The Via Nirone 7 is Dead - Long Live the Via Nirone 7!

About 3 months ago I ventured out of the boundaries of Chester and visited the very friendly folks at Eureka Cycles in what was, at the time, their brand new location.  The idea was to have a bike fitting and see if adjustments to the bike would easy the occasional lower back pain, frequent knee pain and the seeming inevitable pain between the shoulders.

They have a rig that measures an amazing number of parameters such as inside leg, shoulder width, torso width, torso length, reach (both arms separately) etc. etc.  That's then all pumped into a computer program along with the style of riding you're aiming for (mid-long distance sportives translate to sport endurance).  The program then prints a bike frame with a vast array of measures such as top tube length, stem height, bar width, saddle height, crank length, saddle position fore and aft, distance from saddle centre to bars (including stem length) etc. etc.

So we compare this against the Via Nirone and discover that I have the saddle height set within 5 mm of the recommendation and that the bars are within 2 mm of being the correct width.  From there it all goes a bit wrong.  Basically, although the 53cm semi-compact frame is big enough to provide correct saddle height, its woefully short in top tube length.  This is bad news!  We um and ah a bit (I'm sure Eureka would love to have sold me a shiny new Orbea or similar at this point!), but that's not currently an option.  I leave with a 120 mm stem with adjustable inclination.  It looks clunky and is pretty heavy, but we agreed that it would be good to give a few tweaks a try before buying a fixed stem.  We also made a significant adjustment in the position of the cleats on my shoes.

So that was the config I rode with for the Sportive out of Builth Wells noted below and the comfort was a major improvement.  Despite the amount of climbing involved, there were no lower back problems and the shoulder stiffness took a good bit longer to kick in.  And, importantly, no knee pains at all.  So based on that, I purchased a 130mm stem with a 10 degree rise (standard is 6mm) and put as many spacers as possible in underneath.  This was the config for the 100 mile sportive that I got through reasonably comfortably - no back pain, no knee pain, but still stiff across the shoulders.  So given the spend involved, pretty good improvements really.

So using the (some would say very bad for you!) helpful alerting system on ebay I've been watching out for frame options coming along at a reasonable price.  Lo and behold, last week a Alu Carbon via Nirone 7 came up only about 40 miles from home and it was a very similar spec to my existing bike but crucially has the 55 cm frame - one size up.  Won the auction for a reasonable amount and picked up the bike on Friday night last week.  It's not got such a high spec as my existing via Nirone and has done a few more miles.  Frame's in excellent condition though.

So set to it over the weekend and about 6-7 hours work has seen a complete strip down and rebuild of both bikes with every single component swapped over with the exception of the new frame's bottom bracket which was past its best.  So a new Campag BB has gone in too.  This means 2 complete via Nirones with the new one resplendent with its Xero wheels, later Bianchi X-Vid Carbon forks, carbon seat post and Pave etc. etc. are sat in the garage.  I have a couple of stems to work with on the new bike but already I have exactly correct measurements for saddle height, saddle fore and aft position and the reach from saddle centre to bars is now within 10mm or so of being per the computer recommendation (previously it was 110mm short!).

So now we'll have to see how it feels on the road - hoping for some good weather to find out next week.  And the smaller framed version will be up on eBay soon - hopefully all this can be achieved at virtually zero cost!  Fingers crossed.