So my C64 frameset arrived the week after Thanksgiving 2021, which was earlier than I was expecting and after only a four month wait. I took everything out of the box. The frame was nicely packed with a styrofoam piece at the top that held the fork and saddle clamp and kept the frame in place during transit. The seat post was in a box of its own and there was an accessories box and two water bottles and bottle cages I’d ordered with the frame. These were loose in the box but unlikely to move due to all the packaging.
There were a couple of things I noticed. The most concerning was that the brake bosses seemed to be missing from the fork, as though the inserts hadn’t been installed.
Also, the accessories box that contained all the fittings I needed to build the bike was for a disc brake frameset.
This mattered, because it meant I didn’t have the fittings needed to fit the rear brake cable through the top tube. Also it didn’t have the compression fitting for the fork/headset (it’s moulded into the fork for disc brake framesets) and the stem cap and bottom spacer seemed to be for a Colnago R41 stem. With the C64 disc frame, the brake hoses can be hidden inside the bars and stem, but it appears that a R41 stem is required for this.
One nice touch is the Colnago bottle cage bolts that are provided with the frame:
I contacted Maris from Brava Cycles where I had bought the frameset, and he explained that Colnago had started sending out forks with the brake bosses painted over. I just had to dig out the paint covering the holes with a small screwdriver. It came off easily and cleanly in one piece. He also apologized that I’d been sent the wrong accessories box and he sent out the rim brake accessory set I needed.
I’d bought a set of direct mount brakes and a Prologo M5 saddle off eBay, Deda Superleggera bars and a Superleggero stem from Chain Reaction and Merlin Cycles respectively while I was waiting for the frame. I started the build with the components I had, along with the wheels from my V1-R. The plan was to use these wheels for the C64 and buy another set, probably Campagnolo, but model TBD, for the V1-R.
One thing that’s unique with the C64 frame is that the bottle cage on the downtube is fitted into a recess for some reason – referred to by some as a ‘swimming pool’. This limits the bottle cages that can be mounted without the use of spacers, but the Colnago water bottle cages I bought with the frame fitted without a problem and without spacers. The tag with the serial number is riveted here also.
The seat post clamp is a wedge inside the seat tube, which seems to work very well, and it’s tightened by an M4 bolt underneath the top tube, which is very neat.
Next I had to decide what components to buy, my short list being Campagnolo 12 speed Record or Super Record. Campagnolo’s electronic shifting (EPS) is only offered with Super Record, it would have been significantly more expensive than a mechanical groupset. The reviews I’d read were praising the 12 speed mechanical groupset while reviews of the EPS groupset were a little lackluster. After some deliberation I bought a set of Super Record 12 speed shifters from Merlin Cycles (at a price similar to Record at other online retailers). I found really good pricing at Pro Bike Kit and bought Super Record front and rear derailleurs and a Super Record chain. A new cable set was bought from Excel Sports, although I later realized that the shifters included cables.
All these parts and the rim brake accessory box arrived in time for the weekend, which happened to be a weekend where my wife and daughter were away, so I had plenty of uninterrupted time to continued the build, and could do so in the warmth and comfort of the family room.
On both my CX-1 and V1-R the shifting has never been perfect, there have always been a couple of sprockets where I could never get the upshifts and downshifts dialed in. It would hunt in either direction – add more cable tension and it would shift to a larger sprocket but hesitate when shifting to a smaller sprocket, and vice versa. This could be due to cable friction, so I was going to ensure that this wouldn’t be an issue with my C64.
A member (who went by the name ‘Calnago’ – now sadly passed away) had written a great and very extensive thread on the C64 frame and build on the Weight Weenies Forum which I found very informative and helpful in researching my build.
One thing he covered in length was the cable routing around the head tube. With the C64 (and other current Colnagos – V3R, G3X), the derailleur cables are routed internally through the downtube entering on top of the downtube towards the front. According to Colnago, the cable for the rear derailleur enters from the right (right shifter to right hand side) and the front derailleur cable enters on the left (left shifter to left hand side). On the forum, Calnago had an issue with this because 1) the cable hosing would rub on the head tube and damage the paint (and he didn’t see how the rubber frame protector on the cable would stop this) 2) this routing would lead to a tighter bend in the cable that could increase cable friction.
His preferred approach was to route the cable from the right shifter to the left entry to the downtube (and vice versa) and let the cables cross in the downtube. The benefits he claimed were that this would avoid the cables rubbing on the headtube and the wider bend would reduce cable friction.
Incidentally, that is what’s done in this build (see 5m:25s in):
I routed the cables this way at first, but I didn’t like it. Despite keeping cable length to a minimum while ensuring the bars could turn without pulling on the cables, there was too much loose cable at the front of the bike. It didn’t look good and there was too much opportunity for the cables to get caught by something, or for my knees to hit them, which would be annoying.
I reverted back to the standard routing using Jagwire Mini Tube Top protectors, which I thought was a much more elegant solution (I would have liked to have used the Colnago cable protectors as shown on the white and black C64 above, but couldn’t find any).
