V20 Build - MBB newbie

[nobrakes]

Yep, started with a few hours of drills and do some figure 8s at the start of each session, which I will continue. I won’t push it too hard yet, but I have to say that I am finding the bike fairly intuitive and not at all like I expected after hearing so many people saying how they didn’t get on with MBB. Todays ride had the last 7 miles on a busy main road and I was quite happy to use it. But I take your point and will continue learning and practicing and not push the envelope yet

 

[nobrakes]

Had a nice second outing on the bike today. It's been frustrating waiting for a convergence of decent weather and spare time, so a very cold but sunny winter day today and I went for my usual 40 mile loop which has about 2200 ft of ascent and takes in a nice combination of climbs, rollers and finishes with a nice 7 mile blast down a main road back to the start point.

First hour I was taking it relatively easy as I am still in early adaptation, by the second hour I was feeling pretty comfortable and pushed a bit harder. I was wearing a flappy jacket too but I pretty much equalled my PR on the signature 7 mile climb out of Innerleithen despite a strong headwind (the PR was set with a tailwind) and got a couple of top 10 Strava placings on the fast section back to Stow. Not bad as this is a section that is used by the local club so that's placed against people significantly fitter (and younger) than me. Sometimes it is about the bike

A few things worth mentioning:

The stock seat I find very comfortable, more so than my Fuego seat.
The headrest padding isn't thick enough. I strapped the cushion off my ICE VTX headrest onto the adjustment strap on my helmet - luxurious!
The carbon tailbox managed to work a screw loose off the lid at some point, so I'm one short now. Not so good
Strava appears to have changed the way it tracks time - I stopped at the top of the 7 mile climb apparently just a few metres short of the segment end for a good 5 minutes to take some photos but it added it onto my segment time. Sure it didn't used to do that. I think if I'd kept going I would have put in a PR for the entire loop, not bad for a second outing. I am still trying to get round this hilly loop at an average of 20mph, I think I would have been close today if I was more adapted and has pushed harder in the first hour. Next time....
My forearms hurt!

Very enjoyable ride. Shame about the tailbox screw, I'll try to source something similar locally.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1280244310

 

[nobrakes]

Did a metric century on the V today - came a cropper on a patch of ice too! First fall so the bike is now properly christened.

Bike was very comfortable over that distance, definitely my most comfortable recumbent. Fastback bags run perilously close to the back wheel but it seems ok. Bike was creaking incessantly from somewhere in the boom assembly. I wonder if tightening it all down at one temperature and then riding at a lower one causes this? Need to go investigate further.

A slew of PRs, although I am a bit stronger and it’s not entirely fair to compare the V to the slower and heavier Fuego.

Now I have the V I have turned the Fuego into a proper utility/ day bike - fatter tyres, pannier rack etc. Nice to have a choice about riding style now!

https://www.strava.com/activities/1298836812

 

[CruzBruce]

Does anyone here in the forum knows where you can try or buy a Cruzbike Vendetta in Germany or a different Country nearby in Central Europe?

 

[nobrakes]

First ride of 2018 today - V felt spectacular. I've been riding the Quetzal for the past 2 weeks so it was great to break out the bat bike and motor along. I was able to pretty much pedal without any arm input for the first time, although it was a bit wobbly. Average 19.5 mph over a 40 mile hilly loop on an average of 202 W, I'm pretty pleased with that!

https://www.strava.com/activities/1335909033

Happy new year to all Cruzbikers, I hope 2018 is a great year for everyone.

 

[nobrakes]

Does anyone here in the forum knows where you can try or buy a Cruzbike Vendetta in Germany or a different Country nearby in Central Europe?

Hi CruzBruce, I don't know anyone but others may chime in. I had to order the frameset from the US and build it up myself. I did it with the mindset of knowing it was going to be different and I would just do what it takes to make it work. Turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. There's bound to be some European riders on here though....

 

[Karl42]

The only thing that isn't ideal is the front derailleur as per my comments previously in the thread - the braze on mount is too far away from the 50T chainring. I think if you had a larger chainring it would be fine. I have futzed it and it works, but I'm still not convinced it's going to be perfectly reliable. Time will tell.

I'm just starting a similar build and have the same problem that the FD is too far from the 50t chainring. Now that you've had more time with the bike, do you recommend just leaving it as it is (with the 1cm gap between FD and chainring), or did you do something else?

Did you stay with the 11-32 cassette?

 

[nobrakes]

I'm just starting a similar build and have the same problem that the FD is too far from the 50t chainring. Now that you've had more time with the bike, do you recommend just leaving it as it is (with the 1cm gap between FD and chainring), or did you do something else?

Did you stay with the 11-32 cassette?

