Two new retro-modern frames on the market

After a torrid July its been quiet here in blogsville so far in August.  With a new job and a few weeks of very smoky air - from the British Columbia wildfires- there hasn't been allot of time for working on bikes and after one ride in the smoke I decided to not ride again until it was gone.  The smoke has finally cleared, so to speak, but I haven't been out on the bike yet.

The Ritchey road bike did get sold after one refresh of the CL listing and it went for full asking which was nice.  I had grand plans to get two more bikes prepped and listed this month but I don't think that will happen.

One of those is the Motobecane Mirage, which  feels like its about 50% done but still needs a few sessions to be close.  And the other is the Raleigh mixte I picked up from bike works two years ago.  I am just tired of looking at it and the plan is to spend an hour or so getting it functional and then pricing it to move.

I may not have been wrenching on bikes or riding them recently, but I am not blind to a couple of new arrivals.  The first is the Rivendell Roadini which is in pre-order currently for $875 (frame-set).  I was going to jokingly name this post my next bike, but even with a new job I have enough demands on my income that  I won't be buying even a value priced Rivendell anytime soon.

I have lusted after Rivendell frames for nearly a decade and if I'd had more $$ back in 2009 the Handsome devil would have been a Riv Sam Hillborne.  You may have noticed that I really like lugged steel frames and Rivendell still makes them that way.  See the lovely seat tube cluster.

And fork crown.  Usually after a pre-order the price goes up so I am not sure how long these frame-sets will stay under the $1000 mark.

The other retro-mod frame I have my eye on is the Soma Stanyan.  This is actually a reintroduction of a bike that had been archived by Soma.  The original had chromed lugs and a thread-less headset.  I was very interested in them back then but the higher price tag (than a standard Soma road bike frame) and the thread-less stem put me off.  I do like Soma's stuff and even built up and briefly owned a Soma Smoothie.

The Stanyan also has lovely lugs as you can see in the bb cluster and unlike its predecessor its build for a old school 1" quill stem. It's less than the Roadini but at an estimated price of $725 (frame-set) it's not cheap either.

I do have a number of parts that would look nice on either bike but I have no where near a full build kit and as I mentioned before my income has other demands on it.  There is also the fact that I have four bikes already in the stable and the Roadini/Stanyan would overlap half my quiver.  The Grand Touring/Passage combo already fill that niche and although I could build up either of the retro-mod frames as a stripped down go fast roadie, that is just splitting hairs.  I really need a garage before I split hairs that fine lol.

Until next time Ride.Smile.Repeat

Ritchey Project Part VII -Done

Just a reminder of where this project started; rigged for triathlons, no seat-post or saddle, no brake hoods, sad mismatched worn tires, and at least a decades worth of storage dust and must. I started today needing to address the front derailleur, after allot of fiddling its not perfect but with some finessing the rear gears I can get the FD to drop into the inner ring.  Then I needed to tweak the front brake and it is also not perfect but its functional.

With those items out of the way it was time to wash up and work on the white bar wrap.  Somehow I got the left side done without too many issues.

Not so with the right side, I felt like I needed 6 hands to address all the issues that kept cropping up; the strip behind the brake lever didn't want to stay attached, the brake hood didn't want to stay rolled back from the bars and those issues kept me from focusing on keeping the wrap taught and evenly wrapped.  I could feel the frustration mounting so I literally threw up my hands and stepped away before I did something dumb.  It was time for lunch anyway and as I stepped away it occurred to me I had a solution for at least one problem.

I stopped by my local ACE hardware after lunch and bought a clamp.

With the clamp acting as my "3rd hand" the brake hood stayed out of the way so I could focus on my wrap job -so much easier!  That was $3.50 well spent.

Taping the bars done! and that puts a wrap on the get the bike ready for sale portion of this project.

Bike forums has an appraisal thread so I have a request in to get some ideas on where to start with listing this bike.  Plan A is to list the complete bike locally, Plan B if it doesn't sell is to expand the listing to Portland and Plan C if there is still no joy will be to dismantle the bike and part it out on ebay.

