I don’t know about you but I am well know for constantly messing around with the setup on my bikes. Part of it is fueled by the luxury of working in a bike shop and constantly being around cool new gear but most of it is just because I like to tinker with stuff.
After about a year and a half of messing around with my Civia Bryant I have gone through 4 handle bar setups, three cranks, two types of shifters, and three saddles. Despite feeling the urge to continue to mess around I think I have things at a point where I have no reason to change.
The most recent revisions to my setup were changing out the saddle, crank, shifters, and lighting configurations.
When it comes to saddles I have two definite favorites on road and cross bikes. The Fizik Arione and Selle San Marco Regal have always worked great but when I built this bike up I wanted to delve into the ancient realm of Brooks saddles. Brooks has some basic suggestions for applying their saddles to different types of riding positions but they are pretty wide. I don’t ride a super upright touring position and after doing some research I decided to originally try out a Brooks Team Pro. After 6 months of daily use it broke in nicely but never quite gave me the fit I was looking for. I was never uncomfortable on it but I can’t say I was comfortable either. A few weeks ago the east coast sales rep for Brooks came by the shop and after talking saddles for an hour I decided that the Team Pro was in fact NOT the right saddle for me and I needed to try something else. The Brooks Swift seemed to be on paper what I was looking for. The Swift is both a bit more narrow and firmer compared to the Team Pro and has a fit that is most like a modern road saddle. Being a roadie at heart this made perfect sense. One week into riding it I can already tell I made the right decision.
As for cranks and shifters this was something that I suppose was a long time coming. When I first built this bike I had a 34×32 as my lowest gear by using a Sram Apex compact crank and long cage rear derailleur. I discovered pretty early on that while this low gear worked for pulling a trailer full of gear and a dog, I could certainly use something even lower. At the time I had Sram Force shifters which I liked but going to a lower geared road crank meant a triple which Sram double tap shifters could not accommodate. So off they came and onto the bike went a Shimano triple crank with 52/39/30 tooth chainrings and bar end shifters. Did this work? Yes. 30×32 was great for pulling a load even up the steep grave pitches I rode this past summer on my trip back to Acadia in Maine. The gearing was great and I quickly got used to bar end shifters but I still could not shake missing the functionality of Sram double tap brake/shift levers.
I was stuck until I realized that Sram’s 10 speed mountain bike cranks were the solution. The the crank with 42 and 28 tooth chainrings looked to be the perfect solution. The 28 gave me an even lower gear for pulling weight and I realized I would not really be giving up anything by ditching the big ring. I don’t suppose I would be winning any sprints with a 42 tooth ring but then again this bike is not for going fast. I would still have to be going over 30mph to really spin out the 42 tooth ring and going back to a double allowed me to put my much missed trigger shifters back on the bike.
Sram’s mountain bike front derailleurs work flawlessly with their road shifters and the new crank setup is perfect.
Last but not least I recently added a dynamo powered light to the package. More on that later though…
