GR300: The Build

So here it is... and the start to the Lynskey GR300 complete bike build.

Given the current global shortage of everything, the kitted option of the Lynskey GR300 is a wise decision to save headaches and waiting time over my usual part by part purchase after a frame is decided upon

Slapping on the main components together is a no brainer. Those can easily be googled on Youtube which I won't spend too much time unless I do find some things are truly lacking -- like road brake bleeding. 

So as usual with my writing, this would contain tidbits from experience and little hacks to troubleshoot or refining of things on a bike.. with many of the lesser talked about preps and finishing on various parts on a bike. 

Unpacking Day: Well packed and all delivered...

As with  building any of my own or for others in the past... having a proper list of every part weighed prior to assembling makes it easier when deciding what's worth changing out later.

Trust me-- if u are incessantly changing things on your bike afterwards because of weight related concern, this saves a lot of money. I couldn't care less about weenie-ing but still its a good habit and for general referencing later on.

 

Not gonna post all the weights of individual component. Just this one. Tires. 

Lynskey switch it out from their stated Kenda Flintridge Pro to the Booster Pro here.

Both 40C but the Flintridge was reviewed as a heftier tire @ ~520gm/ pc... or 1.04kg/ pr.  so the weight savings now is quite significant.

A whooping 335gm for a pair! But something has to be compensated which I suspect is some squirmish-ness from the sidewall, apart from overall thinness of the tire. Let's see.

 

Headset

Unlike customizing part by part, there are stock items which may not be up to par when buying a whole bike like this.

The supplied FSA Orbit C-40-ACB is simply not up to my expectation. Headsets are often a fix and forget component until it comes time for maintenance or change of bearings. But if the sum of all it's parts is not right, there can be all kind of creaking and looseness that cannot be properly tightened down.

Having seen how this can affect parts like unequal wear on the steerer tube or in the headset cups over time, I'm all the more paranoid given that this is on a carbon steerer tube.

The FSA is a headset design with poor interfacing for the top half at least... So I checked with the usual suspects of my FBC gang -- and gotten a good old CaneCreek "Forty" integrated, IS42/28.6/H9 | IS52/40-SHORT COVER in exchange over a bowl of beef noodles. 

Yes, the basic Cane Creek "FORTY" series is already way better, no need Hellbender or the "110", although the additional brass compression ring from the 110 would have been a nice touch. 

When assembling the FSA headset into the headtube with the fork, no matterhow hard it's tightened, there was a pronounced shakiness. Some may say "you need to have the compression nut installed to hold things up. Yes and no... For an initial fitment check of headset parts-- slotting up everything should give a certain level of tightness. Secondly I was troubleshooting this same configuration on another GR300 already built up with the same FSA Orbit headset. That one has everything on it including the compression plug.. The looseness was still rather obvious even as the whole stack was tightened up properly...

Homing in on the issue being at the top half of the headset. It seems the c-ring may just be sitting/ floating on the underside of the top cover, rendering it unable to be tightened down to the headtube integrated top cup. Having lots of interfacing of spacer stack and stem doesn't help to narrow the problem either-- but more on that later...

 Using both c-rings to check... (blue ring = Cane Creek, silver ring = FSA)

The FSA compression ring basically floats over the internal surface of the top cover. Whereas the one on the Cane Creek actually has a recess under the top cover that can hold it snug in place. Note the additional brass seal and the machining on the Cane Creek (middle pic) in contrast to the rather plain looking FSA ring and inside of top cover

Raw unfinished machining marks still on the FSA compression ring

Contoured internal stepping to allow for a better fit when between bearing + steerer and fully anodized for more than just an aesthetic finish...

It's not just about aesthetic on the Cane Creek but every profile machined has a function. The double step on the insides of the Cane Creek allows the forming of a better taper when  slotted between the bearing and steerer for a better fit and has been anodized... If there is uneven wear over time which can occur due to steerer tolerance or if things are somehow loose/ misalignment of bearing and cups-- the wearing off would be easily noted and user can be made aware the next time they check.

A comparison below of the top cap and compression ring of these 2 to show the difference...

To cut it short-- on goes the Canecreek for now, followed by the temporary placement of spacer, stem and bar (all just lightly tighten) as they will be lots of taking out and adjustment while bike is being set up.

Crank...

Since the bottom bracket was preinstalled by Lynskey, next comes a relatively easy part.. The crank. 

For years I wondered why Shimano uses a cheap plastic pre-load piece for the non-drive-side (NDS) crankarm. By now there are some very nice after market metal ones which I have bought a couple but  never had a chance to use yet.

