I've been trying to sell my Douglas Vector and no one has shown any interest in it. Well I consider it a very good bike so rather than get a steel bike I will build it up into a street bike. That would leave me the Douglas Ti as a gravel bike, the Merlin and Airborne as titanium road bikes and I expect the Vector to be very light. With pretty heavy parts on it before it was 16 1/2 lbs. The wheelset I have on it now is between 25 and 30% lighter. The handlebars and stem, replacing the integrated carbon bar is 6% lighter. The rear derailleur is about 6% lighter as well. I don't remember what saddle and seat post but I think that it was a soft (heavy) saddle and the one that has been put in now is only a couple of ounces. The aluminum and carbon seat posts seem to weight the same since the carbon ones are very heavy to be able to flex without breaking. I have a titanium seatpost that I got from a Chinese source that was irregularly sized so it wouldn't work. So I cut off the bottom 3" and it was fine and fits well. Although I'm building it to be less reactive to cross winds it remains to be seen if those Aero wheels are any worse than the shallow Speedwell. In any case I an now to the point of improving rather than building anew. The gravel bike will get tubeless so I don't have to worry about glass or rock cuts. The Airborne has just been converted to Centaur 11 speed as has the Merlin and I'm almost used to not being able to shift into a higher gear across multiple gears. With a wide ratio cogset you don't need to be able to shift multiple gears up anyway.

I ran across another problem. The Campy Centaur cranks I have require a puller to get the off-side arm off and damned if I can find what I did to the one I have. So I had to order a new one. I suppose if I turned the garage upside down I could find it. But they're cheap and an extra one would simply make them easier to find which will inevitably occur as soon as the new one comes in nans the old one turns up in plain site. I am picking up very bad habits from my wife and not keeping things stored properly..

All of the 10 speed gravel bike parts came off of the Eddy Merckx Elite which should be easier to sell anyway. As a street bike it has very little competition. And good aluminum framesets in 61 cm aren't all that common. One of the innertubes was flat on the Siroccos and the other tire was fine. But when I put the good 25 mm tire and tube on the Speedwell, it instantly started losing air. I took the tube out and tested it but any leak wasn't easily detectable and I will have to use a water bath to find it. The same with the other tube.

While trying to find the crank puller, I did run across tubeless fillers so I installed those on the Mrk 2 Siroccos which can be used tubeless. I also discovered where I had left the tire sealant So I ordered fillers and 25 mm tires without a good reason but then I've been wanting to test out Goodyear tires. I did order a set of 28 mm tubeless Goodyear's as well for the gravel bike.

After all is said and done, it turns out I have ended buy bikes and will have the Eddy frameset and the Colnago Taiwanese bike to sell and that will be it. I have no intentions of changing the gravel bike over to an 11 speed unless really cheap parts show up and this only because of the vast improvement of the new Campy rear derailleurs.

