shipwreck

Thanks Pastorbob, that's a relief. On its first trip out the other day I "lightened" myself to go over a combo speed bump/rubble/pothole, and did a bunny hop at 25 miles an hour. Its a little lighter than I'm used to!

OldsCOOL

I love these CRIT bikes. The harder you ride them the more you appreciate them. I just came in from a 12mi hill ride where the first encounter is a winding and steepest-at-the-top kind of 2mi grade. Riding steel is real but the Criterium Series is reality when you need it most. Excellent climbers.

70sSanO

I went from an SR400 to a Criterium around 1990. For me it has been the best ride and nothing corners as well. The only speed limitation has been the tires and my intestinal fortitude.

On a casual ride with my brother I had him take this pic with my 1988 Criterium. Note the sign below the speed limit.



John

shipwreck

Zombie thread, sort of I guess.
Been riding this bike more now t hat I got some better tires for the local roads(trying out Gravel Kings in 26mm, like them a lot so far).And I am running into a problem, not sure if this was discussed down thread or not.
It’s a stiff climber, but I live in the Ozark mountains and there are lots of 15% spots on some of the roads I like to ride on, and its really hard to keep the front tire down!
There are actually a couple short sections of the road to my house that I have to get off and walk, not because its to steep, but because… well, its to steep to keep control!

OldsCOOL

Great climbers! Mine will get light in the front when dieselling up the long grades and my speed drops. There is a side to side wiggle of the wheel due to pulling hard on the bars.
I run light racing wheels and tires, not much ballast to keep it still.

mtnbke

Preaching to the choir. Vintage Cannondales were literal rocket bikes. They were lighter, stronger, stiffer and incomparably faster sprinting, climbing, and just riding than anything high zoot steel at the time. While the aluminum revolution ended the notion of steel being in the conversation of performance bikes, it was just amazing how short lived the aluminum run was in terms of gran tours. For Aluminum bikes it was a brief period before one magnesium bike would win the Tour but everything else would be carbon.

The great thing about classic and vintage Cannondale and Klein bikes is they can still be the fastest climbing and sprinting bike on your group ride even almost thirty years later. With modern components, fork and wheels these can and should still be the best bike build in the stable.

mtnbke

OMG.

Mavic 840 rear derailleur, Mavic 631 Starfish Crank, Mavic 860 Front Derailluer, Mavic 305 Headset. I don't think I see Mavic calipers, I'm curious if you had the courage to chamfer the BB shell threads to use the Mavic 610 BB. I definitely don't see the Mavic 27.2 seat post (you should try to talk me out of mine) as I think that's a titanium American Classic? Mavic chains from 7/8 speed era are unicorns now, so there is no way I think you've got one on the bike and not stretched out, if you ever had one. I'd like to buy even a ruined one. Never seen one in person. Those are not Mavic 640 pedals. Mavic stems are spooky at this point, so I don't blame you there. Same with the vintage Mavic handlebars(I sold off a gold Mavic stem/bars to some collector in Japan), though I can't tell what you have. Looks like you have the Mavic 440 levers, which are more distinctive. I like the Mavic 430 (Modolo Speedy branded Mavic levers because of the drillium). I don't think I see Mavic hubs or a Mavic shark tooth cassette (a good thing). You can use the Mavic M10 9/10 speed cassettes to build a 6/7/8 Mavic cassette for with the right spacers. I think those are Mavic rims. Mavic tires wouldn't be period correct.

I love C'dales but I drool for Mavic. Get that bike repainted in Mavic Neutral Support scheme. That's my plan for my tout Mavic build. Heck Cannondale even is the neutral support sponsor now, it would be an anachronism, but who cares.

Love the build.