On the left- after market aluminium preload nuts. Right preload tool and original Shimano preload nut (plastic)

Rubber mallet, tap straight in. New cranks are usually a little tight... Check crank is snug against the bottom bracket and stop.. Swing crank from pedal insert... should be freely spinning (3-5 rotations). 

 

Using the after market preload nut, I now understand why Shimano stick to their cheesy plastic piece. 

Similar to headset starnut/ compression plugs-- its for preload-- not to fully tighten up the entire assembly by itself.. 

It was really difficult to use the aluminum one as the slightest turn tend to overdo it (spinning the crank -- you can feel its not free moving when too much preload is compressing on the bearing)

So it was back to the good ol' Shimano plastic thingie...  As what i have always done.. screw in till hand tight + another ~15-20 degree turn. Done!

Next is the alternating bolts at the rear which are the ones to secure the crank.

The other reason not to use after market metal preload nut is that as the crank is being tightened down with the alternating bolts behind-- it squeezes down and would slightly compress the preload piece which works ok because it is plastic. But metallic preload nut would resist that compression and hence may affect proper crank tightening/ assembly. Note that with alternating bolts, as one is tightened, the other will loosen, until there is a certain amount of torque applied.

Brakes

Next came the dreaded part... Brakes.

I had no flipping idea that nowadays everything came prefilled and basically makes it a plug and play of one end into the lever side if hose length need not be trimmed. Even the T90 barbs came preinstalled. All these is probably made easy for internal cable routing which seems to be the trend. 

Mulling for awhile.. looks like hose length still needs shortening, so another barb will have to be fitted, which is why Lynskey packed these spares in.

 

But first, some brake-adapter Origami.

 

Front was straight forward... took me a couple of minutes to figure the rear though... and to tighten everything is going bottoms up from the frame...  bit of a mind twister from the usual nuts and bolts

 

2 countersunk M5 attaches the adapter (for 160mm rotor) to the caliper (top pic). The adapter comes with 2 other funny bolts that has an appendix. These goes into the frame's flat mount and screw the adapter from underneath the frame (see bottom pic).

 

 

Shortening of brake hose (top).  Tightening of brake cable to lever and bleeding

Next is where yours truly has royally screwed up ... Note the yellow plugs that seal the opening at the levers (see top left pic of left lever). DO NOT REMOVE THIS until you are ready to insert the brake hose. And DO NOT PRESS YOUR BRAKE LEVER at this time. 

There is actually another piece of plastic under the lever to prevent it from being accidentally depressed.

Of course my natural instinct was to pull out anything that's not supposed to be there, both the white ones under the lever and the yellow plugs. And just like any curious kid I went to squeeze the lever next. Since prefilled, its pretty obvious what happened next was mineral oil all over the floor. Frigging noob me!

So what went from a supposedly simple plug and play-- end up needing a bleed. Learned something here again after looking at all the parts of the lever. 

Owing to the confine of space housing shifter and brake parts, the reservoir is in some pretty odd shape with weird meandering to channel the hydraulic fluids along.

This means probably a lot area to trap air bubbles internally. Now, most videos of Shimano road hydraulic brake bleeding on Youtube are made by wannabes simply trying to promote their channel but hasn't a frigging clue. All they tell you is go tap the brake lines and squeeze the levers a few times and that's it!

Do yourself a favor-- watch the one that actually works by Parktool here .. it is ultra important that you need to tilt the oil cup a couple of times at different angles to let the system be able to completely "burp" the air bubbles out. 

The small amount of space in a road lever reservoir in contrast to mountain bike brakes means that even a couple of air bubbles can translate to a huge amount of lever sponginess and modulation differences!

 

Anyway , back to the brakes, really all there is to do is only to push the cable in and tightened. The olive is already installed inside the lever. 

Be VERY CAREFUL not to overtighten the nut (see bottom left pic above). Note that it says 5-6 Nm but most people at home even ifwith have a torque wrench, will probably not have the 8mm wrench adapter head needed in this case as it is an uncommon tool. Exercise caution. Once tight, stop. You may or may not be able to screw the thread fully in. That's ok. If at all it is better to have a leaky hose that u can tighten again rather than....

The problem with overtightening is that the whole contraption will crack. This is made of either plastic or carbon fiber depending on model but whatever it is, its gonna be some frigging expensive replacement part which is not easy to find!

This is the pic of a Shimano carbon fiber lever my friend came across from his customer that cracked due to over tightening.

