Making some progress and changing plans - Ritchey Project Part III

While I haven't made giant strides I have made progress on the Ritchey Road bike, as you can see its a bit more bare than last time.  I have to give Ritchey Kudos for responding to my query on their website for information on this bike but unfortunately even with a serial number they couldn't tell me more than I'd  already figured out from pouring over photos on the web - its a 1987-1991 model.  I didn't get any more specifics from the bike forums post either, but I got some good suggestions on seat post possibilities.

 On a visit to bike works I was able to dig through their box of seat posts and with the aid of my magnifying glass identify a 27.0 post.

A bit easier to see after the application of some elbow grease and a some 0000 steel-wool.

I like using LaPrade posts when I can find them; their alloy, integrated seat clamp, one bolt adjust, and have nice fluting on the post.  Not bad for $5 and tax.

And it appears to fit, I will give it more of a test once I have the bike assembled but since the 27.0 size was also what came on Ritchey Road bikes of the later 90s according to Sheldon's database, I think its a good bet this is correct.  I did notice something unusual about the seat tube collar.

Most binder bolts I have come across are two parts, but the Ritchey has a binder bolt that screws into the frame...

This is the other side - no corresponding nut, I triple checked that the bolt was screwing into something and yes it is.

In digging into the parts bin I came across this saddle I picked up for about $8 at an REI garage sale, I think the white stripes will compliment the frame decals, but mostly I just need a place holder and something on the bike to allow for test rides.

While I was at Bike Works searching for seat posts I saw this refurbished Schwinn Super Letour II out for sale and it gave me some ideas for a pricing benchmark for my future bike sales.

Now I am obviously a lover of vintage bikes but I sure do prefer the new wireless bike computers to everything you needed to get a wired computer to run back in the day.

I had originally thought that someone had used a hack to run the brake cables areo but I was wrong! These Campy levers, I am guessing late 80s, were made to be able to run the brake cables either non- aero or aero and if aero then out of either side of the back of the lever -front or back of the handlebar -depending on your preference.  Those clever Italians.

Since the hoods I have are set up as old school non-aero that is how we are running the brake cables.

Confirmed that the stem was neither stuck nor rusty.

I also removed the last of the grubby old bar tape off the handlebars.

And I discovered a bit of dirt under the bottle cages when I removed them lol, I am thinking of going with just a single bottle cage on the rebuild for a nice clean fast road bike look.

The front brake came off with no problems, its gonna need a bath, the rear however seems to have a rounded hex nut and so I have left it for now and I can always clean it up in place.

I got the wheels off and stripped them of their old rubber.

That gave me a chance to use this gizmo I had floating around, it helps keep the chain off the frame while the rear wheel is off the bike and it can be used as a guide if you use a chain scrubber to clean the chain.  Clean the chain Ryan? you say,...won't you just replace it?

You may recall from my last post on this bike I mentioned a slightly different approach for this project.  I have a couple reasons for not going the traditional tear down to the frame and build back up route; 1) my friend Pete is an entrepreneur who thinks in terms of return on investment and although he gave his approval of the first parts list I came up with I am sure he will be thinking on the return for the money spent and 2) this bike is outfitted with Campy parts and I don't feel like I have the expertise or tools to do the job I would like in getting them apart and refurbed.  It occurred to me on most bikes I work on if a part needs replacing or I mess up and break it I can get something else for $20 or less and based on my research most of the Campy parts would be easily double that.  My new plan is as follows:

1. Get the bike cleaned up 
2. Make it's safe and functional
3. Return it to its Road bike roots - no Triathlon stuff - and make it look good.
4. When we list it make it very clear that while rideable and safe the bike can use an overhaul  from a skilled Campagnolo wrench who knows their 8 speed stuff.

And from my research on CL in both Seattle and Portland I think in the above state without a complete overhaul its a better bike than almost anything I have seen in the $400 range based on the frame pedigree and the components.  

I found a great deal on a pair of Continental Ultra Sport II tires from Nashbar for $15 total- including delivery! The old bike had mismatched tires and one of them was badly dry rotted so these tires along with new tubes and rim strips will address safety, functionality and the looking good concerns.  I also have new cables, housing and bar tape in the parts bin.  Another reason to not go full rebuild on this bike is that if someone really desired this frame and wanted to bring it back to factory fresh it could use a repaint, in addition to the normal 30 years of use chips and marks, as you can see in the seat tube shots above, I noticed a few rough patches in the paint as well so in that case doing a complete overhaul and charging for it would be counter productive, don't get me wrong it will look great from 10 feet but from 10 inches you will see its "patina".

