CyclingFool95 

In this thread, I will assemble my new 2006 Opera Leonardo FP (aka Pinarello Paris FP) and 2018 Chorus Grouppo from scratch with photos and commentary. I was doing this build now anyway and there were a couple of threads asking how to do a build. Hopefully this is useful to someone and hopefully not too many of you give me abuse for doing it "wrong". Inevitably, someone will. That's okay. I might learn something too. If you reply with quote, please exclude the pictures to keep this from getting too cumbersome.

Remember, this is just one amateur mechanic's approach, and is no substitiute for having a professional do it, or at least reading Campy's rather excellent instruction manuals.

For the record, this is my third build with Chorus 2016 and later. The other two are still running fine and neither has disintegrated on the road.

So, cue up some coffee...

and some tunes...

and let's get to it

CyclingFool95 

So my "new" frame is a 2006 Opera Leonardo FP. I bought it from Excel Sports in April as part of the "Vintage" Pinarello sale. Opera, if you've never heard of it, is just a boutique brand name Pinarello was using until recently. The Leonardo FP was used back in 2005 by Iles Ballears when Valverde beat Armstrong to the top of Sestriere. Not exactly state of the art in 2019, but given that my next newest bike is from 1996, it'll do.

It's full carbon monocoque, with bonded in rear triangle, and the "tapered" Onda fork. Comes with a carbon seatpost. The one odd thing, and which gave me some concern, is that it has an oversize MoST bottom bracket (same as the 05 Dogma). It comes with a sleeve that threads in an converts it to standard British threads. More on that later.




The threaded insert for the bottom bracket

CyclingFool95 

Here's the lube I'll need. I don't show my bottle of Loctite 222, but I also probably won't use it.


And a pile of tools. I might have forgot one or two and I probably won't need all of them, but it gives you an idea. I have a lot of Harbor Freight tools, including my two torque wrenches, They're actually reasonably accurate - I was able to test them and have a written table of setting vs actual.

The odd thing to the right of the three Park cable tools, almost dead center in the photo, is a lens spanner - I bought a set of them on ebay for disassembling vintage camera lenses - proved to be perfect for installing that sleeve into the bottom bracket. I show tools in more detail as I use them

CyclingFool95 

I had the fork cut down by a LBS, so all that's left is for me to install it into the frame. Lube everything and slide it on. This was actually a very tight fit, whether because of the taper, I don't know, but I had to tap the frame onto the fork with a rubber mallet. Basically, I piled spacers over the top bearing cap until they were well above the top of the fork, and just tapped until the bearings seated. I then lifted the fork off the ground and tapped gently on the end of it to make sure I didnt have the bearings overly twisted or preloaded. Tightening the stem bolt will take care of the rest anyway.


One of my pet peeves with a bike build - when you have fittings like the bearing cap, with a logo on it, make sure you align it - I decided to have the name front and back and logo side to side.

CyclingFool95 

Build up spacers and stem. I put one very thin one between cap and stem, and the rest up top. Looks a bit ugly but its nice to have room to tweak the setup later. Make sure the spacers are a bit proud of the steerer tube.

CyclingFool95 

When setting up the retainer, make sure it falls within the stem so you are loading the steerer from both inside and outside:

CyclingFool95 

And now a brief break from bike building while i put a cassette on a set of wheels. I don't have a Park stand, so I use an old Blackburn mag trainer, which means I need wheels. Don't forget the spacer ring, if needed. Campy cassettes only fit on the hub one way - there's a staggered spline. Torque appropriately.

CyclingFool95 

And now work can begin in earnest. First up, that BB sleeve. The larger piece installs from the drive (right) side. It just slips in. I applied a generous amount of anti-seize to the shoulder on the drive side and threads on the non-drive side. And, to the thread of the nut, and it's shoulder (where it contacts the frame). Tightened it down as hard as I could given the limitation of the tool. I figured if it wasn't tight enough, I'd know when it spun when I tried to install the BB cups.

CyclingFool95 

And now the BB cups. Drive side is right. The right side has the retaining spring clip (set it aside for later). The non-drive side gets the wavy washer. Set that aside too. They come with a generous amount of yellow thread locker on them - basically, its a soft compound that will deform as you install the cups and cause increased friction. These being British threaded, I' even less concerned that usual about them backing out (2 of my 3 other bikes are Italian threaded and I've never had a problem). Seat them by hand - because of the thread locker, they can be difficult to start (I had to remove some with my nail on the non-drive side), and are difficult to turn by hand so be careful not to cross thread them.

