Upgraded To Shimano 105

I’m a little late posting this one.

About a month ago I made the decision to upgrade most of the components on the bike. I’m still riding the stock entry level Specialized Allez I bought back in 2019.

The only changes I had made were:

• To add two bottle cages
• ‘Upgrade’ the tubes and tyres as they had either worn out of punctured,
• And most significantly (and costly), switched to using the Favero Assioma Duo pedals.

Everything else remained as it was the day I bought the bike.

And yes, that included the bar tape 🤮

You’re going to have to excuse the obvious underpants, cheapo bib shorts, ancient desktop PC I use as a table, and kids wallpaper and whatever else you don’t like in these photos 😀

What happened to trigger all this was that I was out on my last outdoor ride (of what will probably be the year, for 2023) when I suffered a snap in the gear cable that controlled the rear cassette.

I’ve had that once before, so I wasn’t too worried. I managed to grind it home in the hardest gear, and then went to call the bike mechanic I had always used.

Unfortunately he had gone out of business 😮‍💨

Amazingly, or at least amazing to me, I managed to find a really great bike mechanic on facebook. I don’t actually use facebook, so for me this was basically as a result of a Google search.

If you’re in the Preston / Lancashire area, I would highly recommend Rob Conroy.

Initially Rob came out to my house the very next day and fixed the gear cable on site. That was good enough to get me back up and rolling, ready for a Zwift race that very same day. Great stuff, and a solid road test of the fix.

Post ride sweaty bike shot there, including sweat stained curtain. The grim realities of my cycling experience.

In the discussion with Rob after the on-site repair, he flagged a bunch of things that were pretty urgently in need of maintenance.

Rob gave me several options to get things serviced and sorted, and after hearing them and the prices, I asked about maybe ripping out everything and sticking on the Shimano 105 components instead.

I decided to go with the upgrade to 105.

Later that day Rob sent through an estimate:

Along with what he called “cheap and cheerful” bar tape 😀 and replacing the headset bearing, as the steering was also becoming incredibly ‘grindy’, as though sand were trapped in the turning mechanism somehow.

I’ve deliberately kept the exactly prices off things. Happy to share privately if anyone is interested. I will say the full thing was in the region of £500 including labour.

I needed to make one extra amend to that, which was to add a second cassette to match the new one, so I could continue to ride indoors and out on the same hardware.

The bike was then booked in for the work a couple of week’s later.

Here’s a couple of other disgusting shots from how it looked before:

Clearly the bike hadn’t been washed at this point, but you can see how gross the chain was looking.

If it wasn’t particularly evident from the above, this next one makes me feel dirty:

The problem here is that I’d used Muc Off Wet Lube, and it absolutely gunked up everything.

Previously I have only used the Muc Off Dry Lube, which wasn’t anything like as greasy.

Anyway, that’s the ‘before’ shots.

Now on to the ‘afters’.

After The Upgrade

It’s been about a week or so now, and I have been meaning to do this post but for several reasons I haven’t had time to get to it.

I took these pictures immediately after receiving the bike back, before I’d even ridden it.

I still haven’t taken it outdoors yet. And the likelyhood is that I won’t be doing until early next year. There’s various reasons for that, but right now I’m happiest on the turbo.

Excuse the horrible doors, they are ‘original’ from when we moved in, and I hate them.

Most evident to the touch, although maybe not from the shots is the way the bars and shifters feel.

The new tape feels thinner somehow, which is actually nicer. My grip around the bars feels slightly better. It’s marginal, but it’s definitely an improvement.

Then the shifter hoods are quite different altogether. Again, thinner, and somehow slightly more refined, more ergonomic.

Shinier, too.

The brakes were also changed out:

As I haven’t yet been outdoors, these only have had an ‘indoor’ test. The levers feel thinner, but I can’t comment beyond that.

Rob did note that my previous pads were practically worn out. Good times.

The chain ring didn’t look massively different at first glance. It took me a while to realise the pedal stems(?), not sure of the names of them, the axle thing (also no idea of the name) and the front derailer had all changed.

Then a few days later I just happened to notice how different the chain ring looks from the opposite side. Sculptured. That big mess of bubbles is, I think, some kind of frame corrosion. That was obviously already there, I didn’t pay to add that.

What I can say is that the shifting between the big and little ring now is insane. It’s not only lighting quick, it works with a standard push. Previously I would have had to properly yank the lever to get back from the little to the big ring. Very dangerous outdoors, as I would often have to use my right hand to pull the left lever. Nuts.

The most immediately noticeable thing when I received the bike was the shiny new cassette.

I’d thankfully forgotten how disgusting the old one was, though the photo above brought it all back.

I didn’t actually realise the whole rear derailer was new until I took the back wheel off to get the bike on the turbo.

The second picture above is prior to me having to reseat that cassette about five times before I finally nailed it. In that time I also decided to fully clean the fly wheel so it doesn’t look quite as grim anymore. I even hoovered out the little dust vents.

Oh, and the other replacement cassette, prior to me installing it:

Lastly, here is everything that was changed:

I’ve yet again no doubt missed something from this that will come back to me later.

I guess the only sad part is I’m still on rim brakes. But yeah, can’t complain about that as it would have started to get silly if I’d needed to change my wheels also.

Overall a solid upgrade, and a job really well done. Super happy.