I was downtown recently and was puzzled by this structure at first, handlebar  moustache art? an ode to Cape Buffalo horns?  oh! its a bike rack...ok, very um minimalist.

Over the Memorial day weekend I went to Tankfest NW 2017  and saw something interesting in the back of a WWII era Jeep..  Not sure if can tell from the photo but its ..

a paratroopers bike which could be folded to make it compact enough to store in a glider or jump canister. Hope you all had a great 3 day weekend and as always Ride.Smile.Repeat.

And he nails the Dismount!

It started off well enough, my friend has a new bike she had yet to ride, an Electra Townie, and she wanted to ride to lunch,  Its a gorgeous day so yeah lets go!  And then she texts that the front wheel won't spin, no problem "we'll get it sorted" I text back and throw an extra tool or two in the barrel bag and off I go.  The front wheel had been taken off to fit in the car and then put back on and between not being square in the drops and the brake housing having jumped its routing- the pads were clamped to the rim - no worries got it sorted with no sweat.  Then we did a spin down the block and the seat was obviously too low and we discovered when she got off was twisting.  I noticed they were using the old post and clamp type seat post like you would find on a vintage Schwinn Varsity, and so I tightened the bolts on the clamp, then raised the seat and tightened up the quick release seat post collar and we were off.

On the way to the pub there is a slight rise and she had the classic issue of waiting too late to shift to an easier gear and had to stop, so I turned around and stopped to see if help was needed.  She got going again and since I was already stopped I walked to the top of the rise and then, well you know how I said I nailed the dismount, I might have lied about that.   Has anyone ever told you that its not a good idea to do a "flying" start on your bike i.e you put one foot on a pedal, push off and then swing your leg over and mount up -like Tonto making a quick getaway.  Well if you are a Clydesdale it really isn't a good idea...let just say I ended up on my back on the sidewalk and was glad I'd been wearing my helmet.  After thinking about it I believe what happened was so much weight got put on the rear wheel that it flexed out of true and the tire came in contact, at low speed, against the chain-stay, which acted like an emergency brake, tossed me off the bike like a bucking bronco and landed me on the pavement.  Mostly its just my pride that's hurt, but I have a few bumps and a bruises and a rear wheel now badly out of true. I have a feeling I will be a bit stiff and sore tomorrow as a further reminder not to get on my bike like a cowboy anymore.

tire kissin' the stay

I walked the bike back home since its only about 3 blocks and the rear wheel wobbled like a drunk trying to walk a straight line,  I am fairly certain I can fix that and if not the original 40 spoke wheel is available.

Its actually timely as I need to put the wheels from the Ritchey through the truing stand anyway so I can tackle the Passage rear wheel when I do that.  I was thinking as I walked the bike home that I should have never written about crashing and I certainly should not have said anything about not personally crashing in a while, jinx city.   I should have an update on the Ritchey soon, until then, Ride,Keep the rubber side down, Smile.Repeat,

Research, Ruminations and Issues - Ritchey Project part II

So I have this bike that is a cool frame, obviously well built and all these cool Italian components and I have no freaking idea what the models or years of manufacture are for any of them.  All of my research for old school Ritchey stuff kept referring to a website that no longer exists, and the C-Record era of Campy parts, that the bike apparently has, have no distinguishing marks that I can find and the Internets have been little help.

Cartoonish makers decal at the bb cluster 

After spending more time than I care to mention and putting on my deerstalker I was able to get to a ballpark on the frame and components.  I know from the decals on the frame that this Road bike was post 1986 and pre 1991, Sometime in 91 a Ritchey mountain bike frame was ridden to a world championship and so all the bikes after that have decals with the world championship bands on them and this bike has none, and the 86 and before bikes had the Ritchey name in yellow letters and the script was different and my script is white for the Ritchey name.  This frame is also tig welded not lugged or fillet brazed so that narrows it down a bit too.  I also reached out to the Ritchey company on their website giving them the frames serial number.....

And they were nice enough to respond and ask for pictures, specifically of brazeons and frame junctions which I have supplied them so I hope to know more soon.  I also went old school and reached out to the Classic Vintage Bike forums as I had come across some old threads about Ritchey road bikes there in my web search.   Its basically a discussion board like the early web days but with so little readily available info online I thought one of the members might have this bike or know something about them.

