DCBassman
Guru
- Location
- The lumpy far South West
OK, this seems to be the best way to go about this subject. I'm accumulating the parts and tools at the moment, as well as the knowledge. Hopefully, I won't try anything too stupid...
The idea is not just to go flat bar, but to use this rather nice alloy frame as wide-geared lightweight hybrid. If it goes well, I'll have the bike I want, and will likely have another punt at London to Brighton in 2019.
I will also try to keep the look of the thing reasonably in tune with the original layout. This will not be immediately do-able, as the bars, brakes and shifters I'm aiming to use for the moment are black. All else, where possible is shiny-shiny as per the original Sora groupset.
I've looked up the gearing calculations and the Ritchey chainset should work with the Alivio long-cage rd. It's at the supposed limit of capacity (45), but my reading here on CC suggests you can stretch this a bit anyway. If not, then I have a smaller chainset to try.
The biggest single problem is the mixing of controls. The rd should be fine with the Altus shifter, so far as I can tell. The brake levers are not optimal for calipers. And I don't know if the Altus shifter will properly control the Sora fd. If all this goes wrong, then separate shifters and levers are not too difficult to source, just that I rather like the combined units.
Things I don't yet know: how to assess the correct length of chain, as I can't simply compare it to the old one; if I need to use the smaller chainset, how to adjust the Sora fd to work with it.
OK, that's enough to be going on with!
The idea is not just to go flat bar, but to use this rather nice alloy frame as wide-geared lightweight hybrid. If it goes well, I'll have the bike I want, and will likely have another punt at London to Brighton in 2019.
I will also try to keep the look of the thing reasonably in tune with the original layout. This will not be immediately do-able, as the bars, brakes and shifters I'm aiming to use for the moment are black. All else, where possible is shiny-shiny as per the original Sora groupset.
I've looked up the gearing calculations and the Ritchey chainset should work with the Alivio long-cage rd. It's at the supposed limit of capacity (45), but my reading here on CC suggests you can stretch this a bit anyway. If not, then I have a smaller chainset to try.
The biggest single problem is the mixing of controls. The rd should be fine with the Altus shifter, so far as I can tell. The brake levers are not optimal for calipers. And I don't know if the Altus shifter will properly control the Sora fd. If all this goes wrong, then separate shifters and levers are not too difficult to source, just that I rather like the combined units.
Things I don't yet know: how to assess the correct length of chain, as I can't simply compare it to the old one; if I need to use the smaller chainset, how to adjust the Sora fd to work with it.
OK, that's enough to be going on with!
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