It's apparent a common problem....  https://www.reddit.com/r/bikewrench/comments/i2thq1/shimano_str7020_what_caused_this_crack/

Shifter

Looking for where the cable gets inserted in Shimano shifters has always been a thing ever for me since I started using STI and their now discontinued DCL levers on mountain bikes where brakes and shifters are integrated. Bloody Shimano excel in hiding the tiny cable head like some kind of ninja fetish. Here on the GRX600 its side loaded behind the whole braking and shifter levers.

What really got me was how this entire expensive part is all but over 90% made out of PLASTIC! Anyway that's what it is these days.. Good old days of solid bike parts are a thing of the past. We are getting planned obsolescence shoved down our throats. Even good old metal parts--soon they will stop making things that goes with them. 

I almost peeled off the white piece of thin plastic thinking it was just one of those stopper holding the cable in a brand new lever before installation is complete. Luckily this time I left it alone unlike the yellow plugs for the brake.

Found out later that is is actually a crucial part for proper shifting!

Next the rear deraileur went on the hanger of the bike. What I didn't realize was that in order to adjust the shifting properly, the hood has first got to be rolled back to secure the cable in place. 

Thought all that was needed is just to make sure the cable was in the recess channel. WRONG.  DEAD WRONG of me.

Cable-end prep

But first, let's get another pedantic endeavour of mine out of the way... Prepping cable ends for shifter (or cable actuated brakes). This eliminates the "cable stretch" often mentioned which just simply isn't true. Modern cables are all pre-stretched. Its the wedging of the outer cable housing i nthe end caps that causes problem over time coupled to an uneven cut end. All it takes is  to file/ dremel flat the ends  off a cut and removing a couple mm from the outer plastic housing.

 

Rotors and Adapters

Isn't installing a rotor straight forward? Why need to talk about it?

Yes and installing center lock rotor is even simpler.. just screw it in and tighten with a cassette lock ring tool! Viola-and done for the front.. then the rear.... WAIT! What? The tool wouldnt fit?? WTF..

Unlike old days when rear wheel hubs had 135mm OLD using QR, nowadays most bikes are using Thru Axles which are 142mm or longer.

Ok maybe I had the short type of tool-- so I was frantically looking for a longer lock ring toool from friend...

But the alternative is using another kind of lock ring that utilizes a bb tool to tighten and of course I gotten a couple of these quick from one of the old FBC geezers again ;)

Moving on...  let's get the tires on and out of the way... Still not a convert of tubeless, so its prepping  in good old fashion. Small things like powdering your tubes to sticking a cut out from an old tube to sit in between the valve and the rim goes a long way...  

The other thing is avoiding those thin cheesy plastic good-for-nothing rim tapes. They only serve to get you a puncture from the rim side especially if spoke holes have not been properly finished (which  should be checked anyway regardless of tube or tubeless setup). I only trust Zefal cloth tapes for normal size rims like this. For super wide rims between 55-100mm used on trials or fat bikes, those I have other ways of dealing with them.

Alignment and clearance check

There is nothing worse than getting a frame only to realize the rear triangle is mis-aligned. Having seen badly offset frame which affects the chain line, that is one of first thing I check with just the wheel put on. But this time the tires are on as well so the clearance can be gauged at the same time.

Rim is nicely aligned to the back of the seat tube. Clearance of the widest point in tire at seat stay is 10mm each side and  10 (NDS) and 12mm on the drive side of chain stay. Ok as due to the asymetry of the NDS chain stay-- its not a misalignment.  the 40c (aka 40mm) measures out to be a tad wider on the Kenda Booster Pro @ 41mm

Lots of masking tape and velcro as parts wll still be taken in and out.. pointless for cable ties now.

 

One little part on the chain stay that stumped me for awhile as this little cutout from the solid asymetric yoke just behind the bb. Figured it out finally... to slot a cable tie to secure the shifter cable!

Steerer

The part I absolutely dread in all bike builds-- - The cutting of the steerer tube. More so in this case as this will be the first ever carbon steerer to cut in my entire life. Tools all ready. Mr Lady Finger supplied me with his steerer sawing guide and a carbon sawblade just in the nick of time.

Carbon sawblade which is really more like a very rough abrasive but soft to not fray the carbon parts

I was about to hack by clamping with an old stem otherwise and use some normal 1/32 hacksaw blade.

The hack way if you dont have the proper tools...

 

and... identification. Not foolproof but if u ever want to proof a bike is yours-- chances are thieves would not have swapped out your steerer and notice this...

