Project - Giant TCR C2 Di2

Introduction

Ever since I'd heard about electronic gears, I've been intrigued by them. No, we're not talking about the early incarnations of Shimano Di2, I'm talking about the even older Mavic Zap system. Of course, the pricing put them well out of each for me, so I never had an opportunity to even try them out. That said, reviews seem to indicate that I didn't miss out on much.

Mavic Zap Groupset. Possibly made out of Unobtainium

What seemed like a cool idea to me seemed to fade away into obscurity until Shimano entered the game with their DuraAce Di2 setup. Predictably, this too was out of reach price-wise, but the product was far more polished and the overall uptake was much better than the Mavic systems. Even more interesting was the announcement that there was likely to be an Ultegra level electronic gear set in the future.

Finally Ultegra Di2 was announced and while it was still fairly expensive, it was temptingly on the verge of being affordable.  At about the same time as Ultegra Di2 was becoming more common, I clocked up 40 years of living. I'd long had a thought that I'd treat myself to my dream bike, a Pinarello, for the occasion. Another option kept dancing around in my head, that being to upgrade my current bike (2005 Giant TCR C2) to Di2.  So the options seemed to be either a traditionally geared and cabled Pinarello, or upgrade my current steed. Fortunately, I was able to combine both of these things, and I was soon the proud owner of a beautiful Di2 equipped Pinarello. See here for the story.

As time has progressed the price of Ultegra Di2 has dropped, and my continued use of Di2 on my Pinarello has meant that I've had a chance to appreciate its benefits. So a reoccurring thought was whether I could, or even should, upgrade my Giant to Di2 as well. Most of the negatives around the plan were centred about whether it was just throwing money around for no good reason (particularly at a time when job security was a little fluffy). Most of the positives amounted to "Dude! How cool would it be?" When the opportunity to pick up a cheap secondhand Di2 groupset came along, the scene was set. My Giant was going electronic. This blog post is a bit of a journal intended to document the process.

The Bike

In 2006, having been working at Aquaterra for a number of years, I'd saved up a little bit of money. While I'd always been enthusiastic about cycling, I found myself not riding anywhere near as much as I would like. To encourage me to ride more I decided to treat myself to a new bike. Carbon Fibre, Ultegra gears, far more bike than I needed. This bike has been the catalyst for my renewed passion for cycling, and has been my loyal companion through countless rides; seeing me through a number of community rides and underneath me when I dipped my toe into the weird and wonderful world of bicycle racing. To say I love this bike to bits would be an understatement! Despite having upgraded to my Pinarello, jumping onto this bike still brings a smile to my face.  A chance to upgrade it, for whatever reason, just felt like the right thing to do.

My awesome 2005 Giant TCR C2

The Donor Bike

I guess this is a story of one persons misfortune becoming another persons gain. An advertisement on the Port Adelaide Cycling Club's forum from a user showed that they were looking to sell their crashed Di2 equipped road bike. Initially I wasn't interested as the price was possibly a little higher than I was willing to pay for a secondhand groupset. A drop in price however saw me jump at the chance to pick it up. 

A few inquiries and I was soon the owner of a somewhat worse for wear Cannondale SuperSix frame.

In good condition, this would likely be someones pride and joy. Crashed into a carport, sadly, it becomes a parts donor. I picked this up for $750, which seemed like a reasonable price for a fairly low use groupset, in excellent condition.  Fortunately for me, the Cannondale used an external battery, rather than the internal battery that my Pinarello uses, which meant that I could use it on my Giant. One issue that I faced during the build was that the Cannondale is a much larger frame than my Giant. Those long cables needed to be routed and stashed somewhere!

Cannondale Supersix EVO - not quite pristine

Deconstruction

The first step in this journey was to remove all the Di2 components from the Cannondale frame. This should have been a relatively straight forward process, basically unplug, unbolt and remove. With most of the frame stripped of components and wiring, I was nearly done. Unfortunately though, I managed to turn this straight forward process into a mini drama by breaking the end of my allen key inside a bolt head. Nice one. I describe the level of profanity used at this point as "extreme".

Having removed all of the components, I gave them all a little bit of a clean to remove the small amount of road grime that had collected on the components.

We were ready to go!

