RebornBumbler
Senior Member
- Location
- Barnstaple
Initial experiences and impressions of buying a new road bike - Felt F95 2013 - ~£450 from several outlets. At the time of posting I've had it for 4 days...
I bought mine unseen/untried from Winstanley - they had it in Monster Green and I didn't fancy the Wiggle Special colours, nor the similar standard "Anthracite".
Other than picking a colour I liked and minimising the price I was paying, my criteria were:
A major manufacturer.
New-style integrated shifters (up and down the gears regardless of hand-position).
9 Gears minimum.
It came packed in an undamaged box which was a good start and it required very little thought to unpack and put together (I still haven't read any of the paperwork...)
The bars/controls, gearing and brake pads had all been nicely sorted before removing to pack up, so there was little required other than simple assembly.
Once quickly/loosely put together, I copied the crank-centre to saddle-top height from my old Ridgeback and figured out roughly where I needed the bars rotating to in the stem (I went for an almost straight-line to the hoods from the top of the bars). Threw on the pedals/toeclips from my Ridgeback hybrid thing and checked the pedalling action which required moving the saddle back a tad (by feel, I don't subscribe to KOPS - what's gravity got to do with pedalling ?). Having nipped-up all the bolts, I decided there was no way I could live with the saddle (before I'd even ridden it down the road), so I swapped my Madison Prime over from the Ridgeback - relatively total bliss.
A quick spin of both wheels had me sweating a little, as there was perhaps 3-4 mm of sideways movement - mainly on the front - but a quick twang of the spokes suggested a couple were quite loose, so I blindly tightened them a touch and checked again - just a mm or two then. A little further tightening in the right places and I had as perfect wheels as I've ever had, and was pretty chuffed with myself to boot
(I've since had to do some more tweaking, but I figure that's probably the case with most new wheels).
Finally pumped up the tyres (to around 90/100).
I have to say that my initial thoughts were that the whole bike felt somehow 'fragile' - it felt like it might bend or crumple as soon as I put any significant forces through it - but I've since realised that this is due to it not resembling the "immovable object" Ridgeback that is my only current comparison.
First spin down the road was eye-opening and invigorating. Acceleration doesn't come anything like as easily on a Ridgeback 520 - even when significantly upgraded. I threw it around a few corners with blind faith and the experience was sublime. Braking wasn't quite as impressive - certainly not up to V-brakes with Aztec pads standard - but not alarming. One slight hiccup was a slight grating/graunchy noise/sensation every crank rotation which I thought was probably the not-Shimano square taper bottom bracket bearing. I dismissed it as an immediate problem and prepared to ride it the next day with my local club.
I had determined that I would try cleats on this bike (always used toeclips previously) so went to the LBS and bought a pair of Shimano 520s and Specialized trainer-type shoes. Spent about half an hour putting the cleats in the "somewhere-near" position and a further hour riding around town repeating to myself "CLEATS!! UNCLIP BEFORE STOPPING! CHANGE GEAR EARLY! CLEATS!!!" - which worked out OK.
The pedals hadn't made any difference to the graunch, but it hadn't got worse.
Yesterday's ride was phenomenal - I probably overdid my 'turn on the front', and suffered quite a bit towards the end of the ride on the hills (around 35 miles I think), but speeds were well up on anything I've managed to sustain before. The weather was mostly foul, but I was never concerned with traction or grip - only with avoiding the deeper water and potholes.
We did briefly stop and I immediately (of course) fell over after unclipping and leaning the other way (CLEATS - IDIOT!!) No damage to the bike at all (IT didn't even touch the ground...) and nobody laughed, which was nice.
Handling is precise, but it's not remotely twitchy (On a previous racer I could barely take my hands off the bars). It doesn't tend to shake the teeth out of your skull like the Ridgeback, and just as soon as I adapt to the new position (and fine-tune my cleats /stem/saddle) I predict a very long and happy relationship.
After the ride there was considerable black mess (brake block) removed from from the rims - at least partly due to poorly finished joins on the Alex rims which I've treated to a little fine emery-paper.
I think I'll replace the pads with Aztec roads when the current pads wear out - which might well be quite soon.
I have since been playing with the barrel adjusters, and think perhaps the grinding may be the chain/front derailleur, but I'm not 100% certain until I ride it again.
So to summarise:
The negatives: The brake pads aren't fabulous. The saddle is dreadful! The joins on the rims aren't that well finished and the spokes needed a bit of tweaking. There's a yet-to-be-resolved crank-related grating. The Sora front derailleur action is very clanky/clunky (but this seems to be a Sora feature).
The positives: Everything else! - I haven't grinned-like-an-idiot so much for a long time - it's a fantastic handling responsive ride - I'm also impressed with the Zaffiro tyres - might well stick with those or upgrade to the lighter folding bead variety if I don't suffer too many flats.
I think I'll be getting a 12-27 cassette to help me up the hills a bit (and I really don't need a 50/11 top gear) and I'll swap the pads soon, but otherwise I'm very impressed.