As for the parts I could have probably figured out more with a crystal ball,  After a LOT of searching the web, thank you velobase, I narrowed it down from a Universe to a Galaxy but not much more -I am not in a solar system yet.  These parts appear to be from the C-Record era of the late 80s to early 90s -similar to the frame - but don't quote me on that.  This is an era where even though they had different gruppos; Record, Chorus, etc, they didn't bother to mark that on the parts.  If you look at a campy part from say 2005 it will clearly say; Record, Chorus, Veloce etc right on the part but for the stuff on the Ritchey not a whiff.  It was literally down to me scrutinizing the PDF of a part in a catalog and comparing it to the parts on the bike and looking for subtleties like "oh my crank doesn't have that flair on the  cranks spider arm next to the crank arm so nope its not Record from 1991, damn where did I put that magnifying glass!   

Knowing I had an 8 speed cassette/hub helped some but not as much as I had hoped as apparently they went through a few phases of 8 speed stuff,   I found what appears to be an official Campagnolo presence on face book and shot them a message but I've only had crickets back so far.  I just found a vintage Campy group on FB too so I may ping them for some help.

By Saturday evening I had seen enough of the triathlon bars so I decided to take them off and since the shifters had been mounted to the end of them that meant dealing with the DT shifters as well.  The tri-bars gave me no trouble and since the shifters has such a long stretch of cable I decided to cut the cable and housing too as it would make removing the the shifters from the tri-bar mount easier,

I also discovered that the left (Front Derailleur) shifter which I just assumed was campy like all the other components was actually Shimano 105.  Not a big shock really as the left shifter, even into the indexed era operated on friction shifting and in theory if its friction you can mix and match the groups; Shimano shifters and Campy derailluers or vice versa, one of the things that makes friction so cool, that shifter gave me no problems and the old cable came right out.

The right hand shifter (Rear Derailleur), the Campy one, was a totally different story.  The picture above is towards the end of the story and if you click on it to enlarge you may guess part of the issues solution but I am getting ahead of myself.  Tri-bars off, shift cables cut, left shifter removed, cable taken out good to go and then I get to the right shifter and realize oh no, they fell for the classic blunder! second only to Don't get involved in a land war in Asia, is this Do NOT use Shimano shift cables with a Campagnolo Derailleur!!!  The barrel shaped cable end on a Shimano cable is bigger than its Campy counter part, and while you can jam it in there, the next poor mook who works on that shifter is going to deal with a stuck cable and then alot of blue language will ensue.

I poked, and prodded, I sprayed WD-40, and then I sprayed liquid wrench, and then I poked and prodded some more.  I walked away and came back, I wiggled and giggled it, I swore at it in Italian, ok that's not true I don't know much Italian.  And then I gave up till the morrow.

Since I was going to the farmers markets, and my LBS is smack in the middle of that block I packed the shifter along for the ride.  I stopped in and asked the head wrench if he had any solutions, and he also poked and prodded a bit with a thinner poking device but finally came to the conclusion I knew he would, the one I had avoided thinking about, the S word...Surgery, with the D word....Drilling (que dramatic music) which gets us to the picture above.  He of the steady hand and vice, got me to the point where I could take it home and punch out the remains of the cable head,  Just as I had last month with the step down ferrule I asked about payment, just like last time I was waved away even though he had spent a good twenty minutes fussing with this $%^#*ing problem.

No way I was letting him off that easy, so I crossed the street to do my weekly tasting at the Beer Junction,  My first beer, sadly, did not get photographed so you won't see the lovely IHS Triple Booster IPA from my College town of Corvallis Oregon, if there are no pictures how do you know I drank it - kind of like my friend Tim Joe's Schwinn Le Tour- its all spiffed up and complete but how do we know without pictures......?    The beer above is a tasty Beak Breaker Imperial IPA from Pelican brewery in Pacific City, Oregon - one of my favorite spots on the coast.

For my next selection I chose a hefeweizen which I can neither spell nor pronounce (Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier), hefeweizen is one of the first beers I enjoyed drinking back in my 20s so I have a soft spot for it but I find lately that its hit or miss.  I was explaining that to the barman and he educated me that what I had just had was a European style which tends to have a clove taste (not a fan) as opposed to the American style hefeweizen which is a cleaner, to my palate, taste,

After the disappointing but educational hefeweizen, I needed a palate cleanser so I had another offering from Pelican the Tsunami Stout.  Smooth like buddah, on my way out I picked up a bottle of cider and went back across the street to the LBS to drop it off as a thank you, I've said it before, no good deed should go unpunished, and with that it was time to toddle off home.  I should mention in my 2 km round trip to the market I was nearly hit by a car...twice! I got home safe but geez!  In both cases the drivers were either oblivious or didn't care as they both disobeyed clearly marked traffic signals/signs.  Its not that hard - when the light is red you stop, when it says no turn on red you don't turn on red,,,smh.

