Things ain’t what they used to be.
Firstly, cleats wear out way too quickly. In the good old
days of SPDs (mountain bike style) and SPD-R, the cleats used to be made of
metal. These allowed the cycling equivalent of tap-dancing in various cafes.
The move to plastic based cleats by most suppliers now means that walking
around in cycling shoes is a good way of wrecking the cleats. Living on
building site doesn’t help longevity nor does lolling around Broom Wagon stops
in the Alps.
Having said that, the wear over a period of 12 weeks on my current
“all rounder” shoes is catastrophic. Almost to the point of being difficult or
biomechanically dangerous to pedal.
Bring back robust cleats!
 |
| Before and after. |
Now for the comedy customer service of the week award.
Last year I bought a Fast Forward 9/10 speed
disc wheel (second hand via Shorter’s in Potters Bar). Having run 9 speed on all of my kit for
donkey’s years, I have finally bitten the bullet to upgrade to 11 speed. Not
for any reason other than getting replacement bits and interoperability with my
(new-ish) road bike.
Exhibit A.
I bought the Fast
Forward 11 speed Freehub body – which is approved for upgrade and is an OEM
component.
Exhibit B.
I took my bike to the (excellent) local bike store (Paul Bullen’s
in Hitchin) to have said upgrade performed.
Lo and behold! The beautiful Ultegra 11 speed cassette and rear mech’
were touching the surface of the wheel. This is a bad thing.
So, two things happenend.
1) Paul looked at working out a “local”
solution. 2) I took the opportunity to contact Fast Forward’s all singing, all
dancing international customer service line in Holland. No one answered the phone. For sure. [Insert joke about smoking and pancakes here.]
I filled in the web form as per the following:
Hi - I have a FFWD disc wheel (road, tubular) which is running shimano 9/10 speed hub.
I have bought a replacement 11 speed Shimano freehub and the new 11 speed Ultegra rear mech is touching the wheel surface. The cassette is basically too close to the wheel.
Do you have a resolution or fix for this?
Answer (after two days) from Paligap (FFWD’s UK proxy):
Thanks for the enquiry, there is no other solution than to not use the gears close to the carbon. Otherwise he should consider to purchase a carbon disc wheel 11 speed.
Aside from the pigeon English, basically this translates to,
“Eerrrr, sounds hard. Buy something else that costs about 800 quid and forget
the fact you bought the converter.
By this time Mr Bullen had already crafted a solution using a very
thin spacer.
Local Bike Shops. Love ‘em or lose ‘em.
