matt92037

I just received my shipping notification today as well. Mine is also going to show up on Friday, which also happens to be a vacation day.

What was supposed to be a simple frame change out has little by little turned into an almost new bike as new parts have been steadily showing up at my house over the last 6 weeks.

SethAZ 

Jinx!

Friday isn't a vacation day for me, but I do work from home, so I'll be here when it arrives. I'll probably take a nice extended break for a little while after that out in my garage... I went for a complete bike package rather than swapping parts over, because my current bike is quite old and its old components have thousands of miles on them. I also want to keep my current bike rideable as a backup, or to install on a trainer permanently, or whatever.

Yeah I've ordered some things specifically for this new bike as well. The Brooks saddle arrived back in August and now has over 1000 miles on it thanks to my current bike, LOL. I didn't want to just swap my current low-grade metal Shimano SPD-SL pedals onto this new bike so I ordered some Ultegra 8000 pedals. Bottle holders. New wider tires. It all adds up. My wife grilled me on the ~$450 charge that showed up in our account one day for the Chinese carbon rims I ordered (Light Bicycle 28mm wide x 46mm deep). I didn't tell her I hadn't actually ordered the spokes and hubs yet. Not sure how I'm gonna sneak those by but with Christmas coming up I'll find a way; I've been married a long time, if you couldn't tell. My Stans Team Grail wheels will be fine, and after I eventually get the carbon wheels built up the Stans will make a fine backup set for me.

gettingold

Tell her the cycling addiction keeps you off the streets (well not really true). My wife always asks why I bother to get a complete bike with all the add-ons and changes. Enjoy it. Mine didn't come until after dark but I still took it around the block.

gettingold

Enjoy! I am totally pleased with it. The winter will seem much longer this year waiting to ride.

SethAZ 

I think that your board name is a lie. If you were truly getting old, you'd be here in Arizona with me, riding all through the winter. It's actually our prime cycling season. It'll often get into the low 40s to even below freezing at night, then be back up at 65 or 70 by mid afternoon. Crazy temperature swings. Does make it a bit of a drag to start rides at the crack of dawn, but if I can ride a little later in the day, or on weekends during the day, it's great.

gettingold

I am solidly middle aged, which is a standard which gets higher every year in my mind. Summer and fall is beautiful here for riding but winter/spring not so much. Not sure I could take riding during your summers.

FlashBazbo

It won't be close to 25. My 2015 Lynskey was a custom gravel bike with the same geometry and dimensions as their current off-the-shelf gravel bikes. It had Di2, hydraulic disc brakes, thru axles, Mavic Ksyrium Allroad Pro wheels, 38mm Challenge Gravel Grinder tires (with TONS of tire/mud clearance to spare), cowchipper bars, auxiliary climbing shifter, Shimano MTB cage-type pedals, etc., etc. It weighed in at less than 22 pounds, with cages and pedals mounted.


Incidentally, it weighed almost EXACTLY the same amount as a Salsa Warbird carbon gravel bike in the same size.

twodownzero

22 pounds sounds pretty good to me. I'm pretty sure my Surly is 30+, so that'd be a pretty significant improvement.

I'm tempted to explore Ti as my next bike, just on the fence as to exactly how much tire clearance I'd need and perhaps a 650b conversion because fat 700s are going to have tons of toe overlap in my size (53 cm top tube).

SethAZ 

Does your tracking page now say that severe weather has delayed delivery, with no updated delivery prediction? Because mine does. G A W D D A M M I T. Oh well. I waited 3 months for this thing. Another day or so is a disappointment, not the end of the world. First World Problem.

gettingold

Sorry, I missed this. I'll try to do that tonight. It will definitely take a 32 or 34c.

gettingold

Here's a shot of the rear wheel clearance with the chain stay bracket and seat tube. Lots of room with a 28.

SethAZ 

Well I'm definitely having one of those First World Problems days. After changing from "In Transit" status to "Exception" status with some vague blurb about severe weather yesterday morning, it finally updated this evening and now delivery is scheduled for Tuesday from the original date of this Friday. So I'll still be on my current bike for my group rides this weekend and next Tuesday morning. Kinda sucks, but it's already been 3 months; another 4 days I'll survive. The stupid thing is I looked around at weather maps and whatnot and failed to find any severe weather that I can attribute this too.

matt92037

Mine is still on track to be delivered tomorrow. Unfortunately UPS comes by my house around 6pm.

SethAZ 

I got a couple packages yesterday, including the Ultegra 8000 SPD SL pedals for this bike, a couple of Dura Ace chains, and the Ultegra 6800 12-25t cassette. After a couple of test rides with the bike in stock configuration I'll remove the stock 11-32t cassette and the chain that the bike comes with (which presumably will be length-adjusted to fit the 11-32t properly) and hang them up on a board in my garage to be swapped back in when I plan a ride up into mountainous territory where the lower gearing will be helpful. Nearly all of my usual riding is either on very flat roads, or else up into low hills where the 25t on a 34t chainring will be sufficient.

By going with 12-25 I'll have 1t shifts most of the way down the cassette, which, combined with synchro-shift through the Di2 to manage the FD, should give me 1t shifts pretty much all the way down until I get to the last two cogs and the 34t chainring. Having two DA chains specifically for this cassette will allow me to set my chains to the best length for this cassette (which would probably be too short for the 11-32t cassette), and then alternate between the two chains for best chain/cassette life.

SethAZ 

My Lynskey R260 showed up yesterday. Got it set up last night, and took it out for a 33-mile ride this morning. It rode well. To quantify that statement a little, on the 32.4 mile segment that makes up most of this ride I was just 25 seconds slower on the Lynskey with an average 126bpm heart rate than I was on my old Trek 2300 3 or 4 weeks ago with a 138bpm tempo heart rate. If I did a tempo ride on this segment today I would blow away that previous time.

