Cervélo Soloist Carbon Ultegra R8000

Hello all,

I've finally built my bike up so I thought I'd share it with you.

So the story goes, I got into road cycling just under two years ago, I started out just by simply borrowing a friend's Btwin bike & pretty much instantly I was hooked & started riding to work, one day riding to work I saw a Bianchi go the other way, I didn't even know what a bianchi was at the time, but I knew I loved the colour and had to find out what this beautiful celeste bike was, then I found out the price of them and it went to the back of my mind as a dream bike as even 2nd hand ones were still really expensive, then in the summer watching team GB on the velodrome on Cervélo bikes, I drew my attention to them, I fell in love with the S3 and still would really like one, so I went to eBay and eventually stumbled across my first soloist, £500 with full Dura ace group set, even at this point I wasn't too clued up about it, but I knew dura ace was the best, however the bike was old as were the group set & it was a 58cm frame.

However because the original btwin was a 57cm frame I thought I could just lower the seat a bit ect and it would be fine.
And it was for a while, I even had a professional bike fit to get the most of out it and it was great, but I always knew it was a bit big for me, so I'd often look for a 56cm frame on eBay with not much luck, but I loved the bike so I wasn't too bothered.

Here's a picture of my original bike and pretty much how I bought it minus the wheels and bottle cages.



Fast forward a bit and upon washing the bike I found some small spiderweb like cracks around the head tube.
I still don't know if the cracks were in the carbon or just in the paint, but it meant I had to find a new frame, so daily searching the web for a new frame, I loved my bike so I wanted to keep the same frame but ideally in a 56cm frame, but being built in 2008 there aren't too many around anymore, but as luck would have it, one day on eBay I found one and it looked mint & it was fairly local!

So I went and bought it £300 I think it was in the end, for just the bare frame, no forks, seat post ect. Not that this mattered because I could and did just use the ones from my original bike.

Then winter came and I still needed to get to work, so I used a marker pen and put small marks on the cracked frame so I could monitor it and see if it got any worse.

All the while the new frame was gathering dust, I could have just taken the groupset from my cracked bike and used that but it was old and getting a bit tired, so I wanted to build a best bike, so I started collecting new parts for it, deciding between Ultegra 6800, DA 8900 & then out came Ultegra R8000 and Dura Ace 9100, I really wanted the newest Dura ace as I already had DA, but money I just couldn't afford it, it was so much more expensive than the R8000, so that's what I settled with.

Here's a picture of the frame with eventually all of the collected parts, I basically had to buy a component a month to spread the cost out. I'm also using a C-bear ceramic bottom bracket, because I saw a pro bike was using one.


I also loved the look of the gold chains that some of the top spec bikes out there have so I had to get one of those as well.

So now I've got all of the parts and everything I need but the weather is still pants and I've only got the one bike so I didn't want to build this bike up with all of these brand new components and ruin it with all the winter grit, even though now really that's what I'm doing. :roll:

So I got a really good deal from a friend who works at the lbs and he built it all up for me and I'm in love, I'm so happy with the way it's come out and how it rides now.

This is it all built up.


Building your own bike, means you can build it to your own spec, which is why I'm using a 52-36 front chainring and 34-11 on the back, 34! and it's awesome.




So I'm back to riding to work every day and loving it, everything on the bike just feels great and super smooth.

All that left for future plans for it, is a new black saddle, probably a Fiz:ik item, new black pedals and most importantly another bike fit, as this frame is smaller than my last one, so just needs a bit of fettling and that stem slammed.

So I'll finish this off with just one or two more pictures of it.




best image hosting site


best image hosting site


best image hosting site

Thanks for reading.