I've also written a review of all the different bikes I can remember riding, over the years, in case there's a particular type you're interested in and want some feedback on. I hope to post pictures of broken bike parts here, eventually.
I am impressed with the following companies, in terms of price, shipping speed, and quality: Colorado Cyclist does lovely wheels and is a cool company. Excel Sports always have the stuff I want and ship QUICKLY. Bike World has FANTASTIC prices, so low they scare me. So far they've treated me well. A sort of Crazy Harry's bike Store.
Nashbar isn't bad, but they're ALWAYS backordering the stuff I ask for. I usually get about 60% of my order with the remainder to show up at some later time. Performance was at one time my favorite company,. when they only had the store in NC and in Boulder, but these days, they've got very little variety and their prices are high, so I've sort of gone off them. Cambria Bicycle Outfitters have lovely bargain prices on excess stock, and lots of good stuff to check out.
A while back, I ditched two pair of Machine Tech V-brakes. They're gorgeous, but they needed adjustment way too often. I replaced them with (gasp) Shimano XT V's. These require V-brake-style levers, because normal brakes like SS-5's simply don't have enough pull to move them. Avid V-chip levers (which I got and love) work beautifully with them. Use thin brake cables for the Machine Tech brakes: they thicker cable will not fit through the cable pulleys. I'm also quite partial to the Titec/Bontrager stem. It's light, steel, and has a small plate gusseted into the place that cracked on the previous stem. Good design. Titec stuff has impressed me no end.
I also helped upgrade a Cannondale 'cross from bar-ends to the 600 STI's taken off a Trek OCLV. It's ANNOYING. The 600 stuff has always been my favorite, given that I have no experience with it, but now -- I think it is a distant beauty. There is about no way to get it to work with a triple crankset. This wouldn't be that hard to have designed in originally -- Campy did. The STI's are made of stamped steel. Ick. The derailleur has a lot of steel in it (which leads me onto a related digression: why is it that when Shimano introduces a new high-end group like XTR, they make it all out of alloy and start using steel in XT parts, rather than leaving XT as it was and making XTR BETTER -- in other words, why do they trickle badness up rather than goodness down?) and of course I'm really depressed that I can't get IN the STI's to carefully file another little ramp in the ratchet-wheel and give me an extra spot to grab that triple.
It's the same old thing: Shimano works fairly well if you want to use it EXACTLY as it was intended. Campy provides you with all sorts of little gizmos and adjustments, such that you can use it as is, and then extend it to new and unforseen circumstances, like adding a triple, which you can do with any Campy ergo shifters, right out of the box.
This page was written on 12/28/96, last modified 1/26/99.