At the start of the Christmas holidays, I put the Giant onto the workstand, laid out all the parts and continued to ponder how I might mount the battery. This had been the main worry, since the Giant has no mounting points for a Di2 battery.

Eventually I decided to buy extras parts to mount the battery behind the water bottle cage on the downtube and move the bottle cage on the seat tube upwards. Fingers crossed this would work! Order placed online, time to wait. In the meanwhile, I figured I could do the bulk of the work.

For whatever reason the stripping of the Giant of parts was filled with nervousness. I'm not sure why, but it always worries me when I'm taking apart a bike (especially mine!) that is running perfectly. After procrastinating for an hour or two I marched into the garage grabbed a allen key and started taking off parts. In no time flat I had a frame devoid of any running gear. My poor Giant looked so naked.

My Giant..   ready to be reborn.

Rebuilding 

As my Giant frame pre-dates Di2 componentry, there was a small, but possibly critical, piece that needed to be ordered. Before I could obtain it though, I needed to find out what it was called! It turns out that it's called a "Support Plate".

This small part protects the frame from the support bolt, which is intended to allow the front derailleur to brace against the frame. Obviously, pressing a bolt directly onto a carbon tube isn't a good idea, so this is the work around. The Cannondale has a slightly extended derailleur mount to take care of this which is a nice, elegant solution. To my surprise, this seemed to be a very difficult part to source. I finally found them at SJS Cycles in the UK. After nearly a month of waiting, it finally arrived.

Vital component.

So the process began, and components started finding their way onto my soon to be resurrected Giant. As is the norm for me, I started with the low hanging fruit just so that it felt like I was making progress. So the front and rear derailleurs were attached, as were the brake/shifter levers and brake calipers.

New brake Calipers	Front Derailleur Attached
New Rear Derailleur Attached	New Shift Levers

For quite a while I was hanging onto a fancy Hope bottom bracket, waiting for an appropriate opportunity to install it. This was the opportunity! Realistically there was no real reason to install it as my old bottom bracket was running fine and smooth, but this this one is red! Of course we all know red goes faster.

Shiny Hope Bottom Bracket

While all this was going on the Di2 battery holder and bottle cage mount arrived, allowing me to install the battery. It's a snug fit, but it's all in there.

Battery installed underneath the bottle cage

Connecting up all the wires, a quick test was performed to make sure all the components worked. With everything checking out okay, I got onto the bit I had been dreading the most, organising all those cables!

Cable Routing

Prior to starting this project, one of the biggest unknowns that I assumed I would have, would be the routing and securing of the cables.  Since the frame pre-dates Di2 by a number of years, this pretty much turned out to be the case. Quite a bit of time was spent head scratching and pondering how and where a cable should or could go, and what to attach it to once it was in place. The Di2 specific cable covers helped a little with this, but were of little use when trying to route cables from the top side of the down tube to the underside of it (eg, from the battery and the front derailleur to the junction box on the base of the bottom bracket).  Judicious use of cable ties tended to solve these issue, though clearly a Di2 specific frame, especially with with internal routing, wouldn't have any of these problems.

Cable Routing. Mini nightmare.

Finishing Up

With all the big stuff out of the way, all that was left to do is check the gears, check the position of the brake levers and wrap the bar. A bit of a test ride confirmed that everything was running super smoothly.

The Finished Product

Wrap Up

So we're all done and dusted. I'm now the proud owner of a Di2 equipped Giant TCR C2. All up I'm pretty happy with the result. It rides as smoothly as previously, but with the positive and crisp shifting that comes through Di2.

To a certain extent I'm glad that I didn't choose this path over getting my Pinarello, not least of which because I wouldn't have my awesome Pinny, but also because the bike would have been off the road for much longer than I would like while all the messing about to get things fitted happens.

I guess questions that might crop up are whether it was worth it, and whether I'd do it again. To both of those, I'd answer that I'm not really sure. It's been a bit of a fun adventure at times, and yet a bit of a nightmare in others. An old frame with internal routing I suspect would be far easier to deal with than one with external routing like this one.

If anyone is thinking of heading down a similar path and needs more information, send me a message and I'll try my best to help.

Thanks for reading! :)

I made something!