I am heading down to Portland this weekend so that will give some time to get feedback on the worth of this bike before I actually list it on CL.  With the Ritchey out of the work-stand there is room for me to work on something else....whose it gonna be?

Ride. Smile. Repeat.

Ritchey Project part 6.5 Rear brake redux

Before working on the Ritchey I took the bike ride I've been wanting to do for the last 3 days.  I did another West Seattle loop from home.  I got some forest action in Lincoln park.

And some sound and mountain views on beach drive.  I made a mid point stop..

..to fuel up on iced coffee and yogurt with handmade granola.  That helped ready me to tackle Avalon hill again....

but this time the granniest granny gear stayed clean, I used the next cog in which is getting me closer to being able to use any bike in the fleet to do this ride.  The Miyata has gears nearly as low as the Passage so if it was ready I could ride it on this route now.  If I can ride Avalon in the next gear down, 3 cogs  in,  then I can use the Handsome devil on this route and if I'm able to get 4 cogs in I can use the Motobecane which has a 40t "small" ring, might need to see if I can find something smaller that will work with the crank on the MotoGT.  Yes, I was geeking out with Sheldon Brown's gear calculator.

A bike forums member who also had an '86 Miyata trail runner was kind enough to pull his seat post and send me the size which is 26.8 and today after recovering from my 21 km ride I headed to the Co-op and found the Laprade above in the correct size - you can see it under the max height lettering if you enlarge the photo.

Where I left off about a week ago with the Ritchey was a self-inflicted torn brake hood.  I gave a try to pulling the hood up the lever and over the front of the housing but that wasn't  working, so I took out the cable, took the lever off the handle bars and got to work.

Going from the back of the housing forward I had the replacement hood mounted in no time and then reversed my process to get the lever back on the handle bars.

Since I had decided to route the cables in areo mode I needed to tape up the housing.

After figuring out the slack needed to make sure the brake cable didn't interfere with turning I used some blue painters tape to hold the housing in place.

I needed to trim some excess cable housing to fit the housing into the brake caliper.

Whenever I am trimming the housing I like to back the cable way off so that I don't end up cutting it by accident.

Everything appears to be working with the rear brake so I capped the cable and called it a night.  I now have 3 things left to do on this bike before I can list it;

• route the front brake cable and housing
• figure out why the front derailleur cable keeps coming loose
• wrap the bars

Really hoping to get the Ritchey sorted in the next few days before I head down to Portland.  And then I can start finishing a few other half baked projects.

Ride. Smile. Repeat

Dem's da brakes Ritchey Project part VI / Bike blitz 2017

Today was the day I was going to cable up the brakes on the Ritchey and hopefully even get to wrapping the bars to finish the rebuild and move on to trying to sell the bike.  Campy likes to do things differently and the brake cables are no exception, you need to use a different head than Shimano brakes but fortunately I had some cables with both ends I could use.  I also had enough white brake housing to use so I was off to a good start.

I  started with the rear brake and wanted to set up the brakes in the non-aero routing, through the top of the lever body but I ran into an issue when I started testing it.

You can see the channel on the side of the lever, that is where the barrel that the cable runs through moves back and forth on the lever.  When I tested the brake however it did not work smoothly, the brake lever did not fully retract and I couldn't get the rear brake to work right.

I thought perhaps the brake hood was interfering with the movement of the lever.

To make matters worse in testing that theory I managed to tear the hood...drat!

I know better than to use a sharp pointy tool to manipulate the brake hood but stupidly, and impatiently, I used it anyway and not surprisingly it caused the tear in the hood making it useless.

I recalled from taking the bike apart that these levers can be run either non-areo or areo and I figured if I ran them in aero mode the barrel that the cable runs through would be pulled all the back in its channel and perhaps solve the issue of the lever failing to retract all the way.

I wasn't ready to commit to running the brake cables in the non-aero mode so I mocked up the cable rather than cutting it to size.  The brake works better this way but of course I am down a brake hood.