The Green is also truly Monster
I bought mine unseen/untried from Winstanley - they had it in Monster Green and I didn't fancy the Wiggle Special colours, nor the similar standard "Anthracite".
Other than picking a colour I liked and minimising the price I was paying, my criteria were:
A major manufacturer.
New-style integrated shifters (up and down the gears regardless of hand-position).
9 Gears minimum.
It came packed in an undamaged box which was a good start and it required very little thought to unpack and put together (I still haven't read any of the paperwork...)
The bars/controls, gearing and brake pads had all been nicely sorted before removing to pack up, so there was little required other than simple assembly.
Once quickly/loosely put together, I copied the crank-centre to saddle-top height from my old Ridgeback and figured out roughly where I needed the bars rotating to in the stem (I went for an almost straight-line to the hoods from the top of the bars). Threw on the pedals/toeclips from my Ridgeback hybrid thing and checked the pedalling action which required moving the saddle back a tad (by feel, I don't subscribe to KOPS - what's gravity got to do with pedalling ?). Having nipped-up all the bolts, I decided there was no way I could live with the saddle (before I'd even ridden it down the road), so I swapped my Madison Prime over from the Ridgeback - relatively total bliss.
A quick spin of both wheels had me sweating a little, as there was perhaps 3-4 mm of sideways movement - mainly on the front - but a quick twang of the spokes suggested a couple were quite loose, so I blindly tightened them a touch and checked again - just a mm or two then. A little further tightening in the right places and I had as perfect wheels as I've ever had, and was pretty chuffed with myself to boot
(I've since had to do some more tweaking, but I figure that's probably the case with most new wheels).
Finally pumped up the tyres (to around 90/100).
I have to say that my initial thoughts were that the whole bike felt somehow 'fragile' - it felt like it might bend or crumple as soon as I put any significant forces through it - but I've since realised that this is due to it not resembling the "immovable object" Ridgeback that is my only current comparison.
First spin down the road was eye-opening and invigorating. Acceleration doesn't come anything like as easily on a Ridgeback 520 - even when significantly upgraded. I threw it around a few corners with blind faith and the experience was sublime. Braking wasn't quite as impressive - certainly not up to V-brakes with Aztec pads standard - but not alarming. One slight hiccup was a slight grating/graunchy noise/sensation every crank rotation which I thought was probably the not-Shimano square taper bottom bracket bearing. I dismissed it as an immediate problem and prepared to ride it the next day with my local club.
I had determined that I would try cleats on this bike (always used toeclips previously) so went to the LBS and bought a pair of Shimano 520s and Specialized trainer-type shoes. Spent about half an hour putting the cleats in the "somewhere-near" position and a further hour riding around town repeating to myself "CLEATS!! UNCLIP BEFORE STOPPING! CHANGE GEAR EARLY! CLEATS!!!" - which worked out OK.
The pedals hadn't made any difference to the graunch, but it hadn't got worse.
Yesterday's ride was phenomenal - I probably overdid my 'turn on the front', and suffered quite a bit towards the end of the ride on the hills (around 35 miles I think), but speeds were well up on anything I've managed to sustain before. The weather was mostly foul, but I was never concerned with traction or grip - only with avoiding the deeper water and potholes.
We did briefly stop and I immediately (of course) fell over after unclipping and leaning the other way (CLEATS - IDIOT!!) No damage to the bike at all (IT didn't even touch the ground...) and nobody laughed, which was nice.
Handling is precise, but it's not remotely twitchy (On a previous racer I could barely take my hands off the bars). It doesn't tend to shake the teeth out of your skull like the Ridgeback, and just as soon as I adapt to the new position (and fine-tune my cleats /stem/saddle) I predict a very long and happy relationship.
After the ride there was considerable black mess (brake block) removed from from the rims - at least partly due to poorly finished joins on the Alex rims which I've treated to a little fine emery-paper.
I think I'll replace the pads with Aztec roads when the current pads wear out - which might well be quite soon.
I have since been playing with the barrel adjusters, and think perhaps the grinding may be the chain/front derailleur, but I'm not 100% certain until I ride it again.
So to summarise:
The negatives: The brake pads aren't fabulous. The saddle is dreadful! The joins on the rims aren't that well finished and the spokes needed a bit of tweaking. There's a yet-to-be-resolved crank-related grating. The Sora front derailleur action is very clanky/clunky (but this seems to be a Sora feature).
The positives: Everything else! - I haven't grinned-like-an-idiot so much for a long time - it's a fantastic handling responsive ride - I'm also impressed with the Zaffiro tyres - might well stick with those or upgrade to the lighter folding bead variety if I don't suffer too many flats.
I think I'll be getting a 12-27 cassette to help me up the hills a bit (and I really don't need a 50/11 top gear) and I'll swap the pads soon, but otherwise I'm very impressed.
The Green is also truly Monster
To the "Clipless moment" club 
