On Friday, February 26, 2021 at 9:46:03 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 5:40:03 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 4:22:54 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 11:21:21 AM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 9:56:29 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Wednesday, February 24, 2021 at 1:56:28 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Wednesday, February 24, 2021 at 12:59:05 PM UTC-8, wrote:
Parts are trickling in slowly. Local parts I can obtained off of Craigs list now are so overpriced that it is out of question to pay $60 for a bolt-on disk. There is a guy that sells Chinese parts that are cheap enough and with the bolts included but he is almost impossible to get him to respond so I gave up. I'm sure he is paying his way through Cal State Hayward with the money but no response, no sale and now it costs as much to get a single disk from eBay as four from him.

The headset tool won't arrive for another couple of weeks but since there are four other minor parts that are going to take that long no sense in worrying about it. The BB386 us going to take that long as well and it doesn't matter if the work isn't installed if the crank can't be fitted. The 32 tooth 10 speed cassette came in and I installed that yesterday as the hunchback. since the rear disk hydraulic line was mounted a rather long way it should fit on the 2 cm larger frameset without problem. The say with the front line. It is internal on this fork but was external on the other. So I will have to strip off the bead and cap on the lever end and stick it up from the bottom side. in order to lose the lease fluid and make it easier to bleed afterwards. It appears that flat bar gravel bikes are getting popular so this one should move a lot faster than the Emonda or Modone. The last guy to query about the Emonda must have been a monkey, after exchanges for three days he said that he wouldn't fit the bike. He is three inches shorter than I am but claims his arms are 37" long. Maybe he is measuring from the middle of his back because from shoulder to fingertip my arms are 26".

The tires are 3 mm wider than I would like but there is more than plenty of room with these triangles. It is surprising how easy gravel tires roll on hard surfaces. But gravel bikes have lower gear ratios and the 11/42 high gear isn't going to rush anyone down the road. If I can get this together there is another Felt road bike that I will buy and build into a 10 speed Campy Record. The parts I have look brand new, though I will be looking for a compact two piece crank. That will require a compact front derailleur that will come from the Campy warehouse.

I was standing upright for the first half hour of this morning so I am recovering from that stained back if a lot more slowly than I would like.

I wonder how you tell what sort of hydraulic fluid is in this Avid setup. It could use either Shimano mineral oil or DOT 5.1 which needs replacing every year if that makes any sense. When was the last time you replaced your car brake fluid?
Six-bolt disc rotors are common as fleas. $20 for a Deore six-bolt of Amazonian. https://tinyurl.com/4nzbb92v What headset tool do you need? It's an integrated HS. Do need a crown seat setting tool? And are you switching to an Avid set up from Shimano? They're not cross-compatible. Avid/SRAM uses DOT fluid, and I'm not sure if the Shimano hose is happy with DOT fluid, and its ID may be incompatible with the Avid brakes as well. The levers definitely take different olives and nuts. Even if you could use the Shimano hose, you'd have to bob the ends, remove the barb, olive and nut, to get it through your frame -- unless it has giant openings. Go get some Avid/SRAM hoses.

BTW, the F55X is not a gravel bike. It is a CX bike. You have a slightly different version of the Redline Conquest you spent so long unloading.

-- Jay Beattie.
I suggest you actually learn to ride before you tell me what is a gravel and what is a CX bike since they handle totally different. You spend most of your time now being disagreeable for no other reason than you are a Democrat that is seeing your world crumble before your eyes and are loath to admit that you were told so, so many times that all you can do is attempt to refute it like a child. "Nuh uh".
WTF are you talking about? The Felt F55X is a CX bike. Google it. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/00...827 344467882

This is not an opinion. I own a CX bike and a gravel bike and am well aware of the differences. The F55X is not marketed as a gravel bike and is geometrically different from a gravel bike. It is a CX bike.

-- Jay Beattie.
Jay, they can call it anything they like. A cross bike uses a short wheelbase and a gravel bike a longer. The wheelbase on this thing is 43" A cross bike would be around 39".
Well, sure, they could call it a touring bike, or a road racing bike, but that would be a lie -- and it would undercut the whole idea of building a CX bike. No?

I don't know where the F55X falls in the CX design world, which seems to oscillate back and forth in terms of steering geometry and chain stay length, but it will certainly have a lower stack height, higher BB and less features for use on the road, although some entry level CX bikes will have fender mounts. My CAADX does. The CAADX also has a dreadful, slack HT with lots of fork offset for a really heavy feeling front end on the road. I much prefer the more roadie feel of my Norco Search gravel bike.

The bottom line is that if you're building this for resale, you're looking at a tougher resale than just a real gravel bike with drop bars. You're building a coffee shop racer with flat bars and big tires. Maybe that sells in the Bay Area. Avid hydros also have a bad reputation, or they did. Maybe it has improved.

And depending on what you're going to try to sell if for, you're up again a really great bargain gravel bike -- the Trek Checkpoint ALR. The CF version was Velo News' bicycle of the year. https://www.velonews.com/gear/gravel...eckpoint-sl-5/ I'd get one of those, but I think I've gotten my limit of pro-deals from Trek.

Plus, I already have my Norco Search, which I got on sale from Western Bikeworks for $1500. This one: https://www.norco.com/bike-archives/2017/search-c-105/ With my custom-applied ho-made frame guards: https://photos.app.goo.gl/PhLwf6MRK8TfPAJYA It's a fun bike.
Look Jay, I respect you as a bike rider but please don't tell me what I have. I know the difference between a real CX bike and a gravel bike. Ridley made the mistake of trying to race long wheelbase CX bikes. After they changed to short wheelbases - nearly the same as a road bike - they began winning. It wasn't that they switched to carbon fiber, but because they switched to shorter wheelbase bikes and gained far faster maneuverability. The difference from my older style Ridley and the Redline or Trek Boone CX bike was more than noticeable.

All I am saying is that the F55X is a CX bike with whatever attributes Felt has given it. You can call it whatever you want, but it is not Felt's gravel bike. https://feltbicycles.com/products/breed-gravel-bike The CX bike has way less BB drop, shorter stack height, higher stand-over, steeper HT with less fork offset, flat underside of the TT for shouldering the bike, etc., etc. The current FX CX bike actually has a longer wheelbase than the gravel bike, which is interesting. You can market it as a gravel bike, but that will be suspect to serious buyers who will do just what I did, "hey, that's Felt's CX bike, not its gravel bike." An old man contradicting the company's advertising and calling it a gravel bike will not comfort buyers.


-- Jay Beattie.