Personal Project
This old work horse has been running for well over a decade. It originally belonged to my brother, but when he bought a new bike this fell into my hands. I have done some subtle upgrades here and there over the time I have had the bike but for the most part this is stock. It came from the factory with a very nice frames, tripled butt welded aluminium frame with a CFRP fork. By today’s standards its perhaps somewhat old fashioned in design, its made primarily as a compromise between stiffness and weight reduction, whereas a lot of new bikes have areas designed to flex for comfort. So they will have a reasonable amount of flex in the vertical axis, and a lot of rigidity in the horizontal axis to enable efficient power delivery.
That said, the rest of the bike is where Merida cut their costs. This is very common on mid range bikes, they will either give you a good frame and cheap parts, or they will give you a set level of parts, and make some short cuts on the frame. The former is definitely the preferred option, you can always upgrade parts in your own time, but there is not much you can do to upgrade the frame. The most common area to really save money on parts for manufacturers is the wheels. Therefore the wheels were the first thing I replaced. I did initially service the bearings, and found all sorts of treasures in there including quite a lot of hair from my brother’s cat Jack! That got me a few extra years of life out of the stock wheels. But after I fitted the new wheels I really wish I had done it sooner. The difference is incredible, they are more comfortable, more efficent at deliving power and most importantly, they look beautiful!
The ones I went for are Campagnolo asymetric wheels, so the front has fewer spokes than the rear. With this done, and several more years of enjoying this setup I started thinking about the rest of the bike. The next more important investment is contact points, so anywhere you are touching the bike. My brother had already put a really nice saddle on the bike that I was happy with. So I set about changing the tape, I went for a blue foam tape from sram. This fits well into my colour scheme which comes from both the original frame colours, and my new livery, the Icelandic crest.
I also added some road pedals that interface with the bottom of my cycling shoes. Now, with contact points sorted, I set about changing some of the other components. This really started with the crank falling off my bike once on the way to work. This was a shame because as it came off, it rounded the square tapered fitting on the spindle that runs through the bottom bracket of the bike. I did replace the bottom bracket, but it always seemed to me to be a mistake. I would always rather upgrade than replace where possible. So I saved up and bought a full Tiagra groupset with shifters, deraileurs, gears, chainset, brakes and bottom bracket all included. This was effectivly major open heart surgery for the poor old Merida. But the final result was amazing.
For those who do not know, Shimano offer a range of components that are grouped into a hiarachy, starting with Claris, Sora, Tiagra, 105, Ultergra, and Dura Ace. Claris being entry level, Tiagra and 105 are mid range, and Dura Ace is for real pros. What was on the bike originally was Sunrace, which is a fairly solid, but low cost Tiawanese manufacturer of bike parts. They had held up nicely, but what you get with a midrange setup is much more precise and smooth shifting. The process was not without some difficultly. The most troubling issue was that the diameter of the bolt for the front brake was slightly too large for the hole on the bike. So I unfortunatly had to drill out the hole a bit, which was not a comfortable experience, there is no going back from something like that. The other issue was the nut/bolt was too short for the front brake. To fix this, I bought a new nut that fits better, and I now have more than 4 threads of engagement, with a bit of locktite that seems to be rock solid. The final version of this bike is now a very capable road bike, comfortable, nice to use and as always, most importantly, it looks brilliant!