On Monday, October 5, 2021 at 8:16:11 AM UTC-7, Tom Kunich wrote:
> I've been trying to sell my Douglas Vector and no one has shown any interest in it. Well I consider it a very good bike so rather than get a steel bike I will build it up into a street bike. That would leave me the Douglas Ti as a gravel bike, the Merlin and Airborne as titanium road bikes and I expect the Vector to be very light. With pretty heavy parts on it before it was 16 1/2 lbs. The wheelset I have on it now is between 25 and 30% lighter.. The handlebars and stem, replacing the integrated carbon bar is 6% lighter. The rear derailleur is about 6% lighter as well. I don't remember what saddle and seat post but I think that it was a soft (heavy) saddle and the one that has been put in now is only a couple of ounces. The aluminum and carbon seat posts seem to weight the same since the carbon ones are very heavy to be able to flex without breaking. I have a titanium seatpost that I got from a Chinese source that was irregularly sized so it wouldn't work. So I cut off the bottom 3" and it was fine and fits well. Although I'm building it to be less reactive to cross winds it remains to be seen if those Aero wheels are any worse than the shallow Speedwell. In any case I an now to the point of improving rather than building anew. The gravel bike will get tubeless so I don't have to worry about glass or rock cuts. The Airborne has just been converted to Centaur 11 speed as has the Merlin and I'm almost used to not being able to shift into a higher gear across multiple gears. With a wide ratio cogset you don't need to be able to shift multiple gears up anyway.
>
> I ran across another problem. The Campy Centaur cranks I have require a puller to get the off-side arm off and damned if I can find what I did to the one I have. So I had to order a new one. I suppose if I turned the garage upside down I could find it. But they're cheap and an extra one would simply make them easier to find which will inevitably occur as soon as the new one comes in nans the old one turns up in plain site. I am picking up very bad habits from my wife and not keeping things stored properly..
>
> All of the 10 speed gravel parts came off of the Eddy Merckx Elite which should be easier to sell anyway. As a street bike it has very little competition. And good aluminum framesets in 61 cm aren't all that common. One of the innertubes was flat on the Siroccos and the other tire was fine. But when I put the good 25 mm tire and tube on the Speedwell, it instantly started losing air. I took the tube out and tested it but any leak wasn't easily detectable and I will have to use a water bath to find it. The same with the other tube.
>
> While trying to find the crank puller, I did run across tubeless fillers so I installed those on the Mrk 2 Siroccos which can be used tubeless. I also discovered where I had left the tire sealant So I ordered fillers and 25 mm tires without a good reason but then I've been wanting to test out Goodyear tires. I did order a set of 28 mm tubeless Goodyear's as well for the gravel bike.
>
> After all is said and done, it turns out I have ended buy bikes and will have the Eddy frameset and the Colnago Taiwanese bike to sell and that will be it. I have no intentions of changing the gravel bike over to an 11 speed unless really cheap parts show up and this only because of the vast improvement of the new Campy rear derailleurs.

Well, just like I said, now that I ordered a new puller, I went down into the garage and there is was sitting on the counter. I had pulled it out of the cupboard to use it, placed it on the counter and then forgot I had done that and tore the garage and computer room apart looking for it. This is the thing that occurs from that damned medication. I also forget names almost instantly. It is so bad that I seldom bother to listen to someone's name. If there's any importance repetition will finally lock it in.

I could have sworn that I had English Power Torque cups but the new one's I have are Italian. So it is just as well that I ordered a new set.
I have 85% assembled the Douglas Vector and weighing things shows me that it will probably come in at 16lbs flat. That was the weight of my Look KG485 with Record components on it. Not bad for 25% of the cost. I have the Campy Sirocco wheels all set to install the tires and sealant in so that the gravel bike is rideable by Friday if the tires come in as promised and these guys are usually at least as accurate as Amazon. It's warm today meaning the eye of that storm is passing over us and so we';ll probably be rain again on Thursday Hopefully I'll be able to get out on a ride tomorrow. This may be another wet winter in which case I will lose fitness. My leg muscles, (Gracillis?) never returned. They used to be the size of my fist on both legs These were the climbing muscles. At my age I don't have the hormones for muscles to grow much. So I will be stuck climbing like a snail forever after. But at least on a lighter bike I should be able to hold it longer.

As for the gravel bike. It turns out that there is a Bay Trail that goes from Oakland to San Francisco. For some reason they show the San Francisco side of the Bay Bridge as part of this route but there's no bicycle lane there. But a map is available so that you can interconnect all of the bits and pieces together and miss almost all of the real traffic, though that last 5 miles into San Francisco are on real city streets. But this is largely downhill so you don't have problems keeping up with traffic with the number of lights along that route. So I now know that there is a gravel trail between Fremont bicycle trail to Alviso on the far south end of the bay. And quite a bit of gravel on the other side, But it appears that it is rather out of the way from Palo Alto back and there is a good road route from there. So I have something to look forward to - a new trail I've never been on.