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!
To this date David has been the only guy to detail my GT-R. I’ve known him since the JDMST and VWG forum days, and later through ZEN Garage. It’s so awesome to see how far he’s come.
In the fourth of our Find your ZEN Features (where we feature extraordinary people who have found their ZEN) we shine the spotlight on him!
Full Feature on ZEN Blog: https://www.zengarage.com.au/find-your-zen-david-trieu/
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!
Confirmation and affirmation that all that hard work was worth it, positive feedback for all I’ve done is the gift that keeps on giving.
In the early 2000’s I looked up to Sydney Graff Artist ATOME’s work, fast forward to 2025 and I finally got to meet the legend and take some photos of him painting a wall.
We just featured him on ZEN Blog, and he had this to say about ZEN:
“Justin and his crew have brought ZEN garage back with a bang!! I’ve known of and followed Justin since his amazing INfront days. He repped Sydney and the design community hard! In addition to that (as if it wasn’t enough) he’s one of these super amazing guys who goes hard in everything he does … cars bikes photography plants … and more and more….! I’ve been excited to see more … inspired by what I see him do and always amazed! So, to have a small little piece on the return of ZEN is super nice!
Thankyou Justin. Thankyou Zen 🙏 ! Link in bio annnnnnnd if you want to see some cool shit check out both zengarage.com.au & justinfox.com.au put some time aside.. it’s a great great rabbit hole to dive into”
Check out ATOME’s Find Your ZEN Feature on ZEN Blog: https://www.zengarage.com.au/find-your-zen-atome/
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.
Ben holding up an array of jet engines which bolts on to his Porsche rear diffuser. He’s literally a mad inventor!
For shits n’ gigs he’s making a jet engined bike too. Cray!
Weight weenie friendly tyres.
Love is in the aero.
Dropped in to Ben Caden’s workshop to pick up some of his new super light floating disc rotors. The guy is a legit OG. Thought I’d rattle off a few shots whilst I was there!
Happy dogo is happy!
What an awesome day (that ended at 2AM for me lol). So many faces I’ve not seen in 10+ years.
Thanks to all that came along. Seeing you guys wearing ZEN again blows my mind! Special thanks to Reggie for feeding us and Gi for running the ZEN shop.
I brought my camera, but as usual I failed to get any shots as I was talking too much!
