I started by unscrewing, unbolting, disassembling and removing the old groupset. I had done a fair bit of bike maintenance before but I had never removed a bottom bracket (the crankshaft assembly). Once removed, I cleaned up the old groupset, and given that it was still perfectly operable I sold it on to another club member for use on a commuter bike:
Removing the old bottom bracket and installing the new one turned out to be not particularly difficult after all. The most time consuming part was figuring out which tools I needed to unscrew the old and screw in the new. Buying the tools and doing it myself turned out to be cheaper than paying a bike shop to do it for me! The new crankshaft is hollow and you can see right through it:
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Setting up the derailleurs was something I already had plenty of experience with and didn't present any difficulties. However, I had never cut a chain to length before. After a bit of experimentation with the highest and lowest gears I figured out how many links the chain needed to have, and I used my chain breaker tool to remove the surplus links and install it onto the bike:
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The bar wrap turned out quite nice, if I do say so myself. It's only the second time I've done it but I reckon I've learned how to do it properly. The new shifters allowed me to route the cables down the handlebars, making for a very tidy appearance:
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I took it out for it's first spin today. I carried a bunch of tools with me in case I needed to make adjustments, but it turned out not to need any. Gear shifting was perfect: positive and fast, even under power. This will now be my main bike for winter & wet-weather training, as if I'm going to slide & crash I'd rather do so with an aluminium frame than with the carbon frame of my race bike
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