I just built up a Cervelo p3c as a fixed gear TT bike. The one thing I have been considering but haven’t decided on is whether to remove the front derailleur hanger or leave it be.
Obviously it would look cleaner removed IF the frame looks cleanly painted underneath it (anyone who has done this, what does it look like?). I would be drilling out the rivets, which makes me nervous about the drill slipping, but I’m pretty careful.
So ST, should I do it? Is it worth significant wattage? Will it look terrible?
One thing I am not worried about if I go forward is wanting the hanger back later. Even if I rebuilt it with multiple gears, it would certainly be 1x even if I leave the hanger. 20+years of fixed gear riding has made me quite comfortable with 1x and I’ll almost certainly go 1x on any future road or TT build I do.
Been 1x on my p3c pretty much since I got it. Converted it before I knew as much about bikes so had a shop do it and they were willing to drill out the rivets for me. If you’re never going to go back to anything other than 1x anyways, no reason not to go all the way now!
So I’ve never actually owned a proper road bike, which means this feels great! I don’t have any problem getting the saddle into a proper position, but I also probably naturally ride more forward since I spend so much time on my tri bike. The cockpit is a bit low with the slammed fork but I swapped the stem to something with a bit more rise and it works fine, just a pretty aggressive position. I really like it. Only downside of this specific frame is the limited tire clearance in the back but that’s not a game changer. And I guess the one bottle cage on the downtube thing, but I just still run a single cage ziptied under the saddle.
i guess my real limiter would be having only 1 bottle cage on the frame.
Here you go! My wife and I love these double bottle mounts from Lyne Components. No affiliation. She uses one on her Cervelo P5
How did the paint under the hanger look before sanding it all off? I’m definitely not planning a repaint as I kind of love the 2008 CSC red/black/silver livery and the paint is in excellent shape.
The small holes I think I can tolerate (already have the derailleur cable holes and rear brake holes to fill in or ignore ), but I’d hate to end up with a big derailleur hanger shaped patch of bad paint.
I too have seen others say they read that here… so I’ve read it here as well (as hearsay). I’m dubious (how would one measure that?) and have never seen actual data.
It’s a pretty noticeable patch if you just leave it as is. At least on my white p3 it was. I didn’t put a lot of effort into covering it. Literally just some random white paint I had lying around but it does the job well enough from a distance. May be harder to hide with yours though.
Edit: here’s an old picture from before any touch ups.
My hanger took some effort to come out. After having removed the rivets, the hanger was still stuck on the frame so it was not very pretty underneath when I took it off. Some paint and coating went off with it.
Ask yourself how much it would bother you to lose by a couple seconds or just miss a goal time by a second. I can think of plenty of times I needed every second I saved so I haven’t had a hanger for years.
For frames that had a riveted hanger, they are probably going to drill and rivet the hanger after paint so they don’t have to mask off the hanger at every step of the finish process. They even used some glue on my Speed Concept.
Just this weekend I was in the garage and the dremel was handy so I cut off my FD hanger off my Specialized AL Allez . Easy enough. Then I realized I should have removed the chain first as now I hand lots of AL dust sticking to the chain wax. 10 min job turned into 30 min job
Trying not to be too pedantic…I thought it was Damon who said the front derailleur hanger had more drag than the downtube? Trying to find the quote, but struggling to do so.
This bolt-on mount adds a few grams of weight compared to a riveted mount, but as you’ve shown, lets you neatly run a single ring and leave off the derailleur and mount. FYI: that FD mount alone has more drag than the whole down tube.
Damon Rinard, Cervelo Senior Technologist
But it’s easier for people to disagree with me than for them to disagree with Damon…
Dang…that almost makes me want to convert my p3c into a road bike. How does it feel?
Aside from any potential geometry problems (i don’t know if there are any), i guess my real limiter would be having only 1 bottle cage on the frame.
We converted a p3c (2015 frame) into a road bike. No geometry problems besides that it is long and low as we wanted it for an aero road bike. With two holes drilled into the seat tube it has now 2 bottle cages.
