Redline Conquest

I have a Redline Conquest which is a Cross bike. As far as I can tell the only difference between a cross, gravel and road bike is the bottom bracket being slightly higher on the first two.

It is a disk brake bike and I have a friend coming next year and need to build him a rider. He is a roady.

When I first built this bike there were no hydraulic road levers available so I made it a flat bar bike with MTB components. I spoke before about how dangerous disk brake bikes are but on a road bike they should be more manageable since you have longer sight lines and can plan your braking.

The bike will of course be Campy so I've been trying to find 11 speed hydraulic levers. I can get Potenza levers but they have the "cheap" Campy problem of only shifting one gear up at a time.

So my plan is to get a Chorus or Record set of used levers now that everyone is changing over to 12 speeds and to install a Potenza rear derailleur and 11-32 cassette. I could get this fairly easily for Shimano but Campy doesn't believe that lower gears are for real men.

One of the questions I have, and can't find the answer for, is whether the Chorus or Record levers will work with the Potenza rear derailleur. So as I'm building it I have to learn that.

The Redline is aluminum and it will be lighter than Mike's custom steel Tomasinni so my plan is to put the Fulcrum tubeless tires and disk brakes on them to give him a dose of modern technology which he has spend the last several years denying is worthwhile. While I happen to think that tubeless is the only way to go on California roads, I see disks as bad. They put all of the braking loads in the incorrect areas of the bike and lord knows what will happen in the future. We've already seen them having to move the sizes of the axles up 2 mm and to eliminate the real quick release function.

But for a sports rider I suppose you can look up-to-date without having any problems.

As I build it I'll keep the string going.