The proper tool is shown below on the torque wrench. Torque is marked on the cups. Follow it. This tool happens to be a Pedro's.

CyclingFool95 

FYI, to get to this point was around an hour and a half, including a break to get more coffee, and another while I took a knife to clean up the paint in the rear drop-outs that was keeping the wheel from seating correctly.

sdmc530

Nice....I like this kind of thread!

I too am doing what your doing. Building a bike piece by piece. I wanted a carbon fiber bike and have always wanted to build one so I am doing just that. I am down to getting the wheels/tires and then getting everything dialed in and I will be done. Been a fun 1 year project so far.

good luck!!

CyclingFool95 

And now its time for the groupset...

I bought this group as a takeoff from someone who wanted Shimano...why, I'm not sure...

CyclingFool95 

These splines need to lock together. The little bolt accomplishes that. Torque it as per Campy's instructions - 42-60 N-m (372-531 in-lbs). I went mid-range. 36 ft-lbs = 432 in-lbs.

Anti-seize is your friend...

CyclingFool95 

After seating the drive side, you need to clip in the little retainer. I seated the end at the top first since I could see it and just pushed until the other end fell into place. Then I push it to make sure its fully seated in the groove. Then, tug on the crankarm to make sure it can't come out.


Wavy washer goes in on the non-drive side:

CyclingFool95 

Now, and this is very important, The threads for the screw are in the non-drive arm for Chorus. You should have put anti-seize there too. Install the screw using your long 10mm allen wrench and snug it up. Do not, I repeat, do not install it on the non-drive side. If you do, you will spend the next fifteen minutes trying to figure out why the crankarms are moving slightly against each other, before you remember that this is Chorus and the bolt goes in on the drive side. So, don't do it this way:


Actually, do it this way but on the other side of the bike.

ChinookTx

You're missing the plumbing pipe cutter for the steerer tube!

CyclingFool95 

Rear derailleur/ Not much to it in terms of mounting to the frame. Campy uses T25. Because you can't really start it by hand, be slow and careful that you don't cross-thread it. I don't torque this bolt, since I don't have a torx set with hex drive (come to think of it, I believe I do). Anyway, be mindful of what you're tightening into (in this case aluminum).

CyclingFool95 

Brakes. Rear on the left, front on the right. The nut length kinda gives it away but it's the brake shoes that tell the story. Look at where the stop is and think about which way the wheel is rotating. Put the wrong brake in the wrong place and the pad is coming out of the shoe.

CyclingFool95 

Campy puts these lockwashers on their brakes to keep them from rotating on the frame. I don't want to use those against carbon so I stole the flat Shimano ones off the Tiagra brakes off my trainer bike (it has no wheels so no need for brakes anyway).

CyclingFool95 

Next problem, despite having a whole bunch of different length nuts for brakes, I didnt have one longer than around an inch. The really short one on the left is the one that came with the brakes. None of them make it through the rear brake bridge. I have some SRAM ones on order from Amazon, arriving tomorrow. Front one got by though (since the screw is so much longer)

dedhed

He stated the LBS cut the steerer.

ChinookTx

It was a lame attempt at a joke. You must have missed the thread where someone is building a Pinarello F10 as their first bike build. Interesting choice of tools.

Back to this thread, very nice and detailed pictures. I always think after the fact "Man, I should have taken a bunch of pictures and shared". Wish I'd think of it beforehand!

CyclingFool95 

New brake retainer nuts came today and the rear brake went on no problem with the Tiagra spacer instead of Campy's lockwasher. Really tight clearance, especially since this is a 23mm tire, and I normally ride 25s.

CyclingFool95 

Next up, bars into the stem. A little anti-seize, of course, and torqued the bolts as specified. Remember to tighten them incrementally so everything seats nicely. Bars are cheap Deda RHM Zero. I like the shallow drop on them.

CyclingFool95 

I put a pair of Time Xpresso pedals on the bike temporarily (they're yellow, and don't go with this bike, so they will get swapped onto another one that has black pedals). But, I needed them so I could adjust the seat, which I wanted so I could see how the cockpit setup felt before/while I put on the levers.

Next up, the seat-post and seat. The post came with the bike. It's a 31.0mm carbon post. So, Park's CF grip compound went on. I disassembled the head so I could put anti-seize on the screw threads. Seat is an Astute with Ti rails. All bolts torqued as specified.