My most difficult customer.

Now that I’ve formally introduced myself, you should also meet my significant other. She is very temperamental and difficult to get along with, but I love her so I have to put up with her time and time again.

When I was attending summer school in my 3rd year of college, there was a ‘goldfinger’ Waterford 1700 series track frame that was parked outside my classroom. I met the girl who had so eloquently equipped her bike with a full-Campy groupset. I was in awe and was certain that was the most beautiful track frame I had ever seen. For 2 months, I got to see this Waterford shimmer its golden skin under the warm summer sun and by the end of summer sessions, I was determined to own my own custom Waterford.

Fast forward one and a half years. It is September and I am anxiously on my way to Bicycle Odyssey to place my order for my own custom Waterford. After extensive research about what model frame I want, what each model’s proprietary tubing was and colors/feature, etc. I placed my order with Tony Tom at Bicycle Odyssey. He originally quoted me “4 months” which later turned out to be 8 months. The frameset finally arrived at the end of April and I was ecstatic.

My Waterford 2800 frameset constructed of True temper platinum OX in the rear triangle and 853 in the main triangle is my most stubborn bike. It has gone through too many transformation since a year and a half ago. I am most known for this bike because of how I’ve stubbornly put up with this bike while others had encouraged me to sell it.

The main problems:

- The chainstays are too fat, causing the crankarms to rub the stays at each rotation of the cranks.

Campy

Dura Ace

I finally did get the crankset to work with the chainstays after giving up on Campy cranks. Dura-Ace is the way to go, and you’ll see in following posts that although Campagnolo is nice, Shimano components never fail me and seem like the more practical and economical way to go about a build oftentimes. The nice thing about Dura Ace track cranks is the octalink. Many will argue that riding brake-less with octalink tends to wear out the little spindle “teeth” on the octalink spindle. I will say that that is true, ONLY IF your crankbolts are not properly tightened down. I have ran DA cranks for quite some time now and have never had any type of problem with them. For situations like mine where you have clearance issues, octalink spindles are so much easier to work with, simply because you cannot overtighten your cranks. Traditional square taper spindles allow for the crankarm taper to spread if overtightened.

My Waterford originally started out as a “Sunday rider” that I would baby and be afraid to get it scratched. A friend once told me that since it is my custom frame that it should be the frame that I ride the most. This made a lot of sense to me, so as of right now, the Waterford and Bridgestone are my daily riders.