Replacement bike - Aerocat R509

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was riding a new bike this season.  Sometime last fall, October I think, I put my Fuji Roubaix up on my workstand to do a little maintenance.  While cleaning around the rear cassette area, I happened to notice a weird little mark on my drive-side chainstay.  I looked a little closer and realized it wasn't a mark, it was a crack, pretty much all the way through the chainstay.  I have no idea how it happened, but I'd put a ton of hard miles on that bike in the three or four years that I owned it.

You can see the crack right through the chainstay, starting at the little drainage hole.

Another view.

As you can see, that thing is ready to snap right through.  I'm glad I saw it when I did.  If it snapped when I was on the road, that would have been big, big trouble.

I looked online to check on warranty information, and saw that Fuji offered a lifetime warranty on their frames.  All I needed was the receipt, which I couldn't find anywhere.  Fortunately, the local bike shop where I purchased it keeps a record of all that stuff, and they were able to help me out.  Unfortunately, they are no longer a Fuji dealer, so I needed to deal with Performance Bike.  They were happy to help, even though I didn't buy the bike there.  I brought them the bike, and they took care of the paperwork and all dealings with Fuji.

Although the process was fairly easy, it definitely seemed like it was going to take a while.  And I was right in the middle of my post-season (or very-early-next-season) base-building period.  I needed to be on the bike, and couldn't afford to be taking weeks off waiting for my bike to get replaced.  My Fuji was a few years old, and was more of a casual bike, not really a race bike.  So, I figured I would start looking for a replacement, and once I got the replacement Fuji, I could sell it to partly pay for the new bike.

Since I didn't have a job, I still needed to be conscious of what I was spending.  I was looking to spend about $2000, probably less.  I looked on Craigslist, but couldn't find anything.  I browsed around at a few local shops, and was thinking of either a Giant TCR Advanced, or a Giant Propel Advanced.  The TCR was more of a lightweight climbing bike, and the Propel is more of a sprinters bike.  Both seemed to be really nice bikes, but neither one exactly met exactly what I was looking for.  I really wanted to step up to a carbon frame, some higher-end components, and probably mid-compact gearing.

After thinking about it for a couple days, I happened to be on Facebook, and a teammate mentioned that he knew someone selling their old bike: a 54cm Aerocat R509, mid-compact gearing, really nice wheels, and SRAM Force components.  It sounded like exactly what I was looking for.  And it was even black and white, so it wouldn't clash with my team kit like my old red bike did!  Oh, and it fell nicely into my price range, too.

It turns out, the guy selling it was our old team mechanical a few years ago, so he took really good care of it.  I gave him a call, and went to check it out the next day.  He was a great guy, and we talked about bikes and the team quite a bit.  I got the saddle adjusted and attached my pedals, and was ready to take it for a spin.  It rode really well, but the SRAM shifting took some getting used to.  I drove away a short time later with a sweet new bike.

The new bike, out for a beautiful afternoon ride in Boulder the day after I bought it.

Since I bought the bike in mid-October, I've made a few changes:

• The front chainrings were pretty shot.  I swapped out the old SRAM 52/38 rings for Praxis 52/36.
• Replaced the chain with Shimano Dura-Ace.
• New brake pads.
• I got a bike fit which required swapping the zero-offset seatpost with my old offset seatpost from my Fuji.
• And some fresh new white bar tape for the new race season.

Overall, this bike has been a fantastic change for me.  I really love everything about it.  At this point, it's seen two races in 2015, and I've felt pretty good in both.  At some point, I really hope a photographer will get a good shot of me on the bike, but we haven't had much luck yet this year.

After about 3-4 weeks, I eventually got my replacement frame from Fuji, and finally got around to building it back up a couple months ago.  I'll talk about that in a future post.