I still have the Force 22 yaw FD on, yes. It doesn't work in the intended manner and cannot be set up to do so as it's too far from the chainring for the yaw action to work correctly. I have got round this by taking the 'yaw' out by rotating the FD outwards which is a bodge, no doubt about it. It does work pretty well but will occasionally throw the chain too far when moving to the big ring. A straight FD with no yaw might be more reliable but I never tried. I don't have an ideal solution to this and have yet not found an extender that would put the FD in exactly the right place. So it works but not perfectly.

I did stay with the 11-32 cassette which has been perfect. Steepest hill I have climbed so far is 15% but the limiting factor is front wheel slip, not gearing. It's a good choice for a hilly sportive bike, which is what I built the V20 for.

 

[Karl42]

It does work pretty well but will occasionally throw the chain too far when moving to the big ring. A straight FD with no yaw might be more reliable but I never tried. I don't have an ideal solution to this and have yet not found an extender that would put the FD in exactly the right place. So it works but not perfectly.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I just started reading this forum in more depth after I had already ordered all the components, based on the assumption that component packages mentioned on the Vendetta order page would work well. It seems to me that the only real solution would be to change the frame so that the FD mount has a longer hole. Hopefully Cruzbike will do that for the next model iteration. For the 2018 model, I wonder why they recommend the SRAM Red groupset with the 50/34 crank if the frame doesn't actually properly support this configuration.

Did you actually try any of the extenders mentioned in this forum?

 

[nobrakes]

It is a peeve of mine that this issue is not mentioned on the Cruzbike site, or the fact you can get different size chainstays. I think at the time it was hinted at but was not explicit on the V20 frameset ordering page. You shouldn't need to dig around on a forum to know what works and what the options are. I would have chosen a different setup had I known and it annoys me that I could have had a choice depending on what I wanted to optimize the bike for. Putting aside the fact that I shouldn't really need to buy 2 chainstays to get the right one, due to the bad exchange rate and import duty, it makes it exorbitantly expensive to make changes after the fact. I did briefly talk about getting a bigger chainstay by email but that conversation seemed to fizzle out, and I decided to leave it as it's a lot of money just to raise the BB by a couple of inches.

Rant over

I tried one of the extenders, the one with the black plastic block but it didn't work, it put the FD in a worse position. The Force22 works OK - it's just not perfect.

 

[Karl42]

Hi David,
Could you post a picture of your cable routing for the front derailleur, especially the orientation of the pulley holder?

Do you have the spacer washer on the inside or the outside (as discussed here (sorry, the forum doesn't let me post links):

I think I have the boom length set up the way I want it, so I went ahead and cabled the front derailleur, but found a gotcha to watch out for. The front derailleur cable pulley holder was on backwards placing the pulley too far over from the cable stop. Fixed that and it is shifting nicely.View attachment 5017

View attachment 5018

).

Mine came with the spacer washer on the inside, which is the wrong side according to that post.

 

[nobrakes]

Pretty sure mine's on the wrong side as well, I had it all cabled up before I realised and haven't fixed it since. I don't see how this would affect the yaw derailleur issue, as that is purely a result of the FD being too far away from the chainring. I hadn't considered the cable pulley when thinking about the occasional overshift problem - will definitely check it out, thanks

 

[Karl42]

I installed my shifters today (SRAM Red 22 mechanical). The initial impression is that it works much better than I was expecting based on the forum posts about the FD positioning. I still have to install the brakes, so I haven't ridden the bike yet, but in the workstand the shifters seem to work quite well so far. Yaw performance doesn't seem to be affected by the slightly too large distance of the FD.

 

[Karl42]

Last weekend I did my first serious ride on the new Vendetta: 72 miles, with 6000 ft of climbing.
The result: my knees really hurt. I went with the setup that had been recommended by the Cruzbike website, going with 165mm cranks, 50/34 chainrings in the front, and a 11-speed 11-32 cassette in the rear.

I've been riding recumbents for many years, and on my old bike I've had 155mm cranks. The old bike has a triple chainring, so the lowest gear is 26 teeth in the front and 28 teeth in the back. With this I never had any knee problems for this kind of ride.

So today I removed the 165mm crank and installed an old 152mm triple crank, leaving the outer ring empty, mounting the 50 tooth ring in the middle, and a 30 tooth ring on the inner position. This gives me a 50/30 crank, and surprisingly the SRAM RED front derailleur seems to be able to shift this quite well. This setup gives me the same gear ratio in the lowest gear on both the old and the new bike.
I'll see how this works in practice after giving my knees a few more days to recover.

 

[Robert Holler]

I am not sure why so many are having issues with the Yaw style from DR, I have used one for a handful of years since they came out and have never had shifting issues. It is too far from the ring than ideal, but it has not caused me headaches for the most part.