One benefit of rerouting the cables, is that it gave me opportunity to check that the cables weren’t dragging on anything and cable friction was at a minimum. The cables ran freely. I paid particular attention to where the inner cable entered and exited housing that had been cut. I’d made the ends of the cable housing round again after cutting by inserting a bradawl, but sometimes the inner cable can still feel tight. They were nice and smooth now passing freely into and out of the housing. Also I found it better to insert the housing into the shifters before feeding the cable through the internal routing of the Deda handlebars. This ensured that the cable housings were seated and installed in the shifters properly – any movement between the housing and shifter could also affect shifting consistency
The bottom bracket cable guide is moulded into the carbon on the C64, which is a nice solution, but requires nylon tubing to prevent the cables from digging into the carbon and it also helps keep dirt away from the cable. There was no explanation in the Colnago assembly manual about it, although some tubing was included in the accessories box for this purpose. I followed the recommendation from the Weight Weenies thread, and purchased some tubing from Amazon which worked very nicely.
The last note on the subject of cable routing is that Colnago included a Jagwire cable end with an extension in the accessory box. It wasn’t obvious to me where this would be used. It’s used where the rear derailleur cable exits the chain stay with the extension inside the chain stay, and is a nice way of preventing the ingress of dirt into the cable.
Brake cables were easily installed, the only thing remarkable was that the fittings that act as end stops for the cable ends in the top tube, clip in to the frame. I was worried about either breaking them or damaging the frame. There were no issues but there seemed to be more movement with the rear fitting than I would have expected.
One of the more difficult decisions I had was around the chainset. A Super Record chainset is ridiculously expensive and twice the cost of a Record chainset. The technical differences are that the Super Record chainset uses a titanium axle compare to steel on the Record, the Super Record has a carbon ‘brace’ that adds some stiffness to the large chainring when on the smaller sprockets of the rear cassette, and the Super Record chainset uses CULT ceramic bearings, which apparently are very high quality. Also, the Super Record chainset uses a bolt with a left hand thread to join the two halves. I’ve read that this is done to avoid a steel bolt being used which could lead to galvanic corrosion between the steel and titanium.
90 g of the 150 g weight difference between the Super Record and Record groupset is in the chainset. For me, what was more important was that, to my taste, the Super Record chainset looked much nicer than the Record. Also it seemed appropriate that the top frameset got the top components – it’s supposed to be a superbike after all.
After much deliberating and searching for the best price, I bought a Super Record chainset from Chain Reaction Cycles. Chain Reaction Cycles seems to change their prices periodically without it being obvious. When I first looked, there were other retailers with better pricing, but when it came time to pull the trigger, Chain Reaction suddenly had the best price. I’ve seen the same in the past on other components I was looking for.
One thing I found was that most places had 172.5 mm chainsets, but some didn’t have any 175 mm. Merlin Cycles had the best pricing, but only had 172.5 mm. I’ve never had a bike fit so I don’t know that 172.5 mm cranks won’t work for me, but I’ve never had a problem with 175 mm cranks and all my other bikes have 175 mm cranks. It wasn’t worth the risk of buying 172.5 mm cranks to save a few dollars and finding a problem in the way they felt or worse still, start suffering from some kind of pain while cycling. It’s worth noting that 175 mm is considered the standard crank length for mountain bikes and 172.5 mm is considered the standard length for road bikes. I’m 6’4″ and I used to use 180 mm cranks on my mountain bike.
The other thing I found was that not many places offered 53/39T cranksets, which is what I’d always run on my road bikes, however I didn’t think it to be an issue going with 52/36T which were much more available. I could see where the lower gearing of the smaller chainring could be a benefit, and a 52T large chainring wasn’t going to limit me in any way.
The next decisions were around the cassette. There were two decisions to be made, gear ratios and Chorus vs Super Record (there is no Record 12 speed cassette). The gear ratio options were either 11-29 or 11-32 (Chorus also has an 11-34, which might need the Chorus rear mech, I wasn’t interested in that so didn’t look into it). My 11 speed setup on the V1-R has an 11-29 cassette. The 12 speed 11-29 cassette would add a 16 tooth sprocket that is missing between the 15 and 17 teeth sprockets on the 11 speed cassette. The 11-32 would also add the 16 tooth sprocket but extend the last four sprockets out to 32T going 22, 25, 28, 32 compared to 21, 23, 26, 29 on my 11 speed bike. This seemed a better option, and I’ve had no problem with the wider gear spacing for the lower gears on my Ekar 9-42 cassette. The difference between Super Record and Chorus 12 speed cassettes is that with Super Record the largest 6 sprockets are titanium whereas Chorus uses steel. Super Record is almost twice the price and titanium sprockets are less durable. The weight savings is over 50 g, but I wasn’t out to build the lightest bike -just the nicest – so I went for Chorus and saved the money.
Parts arrived, I pressed in the BB86 bottom bracket cups I’d bought earlier, and installed the crankset and cassette.
I shortened the chain (according to the Campagnolo maximum chain length rule) joined it with a KMC Missing Link, installed my favorite SuperCaz bar tape, adjusted the gears and I was done.
In an earlier draft of this blog, I wrote at length about using quick links on Campagnolo chains rather than the recommended pin. I’ll just say that if you chose to use the pin as Campagnolo recommends, you should use the appropriate Campagnolo tool, not a third party tool. I personally prefer to use a quick link and I think this article does a good job of explaining why and why it should still be ok to use a quick link rather than a pin to join the chain. This whole topic sparked some lively debate when I posted on the Campagnolo Tech Talk group on Facebook.
Here are a few photos of the finished bike.
