Bike Stuff

With the original  Shimano 105 5500 9 speed triple Aluminum-framed, 105 triple road bike  Klein was one of the original makers of aluminum frames using 'oversized' lightweight tubing. Today the proportions look totally normal. But it was avant guard 20+ years ago. In 2002, I'd been riding the Bianchi Nuovo Racing as my road bike but moving down to Menlo Park, road biking became more important than mountain biking and it was time for an upgrade. In early 2003, I found this 2002 model on closeout. In some ways, it was better than the newer ones because it was the last of the Kleins to get the trademark cool paint job. Trek had purchased Klein a few years earlier and they were about to start painting them 'normally' like other Treks.  What is cool about this paint job? It's not just "Plum Crazy" purple (and purple is kinda cool all by itself), but it is a semi-translucent paint with metallic flecks and is color-changing. Huh? Color-changing? Yeah, dependi...

The “Impossible”: 9-speed to 11-speed conversion Goal: Give a 2002 Klein Quantum a lower granny gear and an update. It came with a Shimano 105 5500 9 speed road triple chainring setup with a granny gear of 32 gear inches. In 2002, this is how you got both low gearing and wide range. However, it is still significantly higher than either my gravel or mountain bikes. Of course, being a road bike, it also topped out at 115 inches for speed in the flats. This is much higher than the gravel 1×11 (88in) or even the mountain triple (100). But things have changed in the world of drivetrains in the last 20 years. Let's go for a bit of a journey into the changes in road componentry in the last two decades: The most notable change has been the ability to put wide-range cassettes on the back. Back in 2002, this bike was equipped with a conventional (for the time) 12-25t cassette to go with a less conventional (on a non-touring bike) 52-42-30 triple set of chainrings. Modern non-race road ...