Project: Lynskey

I have always imagined that if I were to build my own bike, it'd probably be some exotic road bike, since that's generally what I prefer to ride. However, with Miss V and myself planning on doing another leg of this years BikeSA Outback Odyssey later in the year both of us were thinking that new bikes might be the order of the day. While our 26" dual suspension bikes handled things okay last time, we thought things could be a little more pleasant for us with some smooth rolling hardtail 29ers. I initially had a few options in mind, Focus and Scott had some likely candidates to name a couple.

Something that kept cropping up and piquing my interest was a Lynskey titanium frame on special. Did I have the skills to build my own bike? Maybe. Could I maintain interest long enough to complete the project on time? Possibly. Eventually I bit the bullet and started to order all the bits that I thought I'd need. One by one I watched as all the components and tools arrived and were promptly placed in a pile of goodies, ready for the start of construction. With excitement building I (perhaps foolishly) posted a photo of the pile of goodies on Facebook, which produced a huge amount of positive feedback. No backing out now!

Task: Turn this into a bicycle.

I started fairly slowly, taking care of the low hanging fruit first, such as mounting tyres to wheels, installing the seat post and similar trivial things.  The drive train and associated cabling found its way onto the frame in short order. I guess up to this point I was making good progress since I was concentrating on tasks that I was fairly familiar with from working with my other bikes.

As parts were being attached I could get a bit of a feel for what the final product was going to look like, and I liked what I was seeing.

Nice solid wheelset.

Ridiculously complicated seatpost.

Eventually, I had to tackle some of the more difficult tasks though. I guess when I say "more difficult" I really mean tasks that I've never performed before, primarily installing the headset cups and to a lesser extent cutting the steerer tube. 

Installing the headset proved to be more troublesome than anticipated since the headset press that I purchased wasn't entirely suitable. Nevertheless, I improvised a little and eventually got them installed. With the headset installed the forks could be put in place and work start on setting up the cockpit and controls. I think it was during this phase that things really started sinking in. I could stand back and think   "I've made my own bike!"

Getting there!

My final tasks were to cut the steerer tube, install the starnut, and tighten everything down. A few final adjustments and I tentatively rolled my new Lynskey out the door for a gentle spin in the park across the road.  I had a rideable bike! No way!

Looking pleased with myself

Back from my short test ride.

One task that I decided to get an expert to take care of was trimming the brake lines and bleeding the brakes. A quick email to the folks at BMCR and it was all sorted. I figured paying Pete to work his magic on the brakes was by far a better and cheaper option than an extended stay in hospital due to failed brakes!

So there you have it...  In about a week and a half of part time work I turned a pile of parts into an awesome bike, put together with components researched and picked by me. In my humble opinion, it looks pretty damn good to boot!

The initial rides that I have had on it have shown it to be much easier to keep rolling compared to my dual suspension bike. Somewhat expected, but good to have validation that the initial point of the exercise has been achieved.

The finished product, out in the wild.

For those that are interested, here are the specifications for the build.

Specifications:

• Frame - Lynskey MT29, size small
• Fork - Rockshox SiD RCT3, 100mm travel, 15mm through axle.
• Drive train - Shimano XT 
• Brakes - Shimano XT
• Wheels - Shimano XT hubs laced to Mavic XM319 rims
• Tyres - Schwalbe Rocket Ron
• Seat post - Crank Brothers Cobolt 3
• Saddle - Sells Italia SLR
• Pedals - Crank Brothers Candy 3
• Stem - Specialized
• Handlebar -Crank Brothers Cobolt 3
• Grips - Crank Brothers Iodine
• Headset - Cane Creek 10 Series

Learnings:

• Research every component you plan to use, even the seemingly simple stuff. 
• Take your time. Don't be afraid to down tools and have a think about how the task at hand is supposed to progress. 
• Youtube is fantastic for bicycle maintenance and building tutorial videos.
• Have fun! Bicycles are supposed to be fun!

If I were to undertake this process again, I think I would more than likely revisit the seat post and headset. The headset is a lower specification model which uses an injection molded crown race. Hopefully I can upgrade that to something more durable in the future. The seat post, while nice to look at, includes a clamp seemed to be overly complicated, and a bit fiddly to set up.

Any questions, shoot me a line and i'll try my best to answer!  Thanks for reading! :)