I'll need to send the Ultegra 8000 pedals back and exchange them for the Ultegra 8000 pedals with the +4mm spindle length. My left heel occasionally brushed a bit of titanium sticking out from the chainstay where it straightened out for the flat brake mount. I could avoid it brushing by just keeping my heel turned out a little, but I don't want to have to do that. I will also have to swap the inexpensive FSA alloy handlebar that came the Lynskey for the 3T Ergonova bar that is currently on the Trek. The FSA is a narrow round tube section on the tops where I sometimes ride, while the Ergonova is a flattish oval shape there, which is infinitely more comfortable. The Ergonova is also a 46cm bar while the FSA is I believe a 44, and I prefer the width of the Ergonova. I'll get this bar swapped over in the next couple of days.

My R260 frame size is Large. The bike, with the 28mm Kenda Tendril commuter tires that it came with and butyl tubes, the Ultegra 8000 pedals, and nothing else (ie: stock config plus the pedals) weighed at 21 lbs even. Swapping the 28mm Kenda tires out for the 32mm Compass Stampede Pass extralight tires and Vitorria latex tubes cut the weight down to 20 lbs 9 oz.

This is not a lightweight bike. I don't mind, since I'm not a lightweight rider, and I bought this bike specifically because I believed I could trust it to be tough. Keep in mind that this is an Ultegra Di2 drive train with hydraulic disc brakes, and 32h Stan's No Tubes Grail ZTR wheel set (32h both front and rear). This is not the lightweight drive train, lightweight brake solution, nor the lightweight wheel set. The front 32h wheel was a special order by Lynskey from Stans, because I asked for it. Normally it would have been 28h front. Also, this is the Large size frame.

I didn't weigh the bike again once I'd swapped out the Lynskey saddle for my Brooks B17, added the Garmin mount and Garmin Edge 500, front and rear lights, the cadence sensor, under-saddle tool bag, and two bottle cages. Clearly it will weigh more, especially due to the Brooks saddle.

Lynskey set up the Di2 using the battery that hides away up inside the seatpost tube. The wiring is all internally routed inside the frame, so the whole Di2 setup is very clean. I'm liking it a lot. This is my first Di2 drivetrain, so I had to get used to the different feel of the switches as compared to my old Ultegra 6500 shifters on my Trek. I do like how quickly and silently it shifts.




This is a 32mm tire inside of that fork!

SethAZ 

As you can see in these photos above, with the 32mm Compass tires, there is a colossally huge amount of space around the front tire. The R260 ships with the Lynskey Gravel fork rather than their #5 road fork, which is much narrower. The gravel fork weighs something like 100 grams more than the road fork, but for that weight you get all of this space to put in practically any tire you choose. Also notice how much room there is between the chainstays and the 32mm tire.

Lynskey only claims to support 32mm tires in the rear, but I have no doubt that I could run 38mm tires in there if I wanted. The fork officially supports 45C tires. When these 32mm Compass tires are worn out I may order a set of Compass' 35mm version which can be run tubeless, and give that a try. These 32mm tires I ran at 83psi pressure in the rear and 70 psi up front. I could run them lower but I'm a big boy and need to run them higher than a much lighter rider could get away with. Given how smooth these tires rolled this morning, I can only imagine how the bike would feel rolling on the 35mm version, tubeless, at even lower pressure.

gettingold

Congrats. Nice bike. I had a bit of a catastrophic crash on my second ride (I'll post about it), but the bike came through fine. Me, not so much.

SethAZ 

Ouch. Man, that doesn't sound good. Do tell, and I hope you're OK, or at least will be ok. I'm interested in hearing what caused the crash, and what happened.

I was so excited about the ride this morning on the new bike that at lunchtime I went out and did another, much shorter 12.5 mile ride. it was on a route I've done a handful of times before, and turned the whole ride into a Strava segment so I could track my performance on it. I set a new PR (barely) on it, at a lower heart rate (4 bpm lower) than the previous PR which I set only 2.5 weeks ago on my old bike. The trend here is quite nice: I'm as fast on this new bike as I was on my old bike, but at a lower level of effort.

In coming days and weeks I'll do some long rides at my tempo effort and compare them with previous tempo efforts from the recent past on my old bike to see how much of a difference it makes. I'm also excited to see what difference I see in long group rides where I kept up fine on my old bike, but often at a very high level of required effort.

IRideWhenICan

Greetings to all,

I have ordered an R260 just yesterday so I will now have to wait about 4 weeks for the bike to be delivered.
This thread, your comments and pics were a big influence for me to go ahead with the order. I thank you... and Lynskey should thank you

My bike will not have disc breaks or electronic shifters, but will come with the new Ultegra R8000 Group and upgraded Mavic Carbon wheels... I am expecting it will be great!
I currently ride a steel Bianchi with low end components, so frame material, groupset and wheelset are all big upgrades for me.

gettingyoung, Did you recover from the crash? I hope so.
SethAZ, are you still getting PR's everytime you ride your R260?

Regards

Maelochs

Not sure if I asked this or not ... but the 260 frame doesn't have rack mounts?

That's sort of a deal breaker. I had planned for a sporting/light touring/gravel machine.

Gconan

https://lynskeyperformance.com/gr-260-gravel-bike/

BillyD

Welcome to the forums, and keep us posted once your ride arrives.

gettingold

I ended up throwing 32 Clements on mine because I am doing a gravel race in the Adirondacks in June. Turns out, I love the feel of them on asphalt as well and am going to keep them on it. Here is a recent pictures with the Clements. Very comfortable bike.

Maelochs

Thank you very much.

Gconan