Rose X-Lite 4 105

arlowood

Had flagged up my decision to order one of these in the Rose Owners thread. Well it finally arrived late Friday afternoon. Ordered 17th Oct - assembled 25th Oct and shipped 29th Oct. Arrived Friday 2nd Nov late afternoon. Spent a bit of time yesterday unboxing and re-positioning the bars and fitting the front wheel. Rear indexing needed a tweak and I had to add some tension to the FD cable to get it to shift to the big ring - otherwise pretty straightforward.



Specification is the Rose X-Lite 4 carbon frame and forks. I chose the grey/fluoro yellow rather than the black just for a change - all my recent bikes for the past 5 years have been black.

Gearing is Shimano 105 7000 with compact chainset (50/34) and 11-32 rear cassette.
Finishing kit includes Ritchey Evo-Curve bars, Ritchey WCS 90mm stem, Ritchey WCS Carbon Link Flexlogic Seatpost and Selle Italia SLR Flow saddle.

Wheels are DT Swiss P1750 Spline shod with Schwalbe Pro One 28mm tyres

Have not ridden it yet as I'm having a bit of a nightmare with the front wheel. In order to fit it yesterday I had to deflate it a bit to get the tyre through the brake blocks. Re-inflated it but when I came to fit the pedals today the front was flat. Removed the inner tube and found a sizeable hole not far from the valve and in line with one of the spokes. Checked for debris or roughness but found nothing. Fitted a new inner tube and that was holed again but I thought that was my fault - possibly pinching it with a lever when installing. Fitted another inner and inflated and this seemed to go OK - but again after maybe 5 mins the tyre was flat. No more new tubes available until I visit the LBS and I only have a very old puncture kit that I don't trust to still be effective. Think I'll have to strip the tyre completely off the rim and give it a thorough inspection.

So all-in-all I'm well pleased with the look of the bike. Will get it weighed soon and post the result. Also I'll update on the ride experience once I can solve the front wheel issue

KoenM

What's the weight if I may ask, i'm interested what the weight difference is between a 6 and a 4.

supermurph09

This all sounds odd, if you can't get the wheel to fit how did they test it? I'm assuming you've opened up the lever? Indexing would have annoyed me as that should be sorted too. Looks nice though, I'm sure it'll be great once you get going.

arlowood

KoenM wrote:

What's the weight if I may ask, i'm interested what the weight difference is between a 6 and a 4.

Just done a rough check using the old bathroom scales technique (ie weigh while holding bike and subtract weight without bike). Comes to 9.7kg as supplied without pedals. Not sure what the DT Swiss P1750 wheels weigh as they are OEM and I'm not sure what the equivalent commercially available wheels are. Probably room to shave some weight in that area but I'm not in weight weenie mode at the moment.

One thing I am pleased about is the clearance with the 28mm tyres fitted. Looks to be plenty of room from the pic below of the rear wheel/brake interface



Once I get the front wheel sorted I'll post a pic of the clearance there

Supermurph09 wrote:

This all sounds odd, if you can't get the wheel to fit how did they test it? I'm assuming you've opened up the lever? Indexing would have annoyed me as that should be sorted too. Looks nice though, I'm sure it'll be great once you get going.

Hi there

Just to explain - the bike was shipped boxed with the front wheel removed and the tyre fully inflated. Even with the brake cam lever in the "open" position it proved very difficult to get the fully inflated tyre through the brake blocks so I opened the valve to release some air but was a bit heavy handed and allowed the tyre to fully deflate. I then re-inflated the tyre and left the bike overnight. Tyre was flat and the inner tube had been punctured quite badly when I inspected it after removal.

The indexing issue was a bit of a niggle and may well have caused problems for a newbie. I had to source a YouTube video to get the correct tensioning procedure for the front mech since the FD 7000 now resembles the new design introduced to the R8000 groupset. I will be flagging this up to my contact at Rose along with the front inner tube issue once I have been able to fully inspect the tyre and rim.

diamonddog

9.7 kg :shock: :shock: nothing like the approx. 7kg quoted on the Rose site. The site quotes 1585g for the wheels but that could be way off if your bike weight is correct.
Really like that colour, looking at the Force option but if the weight you quote is right then it’s a no go.

arlowood

diamonddog wrote:

9.7 kg :shock: :shock: nothing like the approx. 7kg quoted on the Rose site. The site quotes 1585g for the wheels but that could be way off if your bike weight is correct.
Really like that colour, looking at the Force option but if the weight you quote is right then it’s a no go.

As I said the weight is a rough one using our bathroom scales and I'm not convinced of the accuracy or confident that my weighing technique is reliable. I'll try to get hold some suspension scales or an alternative that doesn't involve me holding the bike in the process

diamonddog

It does seem a bit heavy, my Sm. Canyon CF SL with Force has a heavier frame and comes in under the quoted weight for a Medium CF SL (6.86kg ) so I would think your a bit out with your weighing. Still like the look of your bike though, enjoy it.

arlowood

diamonddog wrote:

It does seem a bit heavy, my Sm. Canyon CF SL with Force has a heavier frame and comes in under the quoted weight for a Medium CF SL (6.86kg ) so I would think your a bit out with your weighing. Still like the look of your bike though, enjoy it.

OK - panic over. Managed to get hold of some luggage scales and re-weighed the bike. Came to bang on 7kg with pedals fitted. Pedals weigh about 270g so the delivered weight should be close to 6.75kg. Hope that allays your fears.

