The 520 has been sulking lately, jealous of all the attention his little brother the 420 has been getting, I guess I can't blame the 520 too much, I did steal the saddle off his back and put it on the 420 after all. I knew there would be sun today and I wanted to ride so I decided to tinker with the 520 in the am and then ride it.
This wasn't going to be the full spa treatment the 520 has coming, more like a strip-mall cut rate mani/pedi to make it more comfy to ride in the fall, step one was getting the VO saddle in place. Glad I removed this from the Novara before I sold it,
Step two was taking off the stamped steel pedals and putting on my favorite MKS sneaker pedals, had a pair still in plastic just waiting for this build. It took less than 10 minutes to do these two updates.
Step 3 I took another 10 minutes to replace the thread bare Kenda tires with the Panaracer's that had a brief stay on the Novara before I swapped it to thinner tires to accommodate its fenders. The Panaracer's had been earmarked for the 520 already.
My most ambitious update, step four, was removing the tape below the brake levers and then removing the brake levers from the bars while still attached to their cables,
So I could swap to the nice wide Nitto bars and taller Nitto technomic stem.
I greased the inside of the clamp area on the stem to prevent scrapes when fitting the bars and of course the stem and plug got a liberal dose where they will enter the head tube.
And bingo new bars and stem same levers and cables. I did have to do some fussing with the cables but didn't have to remove them which was great for this quick update. Everything above took about an hour to do.
That even included putting on this Trek branded bottle cage I had laying around in place of the old plain one.
And then it was time for a shake down ride, pro tip; snug up you stem bolts and quick release skewers before you ride, just saying. The upside of looking for work is that if its sunny and nice at 11 am I can just pack up an go for a ride!
The saddle is still rock hard but it won't get broken in by not riding it, I immediately felt the comfort of wider higher handlebars, The pedals disappeared beneath my feet and the Panracer's had the same plush ride I remember and love. That will do for some fall rides.
Upgrade.Ride.Smile.Repeat.
I'm a fan of those MKS RMX pedals! Much better on the eyes than the highly touted battle axe MKS Lambda's everyone gushes about.
ReplyDeleteA quick lookup shows your RMX pedals as more of a BMX style pedal but that wouldn't deter me from putting them on one of my road steeds. Other than their good looks, what else do you like about them?
Thanks for the lead on another solid pedal that blends in nicely with our C&V machines.
Thanks Josh, there are a couple things I like aside from how they look, they have a nice wide platform and they have enough small "nubs" that my feet feel firmly attached to the deck and I don't recall ever having my foot slip. On my ride today I actually forgot about the pedals until I was near the end "oh yeah I put sneakers on this bike" I now have them on 3 bikes. The Moto_GT stays stock but I notice those pedals, they are just kind of meh. Oh and they are about $25 so there is that too.
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