Ok, so I had some grand plans for this weekend. Thursday night, I talked to the guy who was going to build my Salsa, and he was super-excited about it. AND he was off this weekend, so we made plans to go to his house after the Saturday ride and take apart the Orca to build the Casseroll. Sweet!
Or not. After an afternoon bike-building fiasco on Saturday, I have learned a lot about steel bikes in general, and this bike in particular.
1) A steel frame, generally speaking, does not use the same size front derailleur clamp as most carbon and aluminum bikes. Since most new bikes on the market today are carbon or aluminum, a 28.6mm front derailleur clamp is a special-order item.
2) There are little whatsits that attach to the cable-mount thingies on the frame, if you want to run it with gears. (My frame did not come with those, apparently, because it was set up as a single-speed in its past life. But my bike guy had them, so yay!)
3) When Salsa says that a frame is "designed to use long-reach caliper brakes*", what they mean is, "hey, you'll need long-reach caliper brakes". Not, "we would like you to use long-reach calipers, but no big deal, you can move your standard brakes over from your other bike and be fine".
4) Long-reach caliper brakes are longer downward, not wider across as I had somehow gotten into my head.
5) Because they usually only go on touring bikes, long-reach caliper brakes are not something generally stocked in local bike shops either.
6) If you adjust the wheel of the Casseroll back as far as it will go in the dropout, you can almost use standard brakes with a geared setup. However, that's only if you get a really long chain, or can figure out a way to somehow ride without one.
So, long story short, about 5 hours and one futile trip to the bike store from when we started, the Casseroll looked mostly like a bike...but was utterly useless. Unfortunately, so was the Orbea, since we had taken it completely apart. Two more rides left in the weekend, and I was effectively bikeless. Luckily, McSpeedy had a spare that he sold me a few months ago (dude owed me some money), so I was able to ride that this morning. It was a bit uncomfortable since he's 4 inches taller than me, but we were able to get it to work for today.
Tomorrow, I go to the shop with hat in hand, and contritely ask them to order all the parts the Salsa needs, charge me whatever they see fit, and please, please, PLEASE make my pretty little bike work. Because now that I've seen it as a real live bike, I desperately want to ride it. :)
*The Casseroll has clearance for really big tires and fenders. Normal caliper brakes are designed for standard road bike clearance between a 700cx23c tire and the bike frame (read: very little).
Posted by Joy at July 13, 2008 05:30 PM