Usually my acquisitions go straight into dry dock and get rebuilt before I ride them, but for some reason I had an itch to ride the Randonee. I figured that for the equivalent of a ride around the block I could get it road worthy.
First I dealt with some, but not all of the vestiges of an old wired Cateye bike computer. I took off the stem mount,
and the wiring but left the rear wheel and crank sensors for another time.
I also noticed when loading the bike yesterday that one of the fender stays was disconnected and thus the tire was rubbing on the bracket.
Fortunately I had a film canister (gee remember film?) full of this kind of fender nut from an old broken fender I had salvaged parts from many moons ago.
With those issues resolved I put some air in the tires, made sure the brakes worked, sprayed a bit of WD-40 on the chain and adjusted the stem and seat post. I didn't want to waste chain lube on a chain that will get replaced.
I figured that cockpit wouldn't be great since the saddle was toast, the bars are narrow and the stem was standard unlike the tall Nitto Technomic stems I am used to. I wasn't wrong but it was fine for a short ride, what surprised me was how cramped it felt and when I got home I measured the top tube against the Cresta GT and sure enough the top tube is a full inch shorter! I find this odd because both the seat tube and stand over height is pretty much identical between the bikes.
I thought the ride feel of the bike was fine if unspectacular and I saw when comparing the tubing that the Randonee is Tange 5 as compared to the Nishiki's Tange 2.
A minor but irritating issue is the slightly out of level rear rack that I will correct when I rebuilt this bike.
There is also some rust around the top of the seat tube that I will need to deal with and the frame will probably need a dose of frame saver while I am at it. I am a bit concerned the hardware store nut and bolt serving as a seat post binder could be hiding damaged "binder ears" like I had on the Raleigh junk bike but as long as its not too bad a standard binder bolt is readily available on Amazon.
I have already acquired wider bars for the Trek 420 (on sale at VO) and have a Nitto Technomic stem on the way from Ebay and I have my eye on a deeply discounted VO saddle for the Trek as well, in addition to some Panaracer Paselas they may get used on the Novara as a test bed because I couldn't ride the current cockpit further than about 2 miles without discomfort or at least a lot of swearing. If that makes it more workable then it will be a good leave at work bike for the early spring as I try to get some miles in before Tour De Lopez, otherwise it will get cleaned up and moved on with its stock parts plus new consumables when the weather gets nice.
Ride. Smile.Repeat.
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