NBD!
I’ve been a reaaaaallly good boy. Instead of buying more bikes I’ve been offloading some. I sold the Canyon Grizl and I gave away my Giant Reign and When I sold the Dogma F I tried not to go straight into another project bike, so I’ve been working on Gina’s bike (lol), but at the same time I’ve been eyeing all sorts of potential projects, everything from a fake SL8, Elves, a Canyon Aeroad, the upcoming new Aethos (but do I really need another weight weenie bike?!) to the new Cervelo S5.
The S5 just looks so damn fast sitting still and I love how the older S5 looks vs. the new one. The new one piece cockpit just doesn’t do it for me (that ‘bump’ in the middle of the bars looks so ugly) and the new bike’s deep headtube looks out of proportion, but good news is that the new frame can take the old bars (and hey that would be slightly rebellious!). All that said I’ve been hyper aware that I don’t make enough power to get the most out of a full on aero bike (but I think they look amaaaaazing).
I reached out to Jing from CCACHE to help me find a new S5 frameset (I really need to never buy a complete bike new ever again as I always end up changing every single part on it anyways!). Turns out they’re out of stock Aus. wide in size 51, and the soonest I could get one is October.
I almost put a deposit down on one, but thought I’d sit it out and see if an older size 51 pops up on Facebook Marketplace. A few months back there were plenty, but I missed that train, so since then I’ve been refreshing like a mad man.
And well, this morning I found one, in Sydney and in as new condition. What’s even better is that it’s in the colourway I like the most (gloss black fork, matte black frame). I’m Asian, and was brought up to haggle, so I low balled, and was met with a solid no, price is set, but with the twist of an arm and a little charm I managed to get half way and welp, the bike is now mine!
Not my photos (photos from the listing, seller takes a decent shot!). Sadly (for me) it’s got a full Dura-Ace setup (just like the Dogma F) but hey, even though I’m a SRAM fan it’ll be nice to have something different in the stable (and yay I get to buy another direct mount hanger!).
I’m assuming the ENVE wheels are hookless (might be wrong here), which would mean they’re set up tubeless. As hot as they look I’d prefer not to run hookless or tubeless so I might have to sell them (they’re worth a lot new so hopefully they’ll sell easily enough).
Whilst I’ll try my best to not go full weight weenie on an aero bike (challenge accepted?!) I think I’d like this to be a 1 by setup. The Dura-Ace crankset is a heavy AF too so I’ll most likely get some shorter and lighter 160mm cranks. The ENVE’s are heavy at 1600g. If I can sell them I wouldn’t hesitate to get some lighter (maybe even deeper) Chinese wheels (ZEN Carbon Bike perhaps).
A couple of days before pickup the seller let me know that the bike was in the shop to get the bartape replaced and they found a crack in the bars. The shop is replacing the bars under warranty, bit of a bummer as it was raining all week and I wanted to get busy working on it (and I just really wanted to close the deal!).
Good news is the bars are in, and he’s going to get them on at the shop (Wheelhaus) this Thursday. Fingers crossed all goes well and the bike is mine.