On Wednesday, February 24, 2021 at 12:59:05 PM UTC-8, wrote:
Parts are trickling in slowly. Local parts I can obtained off of Craigs list now are so overpriced that it is out of question to pay $60 for a bolt-on disk. There is a guy that sells Chinese parts that are cheap enough and with the bolts included but he is almost impossible to get him to respond so I gave up. I'm sure he is paying his way through Cal State Hayward with the money but no response, no sale and now it costs as much to get a single disk from eBay as four from him.

The headset tool won't arrive for another couple of weeks but since there are four other minor parts that are going to take that long no sense in worrying about it. The BB386 us going to take that long as well and it doesn't matter if the work isn't installed if the crank can't be fitted. The 32 tooth 10 speed cassette came in and I installed that yesterday as the hunchback. since the rear disk hydraulic line was mounted a rather long way it should fit on the 2 cm larger frameset without problem. The say with the front line. It is internal on this fork but was external on the other. So I will have to strip off the bead and cap on the lever end and stick it up from the bottom side. in order to lose the lease fluid and make it easier to bleed afterwards. It appears that flat bar gravel bikes are getting popular so this one should move a lot faster than the Emonda or Modone. The last guy to query about the Emonda must have been a monkey, after exchanges for three days he said that he wouldn't fit the bike. He is three inches shorter than I am but claims his arms are 37" long. Maybe he is measuring from the middle of his back because from shoulder to fingertip my arms are 26".

The tires are 3 mm wider than I would like but there is more than plenty of room with these triangles. It is surprising how easy gravel tires roll on hard surfaces. But gravel bikes have lower gear ratios and the 11/42 high gear isn't going to rush anyone down the road. If I can get this together there is another Felt road bike that I will buy and build into a 10 speed Campy Record. The parts I have look brand new, though I will be looking for a compact two piece crank. That will require a compact front derailleur that will come from the Campy warehouse.

I was standing upright for the first half hour of this morning so I am recovering from that stained back if a lot more slowly than I would like.

I wonder how you tell what sort of hydraulic fluid is in this Avid setup. It could use either Shimano mineral oil or DOT 5.1 which needs replacing every year if that makes any sense. When was the last time you replaced your car brake fluid?

Six-bolt disc rotors are common as fleas. $20 for a Deore six-bolt of Amazonian. https://tinyurl.com/4nzbb92v What headset tool do you need? It's an integrated HS. Do need a crown seat setting tool? And are you switching to an Avid set up from Shimano? They're not cross-compatible. Avid/SRAM uses DOT fluid, and I'm not sure if the Shimano hose is happy with DOT fluid, and its ID may be incompatible with the Avid brakes as well. The levers definitely take different olives and nuts. Even if you could use the Shimano hose, you'd have to bob the ends, remove the barb, olive and nut, to get it through your frame -- unless it has giant openings. Go get some Avid/SRAM hoses.

BTW, the F55X is not a gravel bike. It is a CX bike. You have a slightly different version of the Redline Conquest you spent so long unloading.

-- Jay Beattie.