If you ever get a chance score the hubs from a set of legendary Mavic Classics or Mavic Classics Pro wheel set. They were very very pricey "pro's pro" tubular wheels made famous for how they handle the cobbles in the spring classics. When people destroy the wheels the hubs can be had cheap. They are straight pull Mavic hubs that can be relaced with custom spokes (Phil Wood or otherwise). A shop like Wheelbuilder could figure out the correct spokes and tension. Find some epic Mavic rims and bring some of the greatest Mavic hubs back to life on your tout Mavic build.

mtnbke

Talk to me about those Microshifters. What do you think?

mtnbke

With glass? I know sandblasting Canndonales or Kleins will remove aluminum but can you blast a C'dale with glass beads? I thought it was walnut shells and soda only?

mtnbke

I'm thinking of Taking a white ST500 and having it painted in Canndonale Crest team scheme. Anyone else willing to take the plunge if I find the artist that will do the airbrushing of all the "decals" to make the conversions?

mtnbke

Great point. Half the buffoons on the internet (I'm local chapter leader) confuse tires with flat protection and higher rolling resistance with the actual bike. I've always felt that you can make any titanium, carbon, or steel bike very uncomfortable with overinflated racing tires with flat protection (Specialized Armadillo or Conti Gatorskin), and you can make oversized aluminum comfy with properly inflated tires on good wheels. The wheels and tires have more much to do with how a bike "rides" to me than the frame. The frame just determines how well it accelerates, climbs, sprints and makes you smile.

mtnbke

The reality is most LBS are predatory to the cycling community they serve. Only one shop in town could sell Cannondales and one could sell Klein, so everyone else was essentially caught with friction bikes in a "if it doesn't click it won't sell world." So the response was to bad mouth the bikes. The hilarious thing about Cannondale is they tried to be innovative and viral in several disciplines, but weren't married to aluminum because they had to be they were brought to aluminum because of how it improved the paradigm.

Case in point. Almost everyone in backpacking uses an internal frame backpack. Which is kind of stupid because I haven't exactly seen a comfortable internal frame kid carrier yet. But when it comes to carrying out gear backpacking, literally, fashion matters more than function. Cannondale came out with an innovative backpack that combined innovations of aluminum frames but used an hour glass low profile single piece aluminum frame structure. People don't realize Cannondale was a backpacking, sleeping bag, bike touring and clothing goods company before they ever made a bike. Cannondale backpacks were about $140-160 in the 70s depending on which size, and the Winan's Camel is considered by many the best backpack they ever used. Interestingly, people who say that use internal frames now. If you ask them why, the answer is a hem and a haw, and it really is more about what the gear "looks like" and what people perceive than their backpacking experience. Those Cannondale Winan's Camel backpacks fit to someone up to 6'8". If someone sees one out there, I want one!

Back to the bikes. The vast majority of the bad mouthing of Cannondale is from fanboys who didn't like that the Schwinn Varsity they upgraded wasn't so sexy anymore, or the "serious cyclists" with imported italian that resented the upstart American bike that had no history or authenticity. It really had nothing to do with the bikes. As a rule when someone on the internet dismisses a Cannondale as harsh riding, they've never EVER ridden one, and they have an agenda. At some point riding a bike is either about collecting and cache or the performance of the bicycle. I'll let you guess which group doesn't like Cannondales. Cannondales undermine everything a vintage Cinelli or Pegoretti represents. It makes the Ferrari of their sport seem like a low end 70s Detroit throwaway. It changed the paradigm, and was disruptive. Many people were financially vested in selling, importing, distributing homogenous vintage lightweight steel bikes and Cannondale almost single handedly dried up that market. People literally lost their jobs, and stores shuttered. Two things killed Schwinn in the end one was Cannondale's emergence as the new standard for a "good bike" and the other was the decision to transfer production and knowledge to what became the competitor Giant. Schwinn should never ever have entered into that agreement without being a stakeholder in that company. There are a lot of Schwinn fans that perpetuate Cannondale hate, which is interesting because they never seem to acknowledge Giant stabbing Schwinn in the back after refusing to allow a buy in.

mtnbke

You can use thinner outer locknuts on some 130mm hubs. If the 4mm variance makes you nervous use a thinner locknut or spacers to get down to 128mm. Half as much stress. I'm sitting here looking at an Ultegra 6500 130mm cassette free hub right now. It uses a very thick combo cone/outer locknut on top of spacers. You easily could get this to 126mm. If I'm measuring this correctly the spacer account for 3mm per side, or 6mm. Using 1mm spacers you'd have a 126mm hub with no worries of frame strain.

