Entry Level Bike upgraded for National Hill Climb Champs

We took an ordinary entry-level Canyon road bike and threw $11,000 worth of premium, lightweight parts at it—begging, borrowing, and definitely not stealing to turn it into a race-ready, featherlight machine. The goal? To beat Ollie, Connor, and Dan at the British Hill Climb Championships. Watch to see the final weight, the mind-blowing component setup, and whether this pointless yet fun build was actually worth the ridiculous cost for a few seconds of savings!

⏱️ Timestamps ⏱️
00:00 – Intro: The Ridiculous Bike
00:54 – Initial Weight Check
02:18 – Stripped Back
03:02 – The Rebuild
03:52 – The Final Weight Reveal
04:44 – What Did Alex Change?
09:03 – The Freehub Sound Check
10:06 – Was It All Worth It?

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Well, the big question is: is this build a brilliant, money-no-object engineering experiment… or a completely pointless exercise? Let us know what you think in the comments! 🔥

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This is one of the most ridiculous bikes I have ever built because I took a £1,000 entry- levelvel bike and then upgraded it with £11,000 worth of parts to build a lightweight racing machine. Why am I doing this? Well, firstly, because I can, and secondly, because no one in their right mind is actually likely to spend this amount of money on an entry-level bike. So, I thought I’d do the job for us. Now, I have begged, bought, borrowed, and even stolen all the parts of this bike so that hopefully come race day, I can beat Ollie, Connor, and Dan at the British Hill Climb Championships. But not sai, cuz he has gymnastics. I mean, tell it’s a swimming competition that day. Anyway, for legal reasons, I should probably confirm I haven’t actually stolen anything. I’m about to weigh this bike to find out if all of the hard work was actually worth it. But before that, well, firstly, we should find out how much it weighed before throwing a truckload of cash at it. Right then, in its stock, out ofthebox condition, Canyon claimed this bad boy weighs 10.72 kg in a size medium. I made a few changes to this bike. So, what I want to do, see how much it actually weighs now. 10.87. Brilliant. I’ve made it heavier. Now, the bike weight is just a small piece of the puzzle. It’s actually my overall body weight, which contributes the most to my system weight. But seeing as this bike race happens in 6 days, well, I’ve left it a little bit late to do anything about that. So, let’s get this bad boy apart and onto the fun bit. Taking everything to pieces was the easy part. It’s putting it back together, which is the real fun bit. Now, in front of me here are all of the components I think I need to build this bike back up in front of me. Some parts I’ve begged for. Some parts I’ve borrowed from other bikes here at GCM Mega Basease. Some parts I’ve bought using the GCN Tech piggy bank. And other parts like this Dura Ace crank. Well, I just have those lying around as spare. Now, I’m really hoping that I can get this build to come in at under 8 kg, but I’m not entirely sure that’s going to be possible. Anyway, enough talking about it. Let’s get back to building. Heat. Heat. Okay, then. Job done. That was actually super easy with no stress whatsoever. Ah, why does it never go in? Damn it. Well, that wasn’t what I expected. Now, I couldn’t actually wait to weigh the bike, and I’ve already done that a minute ago. So, here’s me weighing the bike 5 minutes ago. Oh, it’s actually 7.5. Quick film. Oh, this is amazing. Now, by Ollie’s super nerd calculations, the many, many, many, many, many thousands of pounds I spent upgrading this bike should equate to around a 7se secondond saving over the 800 meter hill climb race. Worth every penny if I manage to beat Ollie, Connor, and Dan. But perhaps in the grand scheme of life, not the most effective way of spending your money. But I’ve also worked out that the amount of money that I would have spent upgrading this bike equates to around £1,500 per 1 second saved. Right, enough chat about it. Let me get a run through of the bike setup. Okay, let’s start at the back of the bike. First thing that’s not noticeable here, well, I’ve upgraded the wheels to Princeton’s. These are the 4550 Peaks DT Swiss hubs. I’ve also got Pirelli P0 Race RS tires on here. Now, these are actually the 30 mm versions. Now, if I wanted to save even more weight on this bike, I could go down to something like a 26. But from my previous testing and experiments, I kind of feel like 30 mm strikes that balance between weight, rolling resistance, and aerodynamics. Also inside here, we got the Pirelli P 0 Race RS smart tubes as well. I’ve upgraded the entire group set on this bike. Shimano Dura Ace throughout. Got the rear derailia where I’ve carefully rooted the cable through one of the little breather holes in the uh chain stay. I managed to get that running internally up to the seat post which is housing the battery. This incredible chain cassette and pulley wheel is absolutely off the charts if you ask me. oil slick because it just looks cool, not because there’s any other advantage to it. This cassette is super impressive. So, it’s from a brand called Recon, and I’ve spoken about their lightweight cassettes on the tech show in the past. This one is even more off the charts. It’s machined from aluminium to make it super lightweight. It’s a 12 to 28 to cassette and weighs 99 g, which is absolutely mindblowing. I’m a little bit concerned about the gear ratios I’ve chosen seeing as I am going uphill and I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a second. And then of course I can’t go without mentioning this absolutely mindblowing oversized pulley wheel system from Ceramic Speed. We’ve got 3D printed titanium pulley wheels here. Oversized. We’ve got the coated ceramic bearings inside there. I know it is kind of mind-blowing and mad to put it onto this bike when you consider this part alone is worth 1.5 times the original bike’s value. But I had this ready for a bike that I’m getting in the future. And then also to finish this off, because I got a brand new cassette on here, I’ve also got this brand new YBN chain, 12speed, flat top, and super lightweight. That looks absolutely boss. Also 140 rotor. There you go. Okay, moving forwards. Of course, I’ve got the durace crank on here. This time, actually gone for 175 mm crank arms. And the reason for this is because out of my vast selection of dur cranks, of course, I’ve got multiple sizes to choose from, but I thought I’m going to take a slightly different approach here and just go slightly longer crank arm, a little bit of extra leverage, and I’ve also got this super cool Wolftooth one by Arrow chain ring here. And I said I’d mention the gear ratios a little bit more. So, matched up to that cassette is a 48 to one by chain ring. It fills me with fear a little bit that I’m overeared for this hill climb race, but I’m going to have to just go with it now because I’ve made my choices and that’s what I got to stick with. Interestingly, I’ve just got the original seat post that came with the bike. I’ve got my 3D printed SLR saddle up top. Two parts which I haven’t actually changed specific to this hill climb. The saddle, there’s lighter versions out there, but I couldn’t get my hands on one in time. And then the seat post, if I’m honest, totally forgot to try and find a lightweight seat post. So, here we are with the stock one, but you know, uh, moving forwards, I’ve got a Pro Carbon Fiber Vibe handlebar. This is left over from some previous bike builds I’ve done in the past. And then this is a super lightweight aluminum stem, which if you recall a few weeks back on the tech show, I was speaking about as it’s one of the lightest stems available. It’s machine from aluminium and actually is a super reasonable price of 66 pounds. Yes, that’s still quite a lot for a stem, but in the grand scheme of super lightweight parts, it’s actually pretty good. Got no bar tape because, you know, hill climb racing, we want to save weight and comfort isn’t that important. And then all way if we go to the front where I’ve got 160 mil rotor and of course the durace calipers to go with the rest of the durace group set, which I actually stole off of Andrew Feather’s old bike. Thanks, Andrew. A couple of other little details I haven’t mentioned yet, actually. So, I’ve already spoken about the chain, but this one is waxed with Silkra’s uh super secret chain blend and a speed chip added in there for extra speed, obviously. Uh the handlebars are 38 cm wide. The stem is 120 mm long. And of course, I’ve taken the bottle cages and the bottle cage bolts off of this bike because, you know, hill climbs. Um, one thing I haven’t done for a long time in videos recently is um do a freehub sound check. So, let’s do it. Let’s get this uh get this wheel up to speed using the 48 to chain ring. Shift down. It goes. Cool. Cool. Okay, so there you go. That is my somewhat ridiculous hill climb bike built and explained for you guys to see. But it isn’t wasted on me that it’s actually a totally ridiculous concept because one of the greatest things about hill climb bikes is that typically speaking people are trying to start with the lightest bike possible and quite often the lightest parts can actually be rim brake stuff which is also on the more affordable scale. Whereas I’ve basically done the total opposite. I started with a really modern entry level relatively heavy bike and then thrown money at the problem and haven’t actually got to a bike that’s as light as what other people could achieve for less money. So all in all, I do think a fairly pointless exercise, but fun nonetheless and I prove that you guys hopefully don’t have to do it at home. But I do think there is still scope to reduce the weight of this bike with a few key important changes that I haven’t actually got to such as I could use the skinnier tires. I’ve gone one by to save weight, but I could have gone without using the aero chain ring. I could have used exotic disc brake rotors. I could have done lots of little tweaks and changes like cutting the steer tube down. I could have got lighter handlebars. I could have cut the bottoms off of the handlebars. I could have got lighter saddle, lighter seat posts. So, all in, I think I could get this bike easily under 7 kilos. But, if I’m honest, I’ve run out of time, patience, and theoretical money to spend on other parts. Um, right, there you go. Hope you’ve enjoyed this video. If you have, please do give this a thumbs up and share this ridiculous bike far and wide for all your friends to see. And um if you want to see me riding this bike in action, well, very shortly we’ll have a video over on GCN where Ollie, Connor, Dan, and I taking the Hill Climb Champs on. Right, I’m out of here. See you later.