Another option is to use a pair of older Campy levers I have that are drilled and run in non-areo mode only, they also would be a better fit for the Rustine's replacement hoods than the C- Record era levers.

The old levers have their own issues, the barrel that the cable runs through isn't turning and seems frozen in place.  I shot it with WD-40 and we'll see if that frees them up.

And now I need to decide do I/can I use the old school levers and order another set of Rustine's hoods or go with C-Record levers that are on the bike in aero mode and either go with the not quite right but also not crazy expensive Rustine hoods or order something that might fit better -like the ones above.  I found a website that appears to pinpoint the levers on the Ritchey at 1992-93, it also indicates that there were 4 generations of levers and hoods within the C-Record era from 1982-92...four - geez!

So close..

And still a ways to go.

Bike Blitz 2017!

I am house sitting this week and have access to the garage space above.  I figured I could get allot of bike work done during the 9 days I am house and pet sitting.  I had hoped to have everything set up over the weekend but I also wanted to finish the Ritchey project and we know how that is gong.

While looking up some info on my Park bike stand (PCS-9) I rediscovered it could collapse into a very small package - see above wrapped up with a toe-strap.  Much easier to transport that way.

A start with a drop cloth the tool box with most of the bike tools and the still collapsed bike stand.

And ready for business.

First customer, while I wait on parts for the Ritchey, is the Nishiki Cascade.  My plan is to strip it down so I can sell a few parts and make it easier to address the stuck seat-post issue.  If the seat-post defeats me no worries as I will have all the parts off and ready to be used or sold. Hoping to get alot done this week.

Ride. Smile. Repeat.

Making Progress -Ritchey Project part V

I have finally resumed working on the Ritchey Road bike and got it waxed so I could move on with the rebuild.

I got the shifters back on although if you look closely you will see I didn't get the right one mounted properly which contributed to some front derailleur set up issues, more on that later.

I also worked on the brakes -one thing about this era of Campy brakes is they didn't use a great finish on the mounting bolt and cable pinch bolt, this shot if after I used the dremel brass wire brush.

I got the front brake mounted.

I took some sand paper to the pads for a better braking surface.

I also noticed on the alloy surface of the brake levers there was black "veining" that mothers alloy polish didn't have any effect on.

And with the seat-post and saddle and the bars and stem back on its starting to look like a bike again. Both stem and seat post got a healthy coating of grease of course.

As you may recall from an early post on the Ritchey I had an issue getting the shift cable out of the rear derailleur shifter because someone had used a Shimano cable instead of the campy cable with a slightly smaller head.  I didn't have any campy cables but I have lots of Shimano ones, so with the help of my dremel with a sander head I got to work.

And kept testing the fit until the head could go in and out smoothly.

And just to be extra sure I gave the cable hole a shot of grease before threading the cable.

I had thought I might  breeze through to the end with the Ritchey but both derailleurs fought me today.  I am not sure if the RD never had an adjusting bolt or if it broke off but as  I was threading cable I noticed the lack of one.  The derailleur had shifted fine in index mode before I replaced the cables so I plowed ahead.

I had a heck of a time getting the cable threaded at the end until I realized it need to be above as in the shot above rather than threaded to the through the rusty nut and washer.  Once I got that sorted it went through all the gears in index mode.

Then the FD got into the act.  I threaded it and tightened it down but every time I shifted it it would slip and come loose.  I also noticed that the FD was "sticky"  it would shift from inner ring to outer but when I shifted back it would stay in the outer ring.  I doused the spring in WD-40.  I didn't quite get to the point of wanting to grab a hammer but it was close.

Things were kind of working for the drive train but I decided it was time to walk away so I could come back later with a clear head.

After fighting with derailleurs it was time for some farmers market fresh raspberries and a rose'.

I sat out on the porch swing and was even joined by my daughters cat Midnight.  I plan on going back for the brakes and the bar tape tomorrow.

Today there was a sale at my favorite bike Co-op Bike Works.  I went to a