Equipment - Tsunami 1.1 or "The Now-Red Orange Frame"

For over a year I've been wanting to get this frame back online. It started out as my original Tsunami frame, with the now-standard-for-me geometry - 40 cm seat tube, 56.5 cm effective top tube, 75.5 degree seat tube angle, 73 degree head tube angle, and designed to be used with a 43 mm rake fork.

The original bike, shortly after I built it up in SoCal.

This makes for a long bike to fit my long torso. It's not very tall though, to fit my not-very-tall legs.

The original Tsunami (version 1.0) had industry standard 40.5 cm chainstays and that's where it faltered. Even coasting in fast corners the rear tire would chatter or slide across the pavement. The unusually long front end meant I had too much weight up front, leaving the rear wheel to fend for itself.

This, along with my short-lived upgrade to Cat 2, instigated the second Tsunami, the black one. Geometry-wise I wanted the same bike but with "as short as possible" chainstays. Those ended up measuring 39 cm in length.

The black Tsunami (version 2.0 if you will) also had some aero features. I wanted the narrower tubes with the thought of racing with a CamelBak. This would eliminate the very bulky bottles from the bike, allowing me to take advantage of the aero tubing.

My CamelBak idea faltered because I didn't like the way it worked (can't toss an empty CamelBak, can't empty it all the way, pain to refill, warm in warm weather, harder to breathe, etc). I resorted to using the bottle bosses, literally an afterthought in the build process.

"Might as well put them on although I don't plan on using them."

The black frame worked well although the nut that held the seat down (aka "the rider" aka me) wasn't as good.

I started thinking of combing my favorite elements from both bikes into what would be a Tsunami 3.0 - internal cabling (easier to clean), short chain stay, regular tubing.

On the off chance that Joseph (aka Tsunami Bikes) could alter my orange frame I contacted him. He told me no problem, he could put new chainstays, seatstays, and a brake bridge on for me. I didn't realize it's just trimming one tube; he'd have to rebuild the whole "stays" area.

I decided it was worth sacrificing the internal cabling to save 6/7 of the money a new frame would cost me.

Joseph sent the frame back unpainted (per our agreement) and I had a local car nut paint my frame the same color he was painting his Mini. It happened to come out red so fine, red it was.

I also invested in some frame prep tools, specifically 1 1/8" head tube facer/reamers and a BB30 reamer, ordering them through Expo Wheelmen sponsor Manchester Cycle. These cutting tools, combined with Manchester Cycle's cutting tool handles, would give me a perfectly finished frame. The frames arrived unprepped and the headsets were always a bit tight and the bottom bracket was also. Bob, the owner of the shop, did the work himself, and the red frame (Tsunami 1.1) came back to me ready for assembly. This would save me a few watts turning the cranks - it's bad enough that I can see wattage numbers pop up on the SRM when I'm soft pedaling (i.e. not keeping up with the wheels)

That process dragged on for months while I realized I was missing this piece or that piece. Minor things roadblocked the build, like a front derailleur hanger, or cable housing (I ran out of Nokons), or trying to figure out what stem would work with the FSA Compact bars I wanted to use.

Finally, before the April 7 2013 Criterium de Bethel, my bike was ready to ride. I wrapped the bars at the prior March 24 Bethel CDR Gold Race, rode it on the trainer before April 7, and did my shake down ride during the April 7 Cat 5 clinic.

It seemed to work okay so I put the race wheels on it.

Tsunami 2.0 to the left, 1.1 to the right.

Note the different shaped bars. The Compact FSA bars on the red bike are 3 cm shorter in reach and 2 cm shorter in drop. To accommodate this discrepancy I have a 2 cm longer stem (so 1 cm shorter overall) with about a 0.5 cm drop (so the drops sit about 1.5 cm higher).

For the Cannondale SI cranks I have two sets of arms, 175mm and 170mm. The 170s came with my Cannondale (Team Replica blah blah blah bike). I bought a used SRM setup that had 175s. In the past 10 years I've had much better results with 175mm crank arms, I think due to my lower general power.

