I’ve got a massive gravel ride on Saturday, probably the biggest one of the year for me. Severnth Heaven is one of my Gravelton rides. It’s a 186km route down to the Severn Bridge and back with a nasty summit finish atop the Worcestershire Beacon @ 425m just to finish me off. The problem is my gravel bike drivetrain is completely worn out so I needed to get that sorted ASAP which meant I was frantically ordering brake and drivetain components last weekend. Yesterday I fitted them.
I decided to just change everything except the BB which I’m sure was ok and I decided to use my original GRX chainrings as the oval Rotor’s are a chunk of money.
Brakes
The bike has been on Shimano rotors since I bought it but changing the pads to Uberbike was, as I found, a combo that doesn’t work. The front just squealed all the time and it drove me nuts. Replacing the rotor didn’t make any difference. The semi-metallic brake compound just doesn’t like the Shimano rotor surfaces.
So I decided to change it up and I’ve gone for Galfer brakes and discs. Galfer are Spanish brand that feature quite a bit in the Moto-cross world but also do MTB/Road too. The wave rotor design is pretty cool too.
The rotors come in nice sustainable cardboard packaging unlike the pads and they supply a centrelock lockring and a sticker too. I’m a sucker for a sticker
Fitting centrelock rotors is simple. Unscrew the lockring, replace the rotor, fit the lockring. Done.
The wave design is nice, however the pads seem to be a fraction ‘fatter’ than other brands so setting the calipers up took a bit of extra ‘finesse’ to stop them rubbing.
Drivetrain
I took the cranks off and inspected the BB. Lovely and smooth so I just replaced my chainrings for the GRX originals (48/31T) I still had and fitted a new 11-34 cassette plus another KMC X11 chain. It was the second chain the cassette had seen.
I took a single link out of the chain and made some minor adjustments to the gears and it was all done.
Now I just need to save up for some GRX oval Rotor rings again @ approx £140 FFS.
Adios