Also managed to get a new inner tube fitted to the front wheel that seems to be holding pressure. Will check tomorrow. One thing I have to say is that having removed and fitted the tyre 4 times it's not something I would like to struggle with out in the wilds of nowhere on a cold winter's day. I'm guessing that some of the earlier failures were just my bad technique - probably nipping the inner tube when wrestling with the last bit of the tyre. Does not explain the initial failure tho but I'll just put that down to a malevolent P-fairy.

The DT Swiss/Schwalbe Pro One combo is a little tight for my liking but I'll put up with it until new tyres are called for

diamonddog

Cheers for that, it is now back on my list.

plodder73

You need new bathroom scales, you are probably two stone lighter than you think you are!
I'm looking at the disc version, probably in this colour, your 9.7kg put me right off!

arlowood

Now that I've got the front tyre sorted I have taken a couple of pics to illustrate the clearance at the front with the 28mm Schwalbe Pro One fitted. Firstly looking from the front:-



then from the rear of the front fork



I'm pretty happy with that. May even just squeeze some Cruds on there if the need ever arose. However I'm only planning this as a fair weather bike so the mudguard issue is moot.

The area where the clearance appears tightest is between the rear wheel and the bottom end of the seat tube.



But as you can see the seat tube is deliberately scalloped to help with tyre clearance I guess.

Still waiting for the right opportunity to get my initial trial ride organised. Foul weather and a list of jobs from SWMBO have intervened up til now

ledeev

I really like the colour of your frame. How does the seatpin clamp work?

arlowood

Ledeev wrote:

I really like the colour of your frame. How does the seatpin clamp work?

Yes - I think the colour sets it apart from the plethora of stealth black offerings out there.The fluoro yellow detailing might be not be to everyone's taste by I quite like it. I have to confess that I've been a black frame follower myself over the past 4 years but I thought it was time for a change.

The seatpin clamp is a bit quirky with the clamping bolt being positioned on the underside of the top tube close to where it joins the seat tube. The actual clamp itself is housed in that triangular area at the junction of the top tube and seat tube. The clamping force is provided by a movable jaw/shoe that forms the top 5cms or so of the seat tube and is profiled to the shape of the the seat pin. The clamp bolt must then act on a cam or wedge to force the jaw/shoe onto the seatpin.

Accessing the clamp bolt is a bit fiddly since you can't see the head of the bolt unless you're a bit of a contortionist. Once you've set the saddle height tho' it's not something you need to fettle on a regular basis

arlowood

Took advantage of the favourable weather today to put the first serious miles on the new bike. Did a short 10 mile circuit close to home with a mix of flat and undulating terrain and a couple of medium climbs.

First impressions are great. Very smooth and comfortable - helped no doubt by the 28mm Schwalbe Pro One's. My old PX Pro Carbon also has 28mm tyres fitted but the Rose X-Lite seemed less jittery over broken surfaces that the PX. The bike also seemed easier to get up to and maintain speed but that might just be the "newbie" effect. Will probably need a fair few more miles to support or refute that impression. Weight for weight the Rose is around 1.5kg lighter than the PX so that could account for some of that effect.

One thing I was not expecting was the noise from the DT Swiss freehub. It's like an angry bee in a bottle when freewheeling. Had a set of disc wheels built on Hope Pro4 hubs a year or so back and they were supposed to be loud but the DT Swiss knock the Hopes into a cocked hat. It's not a major issue but something I'll get used to in time. My PX has some handbuilts with Archetype rims on Miche hubs and they are silent as the grave. I may switch them over for a trial period just for interests sake.

Can't really judge whether I will get on with the Selle Italia SLR Flow saddle on today's short outing. Been riding a FIzik Arione on my PX for the last 2 years and I'm happy with that so in the long run it may end up on the Rose although the Black/Red colourway might clash.

Waiting now for a weather window to put in some serious miles.

avanzato

I've got an X-Lite 4 Disc with Ultegra di2. That was 7.2Kg before pedals.

redvision

Love the colour scheme! Looks a cracker of a bike. Congrats and enjoy riding it!

arlowood

redvision wrote:

Love the colour scheme! Looks a cracker of a bike. Congrats and enjoy riding it!

Cheers.

Hopefully will get some more miles in shortly. Recovering from a hernia op currently. Also I'm wary of riding when the temperature is hovering around zero degrees. Came off on black ice just over a year ago - no major injuries but plenty of bruising and muscle damage. Don't want to repeat that recovery scenario in a hurry.

Have purchased a new chain and cassette so that I can swap the Archetype/Miche wheelset from my PX Pro Carbon to the Rose just for comparison purposes. I have some new 28mm Michelin Pro4 Endurance that I'll fit at the same time to see how things feel compared to the DT Swiss wheels/ Schwalbe Pro One tyres that came with the bike.

arlowood

OK - finally got round to completing the rejig of my X-Lite 4.

Swapped out the DT Swiss P1750 wheels for my Archetype/Miche handbuilts from my previous build, shod with some new Micheling Pro4 Endurance 28mm tyres. Have done a few rides on them and I prefer the feel of them so they will be staying. Probably a couple of hundred grams heavier than the DT Swiss but I'm not too fussed about that. Also swapped out the Selle Italia SMP Flow for the Fizik Arione from my Pro Carbon build as I wasn't feeling the love for the Selle Italia.



Some might balk at the red saddle but it will mostly by under my rear end and I'm comfortable with it.

I was also slightly concerned about the tyre clearances as the MIchelins are renowned for coming up larger than the stated size. Pics below show however that there's plenty of room.

Rear brake bridge:-


Seat tube area:-


Front brake/fork area



Hopefully now that spring is in the air, I'll be able to get some more miles in. The few I've done, however, confirm that the X-Lite 4 was a great acquisition