170mm and 175mm crankarms on the Cannondale.

Picture taken in SoCal just before I moved the parts to the orange Tsunami.

What's nice is that you can change the crank arm without changing the spider (that holds the chainrings).

However I chose to install the 170 mm crankarms on the red bike. The shorter arms give me an extra 0.5 cm in saddle height. The resulting net height difference is about 1 cm less drop to the drops. More significantly the drops are about 1.5 cm higher relative to the bottom bracket. When I'm sprinting out of the saddle that's the height that matters. We'll see how it goes. If it doesn't work out I'll revert to the old style crit bend bars and I may have to go buy a second set of 175mm crankarms.

A final change, but I'll expand on that more later. I'm using a lower end brake lever, one that doesn't allow multiple shifts into higher gears. It's one click at a time, no more dumping 2-3 gears when I jump. I'll explain this move in a different post.

I accidentally used my last name rather than the Sprinter Della Casa sticker.

I want my name to go on my hubs and helmets. SDC goes on the bike.

Note the smoothed out finish around the seat cluster. It's a combination of gentle filing and an expanding primer. The primer puffs up when applied and then hardens. The guy who painted his Mini showed me the roof - when he started it looked like someone dropped a bucket of golf balls on it from a couple floors up. When he was done with the expanding primer the roof was perfect. I bought into the expanding primer idea.

Deda 14 cm Pista stem.

"Pista" is misleading here. I wanted a 65 degree (-25 degree) 14 cm stem but I couldn't find one. I felt the reach (14 cm) was more important than the height (65 degree) because I was already compromising my reach by going 1 cm shorter. Going 2 cm shorter with a 13 cm stem would be really significant because I tried it already. I figured by using shorter cranks I'd have an extra 0.5 cm in saddle height. Therefore I sacrificed the drop to get the 14 cm stem. The Deda "Pista" stem is only 70 deg so about -20 deg. It barely drops 0.5 cm.

In order to have 100% clamp surface for the stem I left the steerer tube too long and used spacers on top of the stem. This way the whole height of the stem clamps the steerer tube, not all-but-the-top-5-mm.

Close up of tire clearance.

The chainstays are about 39.2 cm. I have to measure them again because I keep forgetting what they measure but they're just a touch longer than the black bike's 39 cm stays. There's plenty of fore/aft clearance. To the sides it's bit tighter.

The head tube area. Note how smooth it is compared to the first picture in this post.

It's a bit smoother than before, primarily due to the expanding primer. I put clear frame protector stickers on by the cable housing. I had to stretch the black Nokon housing by adding extra blue and silver segments. I'd have run out otherwise.

The headset is a super low stack Cook Bros headset. It's a bit of a pain to install but Manchester Cycle did it fine. I installed the orange bike's headset in my basement using unofficial tools. The black frame got its headset installed by a SoCal shop during that year's SoCal training camp. I use the same type of headset on both bikes, just the black one got a steel headset and the red one has a stainless one.

Not exact but you can see the drop/reach.

Wire sticking up is for the SRM, two wires carefully taped up into one.

The bars drop more with the old crit bars and they reach more.

SRM wire is hanging forward and down. I need to rewrap that, it's unraveling.

If you look at the two bars you'll see that even though the FSA Compacts on the red bike are longer on the drops (I wasn't as aggressive when I cut off the excess bar) they obscure more of the front brake. They don't drop down to the tire also.

The black bike, with my standard position, shows how the old crit bend bars drop down more and reach out further. Keep in mind that the black bike as a 12 cm stem, 73 degree (-17 degree). The red bike has a 14 cm stem, 70 degree (-20 degree). Due to the FSA Compact bar geometry I lose both reach and drop even after using a longer and lower stem.

You may have noticed a lot of barrel adjuster showing on the red bike. This is so I don't have to unclamp the brake cable when I switch between the "wide" clinchers and the wide tubulars. The clincher rims are only 23 mm wide but that's the "wide" size. Normal is 19-20 mm.

