Upgrading Old Faithful

One of the by-products of buying a set of new wheels is that you end up with a set of wheels that suddenly aren’t doing very much. I had this very scenario, with a decent set of DT Swiss wheels from my Specialized so I decided to put them on my old Felt bike (which I am intending to take to Sweden). I cleaned the cassette, swapped it over and (after a few days waiting for some brand new disc rotors) I set about putting them on my bike. Well, all I can say is that it was more taxing than I thought! After much pissing about with shims and fiddling with the position of disc calipers, I finally managed to get them running true without any disc brake rub. Score!

My other ‘project’ for this bike was to change the handlebars. When I had the original bike fit on the Felt the guy had changed the bars for a 40cm wide set but I wanted to change back to a 42cm as the 40cm felt like it prevented my chest from opening out and restricted my breathing a bit.

I ordered a set of Zipp Service Course bars and some new Deda bar tape. I’ve NEVER attempted this before so I studied the GCN YouTube channel several times before starting out

I do find that the GCN channel has a wealth of useful content for ‘shed mechanics’ such as myself, the Park Tool channel also has some useful stuff so do give them a search if you’re not sure of how to approach a certain task

I followed the handlebar taping video as closely as I could, starting with the removal of the old tape, the old bars and putting the new bars on

I was a bit apprehensive about taking on this task but, using the video and taking my time, it was a lot like putting a new grip on a badminton racket apart from the obvious obstacle of the brake hoods! I did unwind and rewind the tape a few times to try and get as good a finish as I could and I’m pretty pleased with the results!

Ok, so it’s not the most difficult of tasks and the finish isn’t perfect but I’m really happy with the result! It’s another thing that I can tick off the list of things I know how to do to my bike and next time I do it the result will be better.

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With the new tape and the ‘new’ wheels the old steed is looking good for Stockholm and should still be able to turn a few heads!

IAIN