Nothing C&V, been working 11 hours a day and commuting an hour each way. No rest for the wicked, no wrenching except for cehowardGS's monster truck mtb's. (really, a 22" Raleigh M50 that is bigger than my car.)
However, two 20-something ladies, both quite fit (and confident enough to dress accordingly) showed up at my garage entrance. One had a pair of Fuji's, consisting of a 2004 Team road bike and an Aloha CF 2.0 tri-bike. The other had a 2006 Team road bike, newly acquired from CL.
The task was to combine the two Fuji's into one for the first lady, who wanted to keep the TT/Tri Aloha frame and have the best road bike possible. For the novice, a simply Robbie tune would do. I agreed, and after a week of complicating things in my mind, the fit on the tri-to-road bike seemed the biggest challenge, along with my very rusty wrenching skills (taking liberty with the word).
I started yesterday, when the fan kept the garage to a nice manageable 93 degrees. Kind of a low-intensity sweat session. First thing I did was weigh their wheels sans tires, comparing them to my stash, so they get the lightest and best of the bunch for their type of riding. An hour later, they had new tires on their original wheels, but at least now I know.
I thought better of attacking the 2 into 1 scenario, so I went at the CL Fuji Team, a nice full carbon bike with 105 drive train and affordable but decent other componentry. Stem swap and flip, seat post swap, saddle, tire change, cable lube and adjustment, brake pad replacement (had to cut grooves in my bulk replacement pads for the secure screws), and then an unwrap and re-wrap. Testing proved it's quiet and works very well. However, that was a 2+ hour job.
Shower and change, ice cream break. Then, go to the 2-1 scenario. Keeping it simple worked, but disassembly of a tri-bike needs to be done slowly, as the cart can easily precede the horse. Some things can't be changed, like aero seat posts, and after a foray into the parts box, we were at a DA RD, Ultegra FD, and the 5600 shifters that have always performed on par with the 6600, in my opinion. I had to find a suitable stem, spacers, and a bar, but that worked out. A slow strip of each bike to where I was ready to reassemble the one. As many of you can relate, "swapping" is basically stripping down two bikes and then assembling 2 bikes, from scratch. This was about 60% of that, I suppose. I realized some tri-bikes use a brake cable I've not seen, has an end like a shifter cable. Learn something every day.
By day's end, I'd wrenched about 6 hours, completely soaking two sets of clothes, and I've yet to wash down, dry off, and re-lube each bike, then adjust the cable/RD on one.
I think I could have done this in 3 hours 6 months ago, but at least I didn't lose any parts under the car or the workbench.
and so ends this chapter.