The tubulars, on the other hand, are close to 28 mm wide. I bottom out the barrel adjuster to clear the tubular rims. It's about 5 turns difference between the two.

I have normal 19 mm wide clincher wheels but they're far too narrow if I want to use the wide tubulars. They've been relegated to the basement.

I have new-to-me wheels but I'll cover those later. Right now they've become my default race wheelset.

I've only ridden the bike a few times now, once in a race, once for a few laps in a Cat 5 clinic, and three times on the road. The biggest thing I noticed is that the bike seems to move more freely. It's due to the reamed/faced bearing surfaces - the bike steers eagerly and the cranks turn easier, even if I'm soft pedaling down a hill. It feels a bit like riding rollers - the bike wants to skate around a bit. It's not a bad thing to have the bike feel more eager to go, that's for sure.

The other thing is that the top tube is a bit lower on this bike. It means I can't put a frame pump under the top tube - the space is too tight for the Park pump I have. It does fit on top of the top tube though and it's where I had it the last time I rode. I may rig up a front-skewer-to-bar thing or a rear-skewer-to-seatpost, depending on how easily I can set one up.

I have a few good scratches on the frame already. The bars turns hard into the downtube when I was building the bike - no tape, no bar plug, a coarse hacksawed bar end. The downtube has a good gouge/nick in it now. And yesterday, when I finished my ride, I sat on the frame pump and it scratched the front of the seat tube above the top tube.

Ah well.

It's now a race bike because I raced on it. And it's a training bike because I trained on it. Such things will happen.

Equipment - Tsunami 1.1

Tsunami Bike 1.1

(Some assembly required)

It's a start I guess but I haven't really gotten very far in the year or so that I've been "working" on this project. In this picture you can see some hints at what will be on the bike at the end. The frame is the main thing, of course, and it has one sticker on it so far, the bottom bracket (BB30) has been reamed, and the head tube reamed, faced, and a headset pressed into it, all done by Manchester Cycle.

The main modification has been to shorten the frame's chainstays as much as possible, this to pull the rear wheel in. Due to the long front center the rear wheel gets really light, losing traction in any hard turn. The short stays really help counter that (as proven on the black bike, aka Tsunami 2.0), and so I had the first Tsunami modified in a similar fashion.

1. ENVE 2.0 fork, with the same Crank Bros headset as before, a very low stack height (22.x mm) stainless steel number.
2. Campy cassette. I actually have four in this picture, one in the box, three in the plastic bag just above the silver bars.
3. Campy brakes, in the Campy boxes that don't have pictures on them. I may just put the Ultegra brakes on (they were on the carbon Giant) but all Campy sounds better. There's a small surprise on the brakes and I'll reveal all when appropriate.
4. Campy new style 10s Ergo levers. I want to give them a try, and my backup shifters are starting to fade hard.
5. Cinelli 13 cm track stem, in case I want to give the FSA Compact bars (the black bars above the plastic bag) a shot. The Compacts have 2 cm less drop, 3 cm less reach, so I'd need a 15 cm stem that drops 2 cm to replicate the same drop position.
6. Fizik Tares saddle. I saw these at the time trial, they looked good, and based on that I bought one as an experiment. Failing that I'll stick with the Titanio saddle that is on the Thomson post.
7. Fizik tape, just because it was there at Manchester Cycle.

The box has a lot of tools in it too, the Park BB30 tool, a Park carbon-specific cutting blade for a hacksaw, grease gun screwed onto a Pedros grease tube, anti-seize (obscured), carbon assembly paste (obscured)

In the parts boxes somewhere are new brake and derailleur cables (other than the cable kit that came with the shifters). I'll use Nokons for housing and am debating if I should buy some fresh segments for the exposed sections. I'll definitely use the played out segments under the bar tape.

I have a BB30 axle for the Cannondale SI SRM cranks (it's a different length from the standard axle, of which I have one too), and a second SRM spider for said cranks. This way I'll have two bikes set up with the SRM. I have a second SRM PCV head, harness, and mount, so I won't need to set the slope (basically a setting for each spider) when I change bikes.

The derailleurs are coming off the carbon Giant.

And that's really it, now that I think of it. I want to buy some black bottle cages because the blue ones from the Orange Period will clash with the red.

Now, reviewing this post, I'm wondering why it took me so long to even think about starting the assembly.

Equipment - Tsunami 1.1 (Ream/face)

As you may know I've gotten my original Tsunami Bikes frame back with shortened chainstays, smoothed out the welds a bit, and had it painted a basic (Hyundai) red.

The only real issue I've had with my frames has been the BB30 shell. It's a press-fit bottom bracket shell, and as such it needs to be exactly right. The spec states it should be 41.96mm in diameter on the inside (internal diameter or ID). This allows the 42 mm bearing to squeeze in there with a perfect balance of snugness and looseness. If it's too loose it'll creak (most likely) or move a bit. If it's too tight the bearings get squeezed. You may not think a BB30 can be squeezed but trust me, they can.

In the old days of steel and aluminum all frames had to be prepped before they were built. The brazing and welding would warp and distort the metal, leaving behind imperfect frames. Okay, they might have been pretty or whatever but you had no way of knowing if the bottom bracket shell's outside faces were parallel or if the threads were any good. Likewise the head tube surfaces were suspect, both in the inside roundness as well as the flat edges the headset cups sat against.

The problem with having unfinished surfaces is that the different halves of the bottom bracket or headset may not be in line with each other. The frame's owner will always have weird wear or adjustment problems with both areas.

Shimano addressed the bottom bracket issue a long time ago by selling a bottom bracket cartridge, a one piece insert that had its own "shell" if you will. The problem was that these things were heavy, and the current crop of bottom brackets returned to the "left side - right side" construction type of days past. This, of course, means that frame prep counts again.

It's easier for most shops than it used to be. With the advent of mass produced aluminum and carbon frames shops and suppliers have slowly lost the art of frame prepping. The big aluminum manufacturers will get a whole frame, sit it on a jig, and using a monster machine, quickly ream the insides of the bottom bracket shell and the head tube, then face the outside edges. This assures that the bottom bracket and headset will work smoothly on the assembled bike.

With carbon it's even easier - the frame molds are so precise that the manufacturers pull out a frame that's already "finished". They don't need to do anything else because it's all done.

Finally component manufacturers have done their best to enable their bits to work on roughly finished frames. I think of the Soviet approach to military machines compared to the American one. An old joke goes something like this:

An American pilot makes fun of his Soviet counterpart's coarse jet fighter. The Soviet responds, "Well, your planes are like fine ladies' watches. They are beautiful and work well but they are very delicate. Our watches are like Mickey Mouse watches. They tell time and if something happens and they stop you just shake the watch and it works again."

I really identified with this since at the time my mom had a precious watch that seemed very fragile, and 12 year old me had a yellow Mickey Mouse watch that was basically indestructible, even when I dragged the watch face along the sidewalk.

Nowadays there's a lot less adjustment (i.e. fine stuff) and a lot more "just replace the cartridge" (i.e. coarse stuff).

I say all this because a small aluminum frame builder (and steel too I suppose) needs to finish the bearing interface surfaces - the head tube and, if applicable, the BB30 bottom bracket shell.

(Regular bottom brackets get screwed into the bottom bracket shell, and many shops still have the tools necessary to chase/cut such threads. BB30 is nice because it allows a wider diameter bottom bracket axle and ultimately a very light crank/BB unit, but the problem is that very few shops are prepared to service the frame part of a BB30 bike.)

When I built my (then orange) Tsunami, I didn't have the luxury of a bike shop or even the big tools of a shop. I built it in a hurry before I headed out to California for a training camp and I took every shortcut possible. Therefore I never dealt with finishing the frame, either the bottom bracket or even the headset. Because of this I've had to deal with the resulting issues since - a headset that always had to be a bit too tight and a bottom bracket that was very, very tight.

In fact, in that SoCal training camp, I coasted down one of the numerous short but reasonably steep downhills at about 40 mph, shifted into the 39x23 or so, and spun the pedals. Since I wasn't pedaling fast enough to engage the freehub body I was still coasting even though I was pedaling. This meant that any resistance in the drivetrain (chain, derailleur pulleys, pedal bearings, and BB bearings) would result in a power reading on the SRM.

Unlike 99% of my riding time, I stared intently at the SRM as I spun down the hill. I varied the pedal speed, from about 60 to 90 to about 150 rpm. I saw about a watt of resistance for every 10 rpm (which I just realized now, since my benchmark numbers were 6, 9, and 15 watts).

Although it takes only 20 extra watts to see me off the back of a crit, I really focused on the sprint. And 15 watts (at most - if I was pedaling 150 rpm I was doing something wrong) is a very, very small part of the 1500+ watts I could hit at the time.

Therefore I ignored it.

The bearings got crunchy quickly, and I went through a few sets in the year I rode the orange frame. I got the black frame next and spent some time filing the shell by hand. Hopefully I didn't ruin it but on this frame I only saw about 4 watts, at most, doing the same kind of test. This seemed acceptable to me, even if my cranks don't turn more than a half revolution at a time if I try to spin it as hard as I can.

With the UsedToBeOrangeAndNowRed frame back, I decided that I'd invest in the tools necessary to ream and face the two bearing surfaces. With the help of the Expo Wheelmen's shop sponsor Manchester Cycle I went ahead and bought the business end of the BB30 reamer and headset cutting tools. (The cutting edges are what cost money - they sit in handles and Manchester Cycle has the appropriate handles for the cutters.)

I should point out the the FSA BB30 reamer alone lists for $400 (and that's without the handles!). The headset cutting tools were a bit more reasonable, but still, it's not a small thing. Neither are big sellers since most shops work on those aforementioned "fit and finished" carbon or aluminum frames.

All this took some time and I have to thank Bob at Manchester Cycle for all his patient work. Luckily he's a car nut too and used his 20 ton press to finish off the job (I'll explain below). Suffice it to say that I'm looking forward to building up this frame.

 BB30 shell, reamed, left side.

Bob reported that significant material came out of both sides.

 The headtube with the Crank Bros cups pressed in.

This is a simple result for a nightmare process.

 Seat tube - honed in prep for the seat post.

This is the cheapest of the tools needed for prepping a frame.

 Another BB30 shot, of the right side.

I mentioned a nightmare process? Well, I didn't know this, but when I jury rigged the headset press and jammed the cups into the frame, I was really, really lucky. The headset has an incredibly low stack height (i.e. it's not tall), the main reason for me purchasing it. It's also very light, a bonus (I'd have bought it even if it was heavier - I was only concerned with getting the shortest height headset within my budget.)

Well the reason the headset is so light is that the cups are extremely thin. They're so thin that if you try and press them in without a special thing holding the outside of the cup, the cup breaks.

 Special tool that surrounds the headset cup to prevent it from breaking.

Bob used a 20 ton press to press in the cups -  Press means lots of pressure, very easy to modulate.

This is an oops. Crank Bros sent a replacement. Thank you.

Now that the frame has its main bearing points finished, the seat tube honed, it's ready for the detail prep and then assembly.

Detail prep in this case means mounting the replaceable rear derailleur, cleaning out the cable housing anchor stops, and chasing the threads on the downtube barrel adjuster mounts (they got painted over/through).

I'll need to put the headset crown race on the new fork, make sure everything seems right, then proceed with the assembly. I won't be using new parts except for consumables, I'll just be rebuilding with basically the same stuff (which is currently sitting around my bike workshop). It'll be the Record/Chorus 10s stuff, a Cannondale SI SRM (my backup crankset will go on this frame), and a few experimental replacement parts.

Once the red frame is up and running I'm going to have Bob do the black frame - the reaming, facing, and honing. Yes, I already asked him if he'd do it all again (the black frame has the same headset). Yes, he agreed.