Testing old crap the bikes of yesteryear is a risky endeavor:
This is true whether the bike is a 1916 Mead Ranger, or a 2003 LeMond Tete de Course:
I was reminded of this when, on a recent ride, I noticed a wiggly sensation in my right pedal:
At first I thought my cleat was worn or something, but when I finally stopped to investigate I discovered I’d loosened the threaded insert in the crankarm with my massive power output:
Following Old Crap Test Pilot protocol, I lit flares and called for support, and within 15 minutes a chopper arrived and airlifted me to safety:
Just kidding:
I was able to ride it home, it was fine.
As I have what some might consider “too many” road bikes at the moment, I decided this was a sign that I should finally box up the LeMond and return it Classic Cycle. So I took the bike outside and hosed it down. Then I retrieved the box it had arrived in and got ready to pack it up. I laid out all the protective foam and the bubble wrap. I looked at the bike. I looked at the box. Then I looked at the bike again.
And I just couldn’t do it.
What can I say? Despite my affinity for steel bicycles I’ve been seduced by this delightfully decadent vélo de dentiste and I’m not yet ready to give it up. Indeed, I’m still sad about the Litespeed, and the LeMond is sort of like it came back in to me in a lighter, more spectral form and I was able to feel its gentle caress once more:
Its touch is so gentle it can only be measured in DFUs:
[BKJimmy]
So instead of boxing it up I re-installed the backup crank:
As always I used plenty of Dumonde Tech lube, and here’s some gratuitous product placement:
It’s great stuff and it rhymes with the bike!
As for why I like the bike so much, it’s hard to say. Is it the delicate dance of the carbon and titanium? Is it the biting-into-a-baby-carrot crispness of the Dura-Ace 7700 shifters? Or is it the fabled LeMond geometry?
[PDF]
As a Rivendell rider I’m certainly a believer in the power of long chainstays, but the “slightly longer” chainstays on the LeMond are exactly three (3) millimeters longer than the ones on the Litespeed, so I can’t imagine it’s making a huge difference here, let alone the determining factor in keeping you fresh at the end of a Tour de France stage. Here’s some more on the LeMond geometry:
Again, I’m not sure the 72.5 degree seat tube angle on the LeMond versus the 73 degree angle on the Litespeed is in any way detectable by the human scranus, or that it even means anything when you take into account the fore and aft adjustment range of the saddle (or put a zero-setback seatpost on it):
Then again, I do love the bike–at least as much as the Litespeed, and maybe more–so perhaps Crabon + Titanium + Three Extra Millimeters of Chainstay = Scranial Bliss. And despite being quite an exotic bike for its time, there’s absolutely nothing proprietary about it, and in that sense it’s classic in spirit:
It even has a normal threadless headset, and the “custom LeMond headset” they refer to was a feature on the all-titanium Victoire:
I suspect this could be the last time we’ll see a major American bicycle company throw this much into a road bike–and it’s definitely the last time a major American bicycle company will have a dedicated titanium production facility in it (all while also making bikes themselves out of crabon, aluminum, and steel). Trek in 2003 was basically Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and they were so flush thanks to Lance Armstrong’s success they could open their own private Moots on a whim. No matter what you may think of it, we shall never see its like from a mainstream bike company again:
It’s truly the Great American Dentist Bike.