Back home I got out my special bike tools, tiny drill bit and not so tiny hammer and got to work on the shifter.

A stern talking to and a sharp blow got that oversize cable end right out of there, the irony is a Shimano cable will probably work fine now.  Its a bit worse for the wear but at least its functional instead of being a very nicely crafted paper weight.  Its set up as a indexed shifter and I noodled around with it in the stand before I took the tri-bars off and it seemed to work fine.  I am a friction fan these days but I am leaning toward leaving it indexed and if it doesn't want to work after all the trauma I have a set (3 actually) of shimano RSX down tube shifters I can use in friction mode.

  

I was also able to get my digital calipers back up and running, new battery, so I measured the inside of the seat tube and it appears I need a 26.0 seat-post for this bike, which I hope to confirm with Ritchey.  I plan to hunt down a used one locally and test it out.  My friend Pete is out of town but gave his blessing to the parts list I proposed, but I had an idea about a slightly different approach recently, more on that as I continue to work on the bike.   As always Ride. Smile. Repeat.

Hey I've got a bike for you...... The Ritchey Road Logic project

Yesterday I was sitting out in front of my favorite coffee shop enjoying the improving weather and got to talking with one of the other regulars, my friend Pete.  I was telling him about the silly prices people wanted for their garage sale bikes last weekend when he pipes up and says "Hey I've got a bike for you!".  It turns out his brother-in-law had left an 80s-ish road bike with him when he decided to upgrade and the old bike was moldering away in Pete's garage.  Wow, I just had a great idea for an HGTV show, "Old bike garage rescue" kind of a make over show for old dusty bikes where they go from garage prisoner to shiny fixed up bike, hmm wonder if Brooke Burke is available to host......but as usual I digress.

As it turns out its a Tom Ritchey built road bike with a few issues and challenges but an interesting project.  At some point Pete had taken the bike to a LBS and was given a quote of about $100 to fix it up and that it might be worth around $400 when finished.  His proposal to me was that he fund a rebuild and then we would split the proceeds on a sale.  Intrigued I had him send me a photo, and then further interested when I saw it was a Ritchey, I asked him to bring it by for a closer look, and I picked it up at the coffee shop this morning.

What it lacks in lugs - appears tig welded from the above shot - it makes up in interesting components and issues to solve.  You probably noticed the tri-bars. apparently the brother-in-law was an avid tri-athlete who adapted this road bike to use in triathlons and left it behind when he bought a dedicated tri-bike.  So the first challenge will be putting this bike back to its road bike roots.  That means...

from the front

From the cockpit

The tri-bars gots to go, and the nice down tube shifters will get moved back to their traditional spot on the um ..down tube.

The kind of cool co2 canister holder will probably go as well, proper frame pumps were too bulky for triathletes.

And I will remove the venerable Avocet wired cyclo-computer but if I can revive it with a new battery it might find new life on another project.

You probably noticed the one glaring deficiency for this bike, that it has no seat post or saddle.  Pete thought he might have it rattling around somewhere so there is still hope the original will be found. If not I have saddles galore and I should be able to sleuth the seat post size as I need to do some sleuthing anyway on the year of the bike and the year and model of the components.  Speaking of which..

One of the first things I noticed was the Campy components - standard road crank-set

derailleurs

exiled shifters - at the end of the tri-bars

Quick release skewers and hubs, always thought these looked classy.

And brakes .  This being a Ritchey built bike it does diverge from the Campy theme in one area..

only logical it would come with one of the makers flagship parts - the Ritchey Logic headset, rather than a Campy one.  There was one other thing I couldn't put my finger on immediately that seemed wrong to me..

And then it clicked, these non-areo old school bike levers had been bastardized into areo brake lever cable routing - you can see the housing coming out from under the bar wrap.  Understandable as the loopy areo cabling would have interfered with the aero triathlon bike position, but it still looks like crap.  And there are also no campy-hoods on the levers and they can be hard, and expensive to find, however..

fortunately Velo Orange has started selling campy reproduction hoods from Rustines and I had purchased some a while back for a pair of drilled campy levers I picked up on ebay years ago and they are still in the box.

Its also nice to know I'm not working on a bike with just standard old tubes, this bike has Super tubing.  As always I am eager to jump right in but before I turn a single wrench or remove a spec of dust or grease I need to do some research and also come up with a parts list so Pete knows what he is in for before I start the project.  We'll see how that goes.  Who knows maybe I will become a vintage bike consultant.

In other news we are experiencing a warming trend locally so I hope to be following my own advice in the next week - Ride.Smile.Repeat.