing to the front brake cable.

I got a pair of Origin8 bullhorns and got Odette’s buy-in to try them on the blue tandem. The weather turned wet and we weren’t going to be riding any time soon so there was no hurry to install them. The bar tape came off the Prima bars intact, so I wrapped the bullhorns with the old tape just to have something to hang onto while we adjusted their position, figuring that I’d save the new tape until I was sure the bars were going to work. The bullhorns were the occasion for a conversation about saddles – I read Peter White’s comments to her and we talked about cut-outs and shapes. Here are the links I gave to her:

Eventually we’ll select another saddle and give it a try.

Before riding on Black Friday, I had Odette sit on the bike and tell me if she was okay with the position of the bullhorns and to make sure that they weren’t bumping her knees. She wasn’t really into it but said they were fine. After lunch I replaced the bar tape on the bullhorns with a different used tape – and I moved the posts a little further around the bend and tilted them back a bit. It’s still a work in process but I think that they’ll be okay when we get done. While I was in the garage I looked at cassettes and was able to find the number of teeth marked on most of the rings. Here is a basic gearing chart for the red and blue tandems. As I expected, even with a 2-by setup, the range on the Litespeed is comparable to that on the Rodriguez – and the granny gear is actually a little lower.

Here’s my “made in USA” gallery:

CHATTANOOGA (TN)

SEATTLE (WA)

SEBASTOPOL (CA)

Here’s a gallery of Di2 bike photos: