Renovo R1 wooden bike project, part 5: finished for now

The weather finally took a turn for the better today, so I got up early and shot some pictures of the finished bike (finished for now anyway).

I will be taking the bike out on its maiden voyage this afternoon, so I will be posting a review of the bike somewhere in the next couple of days.

Enjoy!

Renovo R1 wooden bike project, part 4: allmost finished

I almost got the bike built up yesterday. Unfortunately Shimano was kind enough to include a pre-cut cabel set. And since they cut the front derailleur cable nice and short, I was unable to guide it trough the top tube. I won't be able to get a new cable until next week, so that sucks a bit, as I was hoping to ride the bike in club ride today.

Here is a (crappy phone) picture of the bike when it was almost finished. I hope you like it!

The frame and fork arrived early last week, but I was unable to take some pictures before now.
 
First of all the weight of the frame: 2,5 kg. Luckily the looks are more than enough to compensate for the high weight, as it looks amazing. Nick Wood from Renovo already told me the frame had turned out really nice and I had also seen in on pictures. However, in real life the frame looks so much better!

I hope to build the bike up today and take it for a spin tomorrow. For now, some close up pictures of the frame. Enjoy!

By the way, I will probably not be using the English Cycles fork that Rob built for me. For some reason it just doesn't look nice with the frame. Maybe it is the color or maybe I should have gone with a tapered design.

Renovo R1 wooden bike project, part 3: first test ride

I was not able resist to give the wheels a try whilst waiting for the frame to arrive, so I fitted my trusty Duell steel winter bike with cork brake pads, so I could use it with the DA Ghisallo wooden wheels. The first ride was at the Belgium Ardennes a couple of weeks ago. The temperature was 1 degree above zero (Celsius), so not really comfortable IMHO. That is why the ride did not last any longer than 15km. My first impression of the wheels:

SWEET! If you like stiff responsive wheels, then Ghisallo wooden rims are not what you are looking for. If you like ultra smooth and great looking wheels, then you need to get some Ghisallo rims! The dampening effect of the rims is really nice: you see a bad patch of tarmac, you hear a bad patch of tarmac, but... you don't feel a patch a bad patch of tarmac. In the first kilometers I rode some gravel roads, did some climbs and bad tarmac and the effect was noticeable everywhere. Don't expect something like a suspension rim, but more like the difference you would normally notice between a carbon and a steel frame.

Despite the dampening effect of the rim and the low spoke tension, I was unable to rub the rims against the brake pads. Braking performance was very poor to say the least at first. However, after only 5km braking performance increased dramatically. With the cork pads, the braking performance is now similar to that of most carbon wheels. I will be changing the pads to SwissStop yellow, so I am expecting a significant improvement there.

Wooden track bike

A couple of days back I came across this beauty. It's a 1937 wooden track bike! As you can imagine it was quite flexible.

Renovo R1 wooden bike project, part 2: wheels and groupset

In part 1 of my Renovo R1 wooden bike project I told you something about the frame of the bike. In part 2 I will give you some insight in the wheels and the groupset that I will be using.

To complement the wooden frame I decided to use wooden rims for the wheels. Wooden rims are mostly a thing of the past, but two companies in Italy still build them: Cerchi Ghisallo and CB Italia. Both companies sell clincher and tubular rims. I choose to go with Cerchi Ghisallo rims because they supply a clincher rim with a carbon fibre inlay. Without the inlay a tire on a wooden rim can only be inflated up to 4-5 bars, so you would have to run 28c or bigger tires. With the inlay you can inflate the tires to more conventional road bike pressures (8 bars), so you can run 23c and 25c tires. The rims are built by laminating strips of Slovenian beech wood together and the end result is simply amazing!

One the cool things about the rims is that they have a hookless tire bead. Lew Racing did a similar thing on their Lew Racing VC-1 carbon clincher rim. I believe Lew calles/called it BSC technology (« Bead Seat Clincher« ). The tire stays onto the rim by the pressure of the tire on the opposite side. For this reason you can only use a high quality tire, whereas deviations in the tire would cause bulges on the surface of the tire.

The rims were built onto Shimano Dura Ace 7700 hubs with silver DT Swiss Competiton spokes. DA 7700 hubs are very highly rated hubs, because they are durable and the bearings used are extremely smooth. However, I did not use standard DA 7700 hubs. I used Shimano DA 7700 25th anniversary hubs. These are part of a complete DA 25th anniversary groupset that I was able to buy brand new. The group dates back to 1998 and was a special edition of the DA 7700 series. It features 25th anniversary logo's, a high polished finish and some extra titanium bolts and pieces.

One of the things that make wooden rims so special is their ability to flex. To accommodate this flexibility, the wheels were built with about half the spoke tension that is normally used on  aluminium or carbon wheels. The end result is a wheel that will ride very smooth on bad roads. Wood does not absorb heat so you can't use regular brake pads, because they would melt. That is why I plan to use either cork pads or Swiss Stop yellow pads. I mounted Continental GP4000 S 25c tires, simply because I really like these tires. They are very hard to puncture yet still deliver a great riding experience.

Here are a couple of picturs of the rims, the hubs and the end result, including pictures of the building of the wheels. In part 3 I will tell you more on the front fork and stem assembly that will come onto the bike.