R2S2

As long as you don't want anything too elaborate I can help too. As I am on the East Rand it'll at least save you some travel! PM me if you are interested.

Just waiting for Razzo to finalise his drawings, and will then probably meet sometime later this week. As we are only discussing drawings there will be no need for you to be upright...

Maybe our test pilot should come have a beer with us then!

Amen to that!

Razzo, I have access to mills, lathes, and an military-spec tig welder, as well as a very nifty little spreadsheet that does frame design based on rider parameters (PM me if you want it!) All I need is someone who has jigged up a frame before, and a couple of other people interested so that we can bring costs down. Sure, I don't need a new bike, but damn I want one! Fred, Thanx for the feedback on ride quality. You will most certaily have better power transfer from steel, as it "stores" flexing in the same manner as a spring does, releasing it in a delayed manner with very little loss. This is something aluminium simply cannot do! I'm soooooooooo jealous!

Well Razzo, happy to meet you then! Tell me more though - did jou purpose build a jig for this one frame, or do you have a proper frame jig? What did you use to get the geometry right? Did you clone an existing geometry, or is it a completely fresh design? If you don't want to disclose too much publicly, please feel free to PM me!

Aaaah, BUT... Columbus has price breakpoints for 1, 5 and 10+ frames respectively, so if we could get 5 or 10 or even more people to join in, we could potentially get those carbon bits for not much more than what your steel frame cost! OK, so I don't exactly need a frame right now for myself, but it really is something worth considering! So, go on then, show your builder the light!

So Sir Fred, who's your builder?

Here's another take on the Spirit tubeset: Though I still think your black frame rocks, it is interesting to note that the material is rust proof, so it needs not be painted. As soon as your framebuilder is ready, I want one!

That is one glorious piece of craftmanship! The all black scheme looks menacing, if not thoroughly evil! Spirit is an excellent choice, and the difference in weight to the Life set isn't worth crying over. According to Columbus' specs your frame should weigh in at around the 1.1kg mark, which is right up there with even some of the best carbon frames. So please tell, who built it for you?

Oh yes, another benefit of the new setup, other than of course weight, is that a hollow shaft is torsionally far more rigid than a solid shaft of the same diameter. The benefit from this is that the power developed by the left leg will be transferred into the chainrings more effectively. A solid shaft also deflects more when cantilevered, so the new shaft should further eliminate lateral crankarm deflection around the shaft center. Empirically, you can expect a 30% improvement in both torque and deflection characteristics over a solid shaft. R2S238923.5470486111

The best I guess to do would be to take the weights of the 2006 components, and factor in the weight reductions quoted here: http://www.campyonly.com/rumors/2006/2007_gruppos.html#WEIGH T

Those fancy joints have very little to do with the glamour of "turbine engineering" in this case, but are put in place for the following reasons: The two half shafts are actually fixed to the crankarms, and instead of having bolts through the centre of each crankarm, holding it onto the shaft, you now have two crank & half-shaft halves, joined in the middle, where there is very little (no) leverage induced strain on the joint. It places the bearings much nearer to the crankarms, as there is now no longer any nead for the sloppy square taper interface between arm and shaft. This provides for even more of a reduction on leverage iduced strain on the bearings, and should in the long run prove great for bearing life. From a manufacturing oerspective it makes it easier to machine out the shaft to make it hollow, as the mounting areas for the external bearings would make it very difficult, were the shaft a single complete unit. This obviously lowers machining cost, as well as to make the process just a bit more precise. As for your comment re damage of components SwissVan: If anything, assembly will be much easier, and only a complete t(w)it will be able to get it wrong. There are 20 splines in the joint, so the least you could get it out by when assembling is 18 degrees - come now, even a beginner would soon enough notice if they had cocked this bit up! R2S238923.5028587963

"The anti torque crank imo is overkill, bicycle BB's are only a few inches long and experience squat torque compared to turbine engine shafts. I reckon it will cause more problems than what it will solve." I suspect it has less to do with torque than it does with cost of manufacturing, ease of assembly, and lessening the complexity of the bearing assemblies.

Some more info, and expected prices: http://www.campyonly.com/rumors/2006/2007_gruppos.html#PRICE S

If the scratch hasn't gone through the clearcoat and right onto the fibre, it can easily be removed by wet sanding it CAREFULLY, first with 600grit sandpaper, and then with 1200 or even 2000 grit. Use lots of water! Once the scratch is gone, you can buff the sanded area back to a gloss using brasso. If the scratch is through onto the carbon, then the best to do is to use a polyurethane based clearcoat, as sold at automotive paint suppliers. It consists of a clear resin, which is mixed with a hardener. Usually only sold in larger quantities, but asking nicely could get you a small enough quantity to patch the scratch up. Your friendly panelbeater will probably also be willing to help you out with a couple of cc's of the stuff, as most modern cars have a clearcoat layer. I have quiet a bit of the stuff lying around, as well as a handy airbrush, so if all else fails, feel free to PM me!

Oh, and to answer your other question - steel and ceramic are completely interchangeable, and ceramic will actually increase the lifespan of steel bearing races.

Ceramic bearings are available from SKF South Africa. Problem is that they have a minimum order quantity of one tin of bearings (we are talking loose balls here), and since you need two sizes this becomes a fairly expensive excercise.

More info: "I just had my hands on 2007 Campy Prototypes. Unfortunately with the Rep present, photos were not an option. Here's what I can tell you from what I can remember: ID of the BB spindle at the crank arm is a massive 25mm. This tapers internally through the Bearing and externally after the bearing (inside the shell so to speak. I couldn't get an idea of the diameter of spindle further down (my ring didn't compare to anything...) The interface in the center has 20 teeth approx. 5mm deep on each side of the spindle that mesh much like two gears. A hollow alloy bolt holds the two sides together at 42Nm. I unfortunately didn't have a magnet handy so I can't tell you if the spindle with alloy or something else. The cups are separate from the bearing and are sold separately from the crank. The cups are the same through the range from Xenon to Record. The Record cranks have been narrowed and made flat in order to keep the Q-factor the same as the current crank/bb set up. They're about 10mm thick at the edges, a small bulge down the center but otherwise flat and hollow. The most noticeable part is that they're close to 50mm wide! The explanation given was that whatever is placed inside the crank before curing the carbon is then sucked out through a small hole in the back side of the crank (this is then covered by some sort of sticker on the prototype, I don't know how the production model will be). Chorus cranks are nearly identical to Record, however won't be hollow. Centaur and down go to a forged alloy arm with a concave backside, in a similar shape from the front as the carbon cranks. Centaur will be available in black. Centaur brakes are forged slightly different from Record and Chorus, with exposed bolts in the center where as Rec/Cho are hidden bolt forged. they're still nice and round but with hollows in the arms. As has been said above, similar in idea to ZG, only a lot prettier, as would be expected from Campy. Most of the other changes are minor, however I have one change to make to my previous statements, Chorus will be going to the shifter that only allows 1 gear change at a time when going to smaller cogs. Record will remain the only one allowing you to dump as many gears as your thumb will allow. However, the shifting action on the thumb lever of the lower units is EXTREMELY shorts and VERY easy so tapping the lever multiple times for shifts will not be a problem. This new system also lightens up the levers pretty well and will make for an interesting dilemma when choosing shifters for a piece by piece build. US delivery on the higher end parts will be late, Chorus and Record probably won't see light of day here prior to October. Bianchi will be delivery bikes with Mirage 10 at the end of this month for most markets, probably June/July in the states. These are the bikes that have been photographed and going around on WW forums."