mtnbke

If it fits, the first rule of Black Lightnings is that you don't sell them, you BUY them! I think the cat that bought my gold Mavic anodized stem and gold Mavic handlebars was putting them on a Black Lightening. Or maybe I have that backwards, and they come off someones Black Lightening. I don't remember.

mtnbke

Microshift has some incredibly funky cool derailleurs in wacky color schemes. I think they make more different derailleurs than Campy. I've never ever seen any of the crazy cool fashion ones, just on their website.

mtnbke

I'm 400lbs and I've never had an issue, including on one of my ST800s that I backed into a garage. Cannondale frames are freakin' strong. The garage made contact with the rear of the bicycle, the seat and all the force did was transfer through the fame to bend the fork at the other end of the bike. Had a notorious frame builder check it out, rebend the fork, and I've never had a problem since. We were 600lbs on our tandem when we used to ride it. Cannondale frames are very very strong. Much much stronger than anyone gives them credit for.

mtnbke

When you drop a plumb from your knee what does your KOPS look like? Could you lose the setback post get a slightly longer stem and improve your position moving yourself forward in the cockpit, and potentially improve your KOPS positioning?

OldsCOOL

That bike was the subject of my dreams for 3 years. Scarcity and prices were too much to deal with....so I built my own (in terms of paint scheme and frameset). Like you mentioned earlier, these bikes take modern componentry very well and can be the best bike in the fleet. I have 2 other bikes with top shelf steel frames (531c and Columbus SL) but for ride performance, give me that CRITter.

OldsCOOL

There was the promo where a rider was standing on the frame to prove their stiffness and dispell myths. I'd like to see that pic/ad.

OldsCOOL

Oh, and they really take well to photos:

pastorbobnlnh 

I really like my microShift drive train! The RD and FD handle the shifting very well. Some of the parts on the RD are CNC aluminum, so it looks a bit beefy but it doesn't seem heavy. The shifters are very "exact" action with "hard" clicks on gear changes, not unlike Campagnolo Ergo. As a comparison I find my Shimano 105 SC 8 speed SIS shifters (on my '96 SR500 2.8) to have "soft" clicks with a "smooth" action.

Now with that said, I don't dislike the Shimano 105 SC. I find it a pleasure to ride as well, I'm just trying to explain the difference. I will say, compared to the Campy Ergo 10 speed (was on a 2001 CAAD 4 I sold this spring), I preferred the 9 speed microShift or the 8 speed SIS 105 over the Campy.

OldsCOOL

I run the Shimano 600 with indexed DT shifters and with the 7sp 12-28HG it shifts like it rides, more by thought and intuition than by action and movement.

shipwreck

There is not much setback to the stock post, but the stem is a little short. The reason is that I set this bike up to fit just like my other "fast bike", a 974. The knee is actually very slightly forward of the spindle compared to my more relaxed bikes.
I am thinking about a slightly longer stem, though, will probably put an 80 on there, replacing the 60.
On the flats, or on a lower grade climb, this thing is super fast and comfortable. Around here, your mostly either going up or down, so I've chased fit to climbing/flats/descent comfort before, and here in constant hill country there seems to always be a compromise to be made between bar height/length, saddle tilt, height, and position, and even brake lever placement. I may try to scrounge some old shimano 600 tricolor levers, as they are a little more comfortable than these suntours(I love suntour, but these are just a little bit stumpy for my hands).
For the moment, I can do some pretty good rides on rough roads with no discomfort, so I want to keep the tweeks slow.

bradtx

The stem length is the item I was going to suggest you look at if it won't screw around with your fitment too much to use a longer stem.

Brad

RobbieTunes

I always liked that there was nothing but "bike" to the bike. Kept it light, kept it agile.
2nd best crit bike I've ever been on, by far, competitive with anything out there.
Twitchy, stiff, and definitely one to pay attention to, while riding.

Any excuse to post.