wjclint

My wife "needed" a new bike so here is my first "from scratch" bike build. 48cm Kestrel RT 900 SL frame, Full Shimano 5700 drivetrain and brakes, and Neuvation wheels. Came in around 17.5 lbs according to the bathroom scale and total cost, including shipping, was just under $2,100.00. Just thought I would share. I'll probably redo the cabling eventually. Functionally it is fine, but the bends and curves don't look as even as they should from the front.

Kestrel RT 900SL..jpg

Inertianinja

nice!

my fiancee has the Evoke SL.
The more i see these bikes, the more i like them.

FogVilleLad

Handsome bike. Usually the ends of the drops would more parallel to the ground. Has your fiancee tried the bike yet?

mrvile

Nice bike. The 48 looks hilariously small (though I ride a 51 myself). Does the wife ride in the drops much at all? The bars look like torture, those types of bars (my retired EA70s were similar) are generally impossible to set up for versatility between the drops and hoods...

M_FactorX19

Very nice I love all black bikes and kestrels. Hopefully it will be my next build and I keep seeing them everywhere online lately. Its like I'm being teased.

wjclint

She does ride in the drops a lot. The bars were the only 38 cm ones at the LBS so I'll have to order some. She has only ridden it once around the block due to weather, kids, and being sick, but the drops not being right is the first thing she noticed. I could move the shifters up and rotate them more, but I don't think that would help much.

bhdavis1978

*drool*.

Makes me wanna build up a RT800 frame set myself.

FogVilleLad

It should help a lot, especially for a female rider. The shorter reach which will result from bringing the drops to parallel will lighten the load on her arms and shoulders. If you also set the shifters so that they angle up a little, the hoods will become a comfortable place for her to put her hands. That position also provides a good combination of comfort and control. (Of course riders have to be willing to use their back muscles, to reduce the pressure on their palms.)

wjclint

I took the advice here and rotated the bars so the bottom of the bars are almost parallel to the ground, and moved the shifters up. It looks a little funny, at least to me, since he top of the bars are tilted down a little. Hopefully we can ride today and see how she likes the bike and where the bars are.

Thanks for the comments and help.

mrvile

If you can't seem to get those bars to work, FSA compacts may be the answer. They are so cheap that it isn't worth not trying them...

oilman_15106

Looks great. Any comment on the internal cable system on this frame. Was it hard/easy to get cables through?

Ride report?

wjclint

Doing the internal cabling was not difficult at all. It came with the guides already in it. I do hope I never forget to put the guides back in before pulling the cables out for recabling. Doing the housing was the hard part, but I think just because I had never done it before, and because the frame is so small the bends in the housing up front are pretty tight, especially for the front brake.

We went for a 40 mile ride yesterday. The handlebars actually looked fine once I saw it out on the road and it brought her total reach in quite a bit, which is the whole reason we got her a new bike (she was way to stretched out on her old bike). My wife said it was very smooth riding and felt "fast"; I may get her a carbon stem for Christmas since everything else on it is carbon except the handlebars - that may make the feel even smoother than it already is. I can't ride it and tell anything about how it rides because I ride a 58cm and felt like I was on a big wheel when I got on it just to make sure it was shifting right. The neuvation hub is almost silent so when she coasts if there is any wind at all (and there were over 20mph gusts yesterday when we rode) I literally couldn't hear her riding next to me.

Funny thing about the ride report, at about mile 25 we cut across a small section of a MUP to avoid some road construction so we were riding single file. All of a sudden I hear "What the Hell !!!" from behind me and quickly pulled over. I was thinking something had gone wrong, I forgot to tighten a bolt, or her entire wheel fell off, the way she yelled. Turned out as we rode under a big tree, what must have been a very big bird, crapped all over her right side. None hit the helmet or her head luckily, but her shirt and bike got bombed. I think I did pretty good holding back a belly laugh - mostly.

ptle

That's unfortunate