 Rear Wheel + Cassette Anomaly

Was troubleshooting at this point why I cant get the shifter to work properly (but not realizing its because I was trying to adjust while the hood is rolled up). Reckon its a fortunate thing because this actually led me to discover another problem. Pressing both brakes and forcing the bike forward, there was some considerable shake. I attributed it at first to the still headset and stack issue up front still not totally overcome.

Yet the amount of movement was more than its possible for the headset issue. So I thought maybe its because of new knobbie tires on tiled floor and its the knobs that rolled or slight movement due to brakepads not bedded in with rotors.  But on my other even knobbier tire bike-- none of this slop was apparent.

So I just started pulling at everything... and DARN! ...the cassette was shaky on the freebody. Pretty sure I tightened it before putting it on the frame. Double chekced and yes the lockring is tight! 

Took out the wheel instructon sheet and read it. I know that some wheels you need to work with a supplied spacer.. checked the wheel box, nothing. This was the case with all the mavic wheelset I had in the past.

HED says "No need for spacers with Shimano 11 spd" but as seen below in the video... the wheelset says otherwise. Luckily I have a boatload of spacers-- they are the same size as those for bb and I have amassed everything from 0.1, 0.2 0.5, 1.0 all the way to normal 2.5mm ones over the years.. so no issue to shim any thickness. Anyway all that was needed here is a single 0.2mm piece.. Yes!

Slap on the saddle to the post and ...first complete rough cut of the bike..

 Things outstanding at this time

1. Shifter/ Deraileur adjustment still not quite done
2. Bar height and control settings not optimized
3. Final steerer cutting after 2. is finalized
   
4. Still a wee bit of annoying headset shakiness...  hmm
5. Bar tape wrapping

Point 1-- fren pointed out to me that hood need to be pulled back down to be able to adjust the shifting properly and with that know, pretty much it was solved in a a few minutes. Since I brought my bike over, he did just that with this awesome mechanical skills which certainly far exceeds mine.

Point 4- -the sloppy headset was simply irritating the heck out of me when I got back home.. Bloody No matter what I did, it just wasn't perfect. Then it started me thinking.. could it be more than just the headset itself. Then I remmebered something from long ago...

... years ago when Chris King refuse to pay for the Aheadset patent, they could not use the c-ring design. So their headsets came with a Delrin ring. For a long time I never really thought it amounted to much but one time when i didnt put that, a slop was detected on the whole headtube/headset assembly. so it was diligently put back on and I never thought much about it..

Now as I sat mulling-- could a piece of old Delrin solve the current problem? The reason was at this point I had 30mm of spacer under the stem and another 20mm above it.. Part of the problem might be an improper pre-loading of the compression nut. dueto all the interfacing of these surfaces. Star nut would just pull things together as it is being tightened but compression nuts works in a different way and would not exactly be pulling the the bits up properly and possible leaving some tiny gaps.

headset top cover>10mm spacer>10mm spacer>10mm spacer>Stem>10mspacer>10mmspacer>C-nut

But first thing was sorting out the final cut of the steerer so that there is little to no spacer above the stem in order to make it easier for the compression nut to do its work properly. 

Yup, couple of shakeout rides followed by anothe steerer trimming. Final spacer stack.. 25mm then followed by this piece of Delrin before the stem pops on and another 5mm of spacer on top.

headset top cover>10mm spacer>15mm spacer>10mm spacer>Stem>5mmspacer>C-nut 

Headset shakiness-- GONE! Once tightened properly-- the spacers need quite a bit of force before they can actually be rotated unlike before the delrin ring was inserted.

Now in retrospect the Delrin ring is pretty much acting like a compression washer in many nuts and bolts application and that's how it has made things work.

 

Damn! Five thousand dollar bike needs a bloody 5 cents piece of plastic to make it all work well.

Last bit here are all the little things I have learned over time. Nothing sky shattering...

Top one is a mountain biker thing... roatating the seat clamp away from adding a piece a of old inner tube to prevent ingress of water and dirt into the seat tube.  Taping of cables where it would be tied to the guides on the frame to prvent rub and wear on housing over time. Home made cable guides where they are needed. 

Yes the fork can run internal cabling but I chose not to. Because when you wan to take out the fork the next time-- it will always be tethered to the brakes unless everything is removed. Internal cabling is really just a pain in the arse and in this case it really serves no aesthetic purpose hiding just a few inches but leaving the top and bottom all still exposed.

 

...and DONE!

Lynskey GR300