Finally got me a vendetta !!

Layne

Active Member
Just a bit of history.. I started riding about 4 years ago ... I'm 41 years old and really never did much cycling, even growing up ... so I really needed to lose some weight and get fit .... I went on a ride with some friends one evening and one had a rans f5 I believe it was that he let me ride :) I was pretty much hooked from the start ... at that point I went to ridesouth recumbents and bought a catrike 700 ... I rode it for probably 1000 miles , by this time I'm getting fitter and losing weight:) .. and I wanted to go faster !!! So I ordered a metaphysic...this was a fast bike but had some serious flaws !! "Sorry metabikes !" It had hard heel/tire interference and a wicked harsh ride ! But it was fast ! Since my normal home rides are on rough chip seal I tried to get the meta toned down but even a 32c rear tire wasn't really enough .... so moving on because the meta was so rough I started riding my daughters hybrid df ..... yea could feel that first 12 miles for nearly a week ! Anyway I ended up getting a trek madone 3.1 and ended up riding my longest ever ride on it :) 125 miles ! But I still was intrigued by the recumbents for comfort and speed ... so I sold the meta by this time and went to ride south again and bought a bachetta corsa 700.
Boy I never got comfortable on it ! For one thing the seat height was to high for me and this was also the case with the meta .... I'm 5-9 or so with 42.5 x seam .... so I couldn't put my feet down decently i.e. Tiptoes on the ground .. when stopped .. so I sold it and ended up back with a df ...

Now to cruzbike story :) on that first ever ride when I rode the rans one of the guys there had one of the first or second generation Silvio ... I thot it looked so cool and was something I never forgot ! But ..... I had heard that they were hard to ride :(
So now since I had went through a selection of rwd recumbents I found an s30 for sale fairly close to me :) so I went and got it to see if I could ride it .... well for me it was no problem .. to be sure the pedal steer took some getting used to! But now I like the feeling of it ! Anyway it was pretty fast and much better design:) i.e. No heel interference, and lower to the ground ! But I really wanted the vendetta :) so I put the Silvio on this forum and sold it :)

Well now for my vendetta:). I received my frame set Friday afternoon and I put it together Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.. i used a Cobb 155 crankset Fsa brakes and dura ace di2 shifters and deraileurs ... this bike is awesome !! Finished build was 23.4 pounds ! I do have the cruzbike headrest bottle holders to be mounted yet so it my go up just abit :)

So got it finished up yesterday and went on a ride :) 31 miles with some friends :) wow this thing is really fast.....and climbs as good or better to me that the Silvio ... the cruzbike/ mbb is the way to go !
 

DavidCH

In thought; expanding the paradigm of traversity
Layne,

Let the fun begin. Awesome bike. Just totally into it right now.

Did you have any issues with the Di2, were you able to run the cables inside the frame?
 

Rick Youngblood

CarbonCraft Master
Congrats Layne and welcome. Your story is very similar to mine, only I when I transitioned from Catrike 700 to two wheels I stayed away from df's and went with a Corsa 650. The heal and toe strike is standard issue with pretty much most rwd recumbent, and is just one of the many benefits of Cruzbikes fwd solution. I also rode a Metabike before switching to Cruzbike, the harsh ride was/is a common complaint, even the non suspended Vendetta has a much more forgiving ride.

I got a hint that you had a happy smile :) on your face when you wrote your story.
 

Lief

Guru Schmuru
Congrats Layne! Quite the story.
Do to think that hearing "they are hard to ride" is what kept you from going with the Cruzbike in the first place? Or was it more complicated than that?
 

Layne

Active Member
Congrats Layne! Quite the story.
Do to think that hearing "they are hard to ride" is what kept you from going with the Cruzbike in the first place? Or was it more complicated than that?

That and they aren't cheap... the corsa was $2000 less than a complete Silvio or vendetta.... not complaining just saying :)
 

Layne

Active Member
Layne,

Let the fun begin. Awesome bike. Just totally into it right now.

Did you have any issues with the Di2, were you able to run the cables inside the frame?

Some issues !! I had di2 on a sworks venge that I used on the v .. so I had to take it off the venge first .. I put the junction and battery ect in the boom this v20 boom has a hole on the bottom side of the boom right behind the bb so I brought derailleur wires out there ....

Red etap would have been so much easier !!
 

ReklinedRider

Zen MBB Master
Still gotta love RideSouth, one of the best recumbent shops in the country, in little old Flowood Mississippi, gotta love Jim and Lane Snider, I still send people there on a regular basis, but I'm also still trying to make headway on eliminating their anti-Cruzbike bias!
Betsy (@castlerobber) and I could use some reinforcements so Layne if you ever get down this way let us know and we'll ride!
(Still drooling over etap too by the way!)
 

Layne

Active Member
Still gotta love RideSouth, one of the best recumbent shops in the country, in little old Flowood Mississippi, gotta love Jim and Lane Snider, I still send people there on a regular basis, but I'm also still trying to make headway on eliminating their anti-Cruzbike bias!
Betsy (@castlerobber) and I could use some reinforcements so Layne if you ever get down this way let us know and we'll ride!
(Still drooling over etap too by the way!)


Yes ridesouth is top notch ...
 

castlerobber

Zen MBB Master
Betsy (@castlerobber) and I could use some reinforcements so Layne if you ever get down this way let us know and we'll ride!
@Layne -- absolutely! Reinforcements would be most welcome.

I can relate to a lot of your story as well. I started the recumbent adventure on tadpole trikes 10 years ago, after advancing from MTB, to hybrid, to road bike over the preceding 15 years. Continued riding the road bike some, since the TerraTrikes weren't exactly speedy. I'd seen Cruzbikes on BROL--the small-wheeled Quest looked manageable for my inseam/x-seam, though I was sure I'd never be able to handle a Silvio or Vendetta--but the hype about "hard to ride" put me off. Stick-bike highracers left me cold, as did LWB recumbents, so I figured I'd never have a two-wheeled 'bent. o_O A combination of increased work hours when my husband retired in 2011, and boredom with my < 10 mph pace on the TT Race, cut my total riding to just a few hundred miles a year for the next few years. :(

I finally decided to sell both trikes and replace them with a faster one from RideSouth, maybe a Catrike or Greenspeed. In the process of researching trikes, I stumbled over reviews of that little orange Quest again...and Cruzbike was having a 15% off sale on it...and there was a 30-day return window if I couldn't learn to ride it...and so I began Cruzbiking. :D Imagine my surprise when a coworker and her husband, both avid cyclists, told me they knew someone else with a bike like mine--not just a recumbent, but "one of those front-wheel-drive things." :eek:Which is how @ReklinedRider and I became acquainted. Months later, I was finally brave enough to try out his Silvio 1.5, and soon bought the frameset from him. :cool:

With a couple of thousand miles on the Silvio 1.5, and another thousand on the Q (my trail and winter bike), I can feel the upgrade bug coming on. Not for the V, but for the latest S30, with the 33-degree seat. Holding it off as long as I can...
 

Layne

Active Member
I tried to upload one but the forum says it's too big .. anybody have a solution for resizing on the iPhone ?
 
Top