Friday, August 21, 2015

Wheelsport Fantasy Flat Handlebar 2x10 Speed: Part 1 - Original Bike Components

Ever since I started this blog in January 2011, I have written over 250 blog posts over these 4+ years, and upgraded countless components on all my bikes. However, one curious thing that I realised is that of all the bikes that I have upgraded, none of them is a mini velo. In my definition, a mini velo is a bike with 20" wheels and a non-folding frame.

Now, I have a chance to upgrade a mini velo! The bike that is shown here is a friend's bike. Although this bike is not mine, I took up the project to upgrade this mini velo with some better components. As can be seen from the title, the target is to upgrade this bike to a 2x10 speed bike.

The bike that we have here is a Wheelsport Fantasy 2.0 mini velo, sold exclusively by MyBikeShop locally. In any case, this Wheelsport Fantasy mini velo can be bought as a complete bike or just as a frameset.

Before upgrading this bike, let us take a look at the stock setup on this mini velo. As a start, the complete bike weight is 9.5kg, including the kickstand and the pedals. Excluding the kickstand and pedals, this bike would weigh only 8.9kg! Pretty decent for a stock mini velo.

This is a lightweight bike, and is already lighter than high end folding bikes, such as the Tern Verge X10 (9.6kg without pedals). The reason is due to the absence of folding joints which will add quite a bit of weight to the bike frame.

Full view of the stock Wheelsport Fantasy 2.0 mini velo

Looking pretty good, especially with the nice red rims

The shifter cables run externally, along the bottom side of the downtube

The rear brake cable runs externally along the bottom side of the top tube

This model has a folding handlepost, with a knob for tightening the joint, much like a Brompton

Wheelsport Sunny 451 wheelset, with Kenda Kontender 23-451 tires

Alhonga road caliper brakes

A Sturmey-Archer crankset? Never seen it before...

Square taper BB, in a standard English threaded 68mm BB shell

The FD mount is already welded onto the frame, allowing a front double drivetrain to be installed easily.

SRAM DualDrive RD? Another unusual component here...

The stock drivetrain is a 1x9 speed system

The RD hanger seems to be bent slightly inward, which may have contributed to the non-ideal shifting on the stock drivetrain

SRAM 11-32T 9 speed cassette found on the stock drivetrain

Original FSA aluminium stem

V-Drive aluminium flat handlebar

Avid FR-5 brake levers, with SRAM DualDrive rear shifter to match with the rear derailleur

9 speed Optical Gear Display found on the gear shifter, similar to the SRAM Attack shifter that I had on the Dahon Boardwalk long ago

Simple and lightweight LitePro foam lock-on grips

FSA Energy aluminium seatpost and a rather generic saddle

Finally, the Wellgo QRD M111 Quick Release pedals. The pedals can be removed easily for more compact storage, just by pulling up on the red release button.

In the next part of this project, I will be disassembling all the components from this stock bike, and seeing which components are worth keeping, and which will be upgraded.

Click here for Part 2

1 comment:

  1. Upgrading a mini velo is really fun!

    I have a Raleigh mv8 which I upgrade to 1x10 speed with a 105 groupset with a microshift flatbar shifter and ultegra casette since sadly, my bike mechanic told me I couldnt fit a FD T_T.

    Cheers!

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