In this review, I want to talk about owning and riding a Look 765. It’s a carbon frame. The model I have is from 2018. I’ve owned the bike for a little over a year and it came to me as kind of a surprise.
November of 2022, I was having lunch with a friend. I got a phone call from somebody in Taichung. I’m in Taiwan and he said, Hey, do you want to come and take a look at this frame? It’s a frameset that had been sitting in a warehouse for many years. It was an XL size frame and they, whoever had bought it didn’t want it because it was too big and not going to name any names or go into that, but I got it pretty much for, I won’t say a smile. I had to pay some harder and cash for it, but it came to me as a pretty good deal.
So when I saw it, I was like, wow, this is a really good-looking frame. The detail, attention to detail in this thing is something else. It’s a beauty. It’s just an immaculate, really nice paint job, black with the classic look colors and nothing too fancy or funky or any gimmicky or strange kind of things. Simple road bike, best fit BB 30 with the, the headset’s just a normal headset. Nothing proprietary about sometimes look does that.
And I put the frame together. I put the bike together basically as if you’re listening to this as a budget build, you’re like, Oh my goodness, really? Well I have seven or eight road bikes. I had a mountain bike at the time. I had an old giant TCX cycle cross that frame that’s quite actually nice. And so I was kind of like, all right, I’ve got plenty of road, I’ve got plenty of bikes, but I want to get this on the road as soon as I can.
And so I threw together, I’ll go through the components really quick. A Campagnolo set of wheels, entry level set bike called Calima. These are cheap, but really durable and then they’re not very light, but they’re great. They don’t, they’ve never broke us. I’ve owned a couple sets and they’ve never, I’ve never even had any spokes break on me, knock on wood. What else did I go with?
It’s just as for like the drivetrain, I bought a BB 30, a press fit BB 30 FSA bottom bracket that basically just goes right into the frame. You just press it in with the tool, it’s dead easy to put in. And I was thinking, maybe I’ll get 8,000 kilometers out of the thing. I’ll go ahead and tell you, I’m doing the review right now because I’m over 10,000 kilometers on the bike and that bottom bracket has been golden. It’s great and it’s not making any noise at all.
I went with a cheap FSA Omega BB 30 crank, 34, 50 tooth, 50 tooth big ring, 34 tooth, just a compact crank. And I was reading that like, okay, this one may be not so good either that people are talking about it breaks, knock on wood again, it’s held up and it’s super smooth and it’s just golden really. It’s really good. Chain, I’ve already been through two chains. I think I’d use just KMC or YBBN, YBBN, whatever it is. Either one, I think they’re made right here in Taiwan. Great, 10 speed chain, nothing wrong with that.
Cassette was like a Shimano, I don’t know which one it was, but it was a 1228 tooth. And I’ve gone ahead and replaced one cassette on that since I’ve been riding it. As far as the shifters, now this is where I have had some problems and I have definitely gone cheap Charlie on the shifters, brifters, whatever you want to call them. This is a micro shift knockoff called micro new and on Shopee, I get a set for like 50 bucks, 50 US dollars, 100, 1500 NT.
Now I order them on Shopee, they show up about two weeks later in Taiwan. And one thing about these shifters is the cable does not have, does not internally go underneath the handlebar, so it kind of goes old school. And a lot of people, wow, really, you’re going to use that? Well, sure, it’s functional. And it’s functional until it’s not functional.
The right shifter, the one that controls the rear derailleur has worked and has not had any issues at all. Actually, it’s quite nice. And I’m not using disc brakes, this bike is a rim brake frame. So it’s just the, you know, the mechanical pole. And I have one of five brakes on the bike right now, brand new, they’re quite nice as well. So the right, the shifter for the controls, the rear derailleur has worked and it’s been pretty good. And up to about 8,000, maybe 7,500 kilometers after about 10, 11 months of riding.
And I went to Florida, I stayed in Florida for about two months this summer. So the bike sat in Taichung for when I was not in Taiwan. And I got back and I started to ride it in the spring in the fall semester this year. And I was like, okay, this the rear derailleur, the excuse me, the front derailleur was kind of funny. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it was giving me a little bit of strange friction when I pushed the lever and then the button, it was a little bit funny.
So I kind of think maybe the cable’s wrong, or maybe something’s, something’s wrong. Some pin inside that, the mechanism inside that left handle, the left, the just a two push kind of thing, it broke. And I was like, oh shoot, maybe I can open it up and look at it. Basically, I just got on shopping and bought another one because it was dead cheap, it’s 800 NT, opposed to like buying the Shimano stuff, which I know this argument, you buy cheap stuff, you buy two or three of them, and you’re going to be basically buying the same amount of money for, I know the argument, I totally understand it, it just totally makes sense.
But right now for the, my quick fix for the thing was just to get on shopping and 800 NT, okay, fine, no big deal. And it gave me a chance to clean everything up. And the bike has internal cabling, which I was a bit worried about when I first put the bike together. I can’t remember it being an issue at all. For some reason, I freaked out thinking, oh, this is going to be a real pain in the ass to redo this internal cabling.
If you’re interested in this frame, or I guess I’m going to say I’d hope that all look frames are similar, it was dead easy. I just, you pulled the cable out, you didn’t, I didn’t even, I thought about using like a mouse or some kind of
way to thread it through with floss or get it through so you could pull it through kind of the safe way to go about it. I basically took the cable, pushed it through, it went right out where it was supposed to come through. And it was so nice. It didn’t, I didn’t have to fight it. It was really easy. So that was, that’s good to know if you’re, and that’s something, you know, there’s a detail on the internet where you might be like, oh man, is this going to be easy or is this going to be a pain in the ass? I’m not a, I don’t own many of the, any other look frames, but I’d like to hope that most of them are built that way where you can just zip it right through and it comes out where it’s supposed to and it all works. But don’t quote me on that.
Okay, so what else about this, this look frame was the saddle, WTB saddle, it’s great. I like it. Bar tape, I had it like a box of SRAM black tape, it works. FSA stem, the frame actually was a frame set that showed up with the fork. I think it had a a headset already came with the headset and the bearings were there. The seat post is a look seat post. Ah, the stem was a look stem and it died. It started to get corrosion. I had a sweat and everything and it came, it went under some, some pretty strenuous, nasty conditions, I guess, and the paint started to kind of corrode off it. It was just, I think an alloy stem. It wasn’t a carbon stem. So I’ve changed that with an FSA, an FSA stem, which is working out pretty good.
Cut the steer tube about seven or eight months into riding the bike and since I’ve cut it, we did it at a shop and first I need to fix this for some reason right now on the downhill when I hit the front brake, there’s no movement at all. If I hold the front brake and push the saddle, it’s tight, but there’s some kind of funky little, maybe I need a new headset bearing. There’s some movement in there, some funny feeling when I’m going down really steep hill and I hit the front brake and I can feel the frame. It needs to be, I need, there’s needs to be some TLC or to look at that. So, but it’s not a major issue and maybe I’m just overthinking and it’s in my head, but gotta look at that. Probably a new headset bearings or just new headset and that may clear that up.
What else about this frame? It’s a really comfortable ride. I think that I’ve owned a handful of like, I don’t know, 20 different different carbon frames and this may be the nicest carbon frame I’ve ever ridden. After like a seven hour ride, I don’t feel beat up because the bike’s super stiff. I have felt like that before. I’ve had, I’m not going to name all the bikes I’ve owned, but I have felt after a longer ride on a super stiff carbon frame, yeah okay, I don’t know if it’s a lower back or what exactly it is, but on this look frames, totally not the case. It’s a comfortable ride and I’ll be 50 in a couple years and I’m pushing like, okay, is comfort important? Kind of, I guess. Is it quick? Yeah, the bike’s fast enough. It’s a lot of fun to ride. It’s got the carbon, you give it the power, you put the power in and it’s going to zip up the hill. It’s got that, it’s cool, it works, it’s like, it works like it should. Is it the fastest bike I’ve ever ridden? Probably not, and especially with maybe the heavy set of the Kalima wheels, probably not the fastest bike I’ve owned, but I don’t mind if I, if I want to go for a longer ride, this is the bike I’d like to ride.
It’s been easy to keep clean. The entire thing is, it’s a black, really glossy, nice black paint job and when you really look at every little detail compared to some of the other kind of things I’ve owned, this one is super special. It’s really, really a looker. The internal cabling for everything, the rear brake, the shifter cables, they’re not super like hidden, like some of these frames, I’ve seen the cables go through the stem and everything like that. You can see the input and output where it goes into the frame, so it’s, it is what it is and it’s definitely nice. It’s a fancy frame, it’s a fancy bike.
So going to kind of a budget build with this one, would I like to maybe use an electronic group set with this bike? Sometimes I think about it, but I’m still like, man, I think I’ll just stick with the cable pole stuff. It’s what I got on all my other bikes and I’ve ridden Di2 and it’s super nice, but I’m just kind of on the fence if I want to, if I want to go that, I’d probably go with the e-tap to be honest if I decided to go electronic on this frame. It would be nice, but I don’t know, for now I think I’ll stick with the cable pole stuff.
Other comments about this bike, if you’re thinking about buying a look frame, shop around. Even, you know, I’ve seen a couple second-hand things go along Facebook marketplace here in Taiwan and as soon as they’re online, man, they go quick. Like I’ve contacted the owners, I’d be like, he said, yeah, I sold it already. It was up for like eight hours or not even that long. I would say, yeah, man, these, they’re quite nice, these frames. I don’t have anything bad to say about it at all. It’s been, I’ve been really lucky to get that phone call from. It’s an old friend in Taichung that works in the bike industry. So there you go. That’s my, my review of this look. Six, seven, six, five. This is not the CX, the gravel frame. This was the pro 2018 version of this frame and I got nothing but good vibes from it. So there’s my review.
