Category Archives: Bike

It’s a sign!

Guido (in the stripy red top) filling us in on what Revolve ReCYCLING does and what’s expected of volunteer mechanics.

Gorgeous Frank Paino, ready to be sold.

It’s all in the details.

A tour of the showroom where bikes that were once destined for landfill have been given new life and are now ready to find a new home.

Europa cycles represent!

We then got a tour of the yard. O. M. G…

Bicycle heaven, or hell?! I was emotional.

We then got to the recycling area. Bikes and parts that are considered unsafe to be used get sorted by materials and sent for recycling.

In a skip for recycling.

The guys got straight to work.

Eugene serviced the brakes and gears on this bike. The idea is to put enough love into the bikes to get them to a state where you’d consider them safe for your own children to ride.

Endless buckets of parts!

My BFAM Eugene loves working on bicycles as much as I do so I thought I’d plant a seed and suggest that he check out Revolve ReCYCLING in Alexandria and ask them for a job. Revolve ReCYCLING recovers, recycles and redeploys unwanted bikes. SO unreal, right?!

It turns out Revolve have a night once a week where bike mechanics can volunteer to work on children’s bikes which will be donated to kids in need Australia-wide. Talk about stocking up on good karma. Eugene and I rocked up at 5pm to be given a tour of the facilities by Revolve ReCYCLING founder Guido, then it was straight to work!

Visit: www.revolverecycling.net

All installed, very happy! You can find the SL8 kit here.

For almost a year now I’ve been tempted to get titanium bolts for my bikes from various online shops but I’ve never been able to pull the trigger until now. I came across US company Better Bolts on YouTube and hey hey it turns out they make a complete Specialized SL8 bolt kit for not only my frame, but also my Roval cockpit and SRAM red groupset.

Their Ti bolts are CNC machined, have rolled threads (vs cut), use PVD coating (vs anodizing so they won’t fade in harsh sunlight) and they offer a lifetime warranty on the bolts too!

I decided to go for the copper colour for a bit of bling, will get them on the bike and take more photos (and measure the weight savings!) ASAP.

Looks right but heavy at 60g.

Always wondered what that little braze on tab was for. It’s for holding the chain when you have the rear wheel off the bike. Neat!

Have heard a lot of praise for Arundel bottle cages but never been into the look of them, until now! The Campagnolo aero bottle I had on the Paino was period incorrect, but worse than that, drinking water from it tasted like plastic so it had to go!

Paino now weighs in at 8.50kg’s with the 202’s. Shimano Sora 8-Speed cassette on order!

Daym!

I love building and tinkering with bikes as much as I love riding them, but the SL8 is so good as is that I’ve been struggling to improve it in any way and now I’m having withdrawals.

Yesterday I stupidly test fitted the 45 deep carbon front wheel off my SL6 onto my old 80’s steel Paino road bike and BAM! Hot daym it looks fucking amazing! I ended up spending hours trawling eBay and FB Marketplace for parts to do a Neo Retro build on the Paino and man, there’s a LOT out there for cheaps so no doubt at all it would be a fun project.

There would be a lot of problem solving to do too and a lot of different directions I could take the build, and possibly a fair bit of trial and error as well. The Paino is 6 speed Campy and if I wanted a 45 deep rear wheel I’d have to give that up and look into a cassette for an 11-speed Shimano hub (or run an 8/9/10 speed cassette with spacers). I could keep the friction shifters to work with whatever cassette, or I could upgrade to modern brake lever shifters or even an electronic groupset.

100% I’d have a lot of fun on a Neo Retro project, but I’ve worked so hard at restoring the bike to how it was when new that I feel it would be disrespectful to modernise it. I have no doubt that the bike would ride better with modern parts on it, but there’s no doubt it’ll still feel like heavy, flexy and unresponsive in comparison to my SL8.

First world problems!

Caden floating 2-piece rotors for the SL8. The 160mm came in at a super light 96g, and the rear 140mm came in at 80g. Literally as light as the one-piece Galfer rotors they’re replacing.