2000 mile review - Foundry Auger +

If you've read my initial thoughts on the Foundry Auger "Plus", I fairly gushed about my intents and early thoughts on how it rode.  Now that I've got a couple of thousand miles of road, gravel and

everything in between, I thought I'd share a few more thoughts at the end of a season's riding.
First, I'm still in love with this bike.  I've had a number of bikes over the years, and my riding style/goals have certainly changed as I've aged.  Bikes that felt good 20-30 years ago now are overly twitchy.  What felt just right for crits is not much fun to bump along on backroads.  And frankly, I don't care.  I'm not riding crits, time trials or road races.  The occasional road gran fondo can be ridden just fine on a responsive cyclocross bike (with decent brakes, of course).

One of my original changes was to go with the thru-axle fork, and I've been very (very, very) pleased with the choice.  I like the total lack of ambiguity in steering, and I don't notice any bad habits with jarring or buzz from the stiffer front end.  The overall configuration of the Auger helps here too - good vertical compliance, but rock solid lateral stiffness at the bottom bracket.  I've noticed no click/creak in the BB30 either.  A couple of people have asked why I use the heavier, cheaper Gossamer crankset instead of one of the more svelte carbon ones.  The answer is pretty simple - it's bulletproof.  Not that much heavier, 1/3 the price, no flex, no bad habits.  Understate, overperform.

A couple of changes I've made since the original configuration. I think I'm swapping the saddle back over to my old favorite Selle Italia Flite '91 instead of the more current Flite, complete with center relief.  This thing has just never felt quite right, although it's a pretty comfy saddle most of the time.

15% pavement descent on LaCrosse Gravel race

Also, I have changed tires. I still think the Challenge Almanzos are one of the best tires I've ridden, I've had no problems with them, and no complaints about the way they ride or durability. But then I got on a pair of Challenge Gravel Grinders, 38mm and in basic black.  Whoa...  what a feeling.  These tires are marked '3 bar' for racing on the sidewall, which seems just about perfect for mixed surface use.  I've ridden road paceline at 23-25mph, paved descents at 45+, and gravel drops at over 40.  They fly.  With latex tubes, they don't have a bouncy 'ping' to larger rocks, and really smooth out pavement cracks, rough roads and track through loose gravel amazingly well.  Yeah, these are a keeper.  The only downside is that the tread life may not be super great, which isn't really surprising since they weren't intended for a lot of road use.  I've got to rotate front to back to balance wear.  I'd love a set of 35-38mm road tires with the characteristics, but a harder compound and more of a road profile. Maybe name them IARBGARs or something.

To date, the only adjusting I've had to do was to the brakes.  I *did* find that the bosses for the Whisky 9 match up to a 140mm rotor (options?, don't know), so I added the bar to move it to 160mm.  After a couple of rides, I noticed an occasional clicking, which I finally traced to an slight interference between the edge of the rotor and the caliper.  Huh? What?  So I started to look at moving washers under the caliper - and realized that the bar could be turned around and then it lined up perfectly.  Again, who knew? I'll rack that up to unfamiliarity with proper adjustment...

I've got my bike for the next few years.  Anybody want a really nice Ridley Noah?
Future tweaks and enhancements.
- 1000 lumen headlight set.  Night riding on commuter lights isn't bad if you are in town and there's lots of ambient light.  Pretty sketchy on gravel though.
- Different rotors.  The stock TRP rotors have a tendency to 'sing', and growl/grind under braking.  I'll put on some kind of 2 piece rotor to see if that improves things.
- 2nd set of wheels, configured more for road.  Fewer spokes, smaller freewheel (like an 11-26 instead of 11-36).

Foundry pushes the 'workman' status of their bikes, and I agree.  Not the lightest, not the sexiest, but it tops the 'just a bike' list,  And that's a high compliment in my mind.  No bad habits, nothing to snark about, just a bike. Again, understate and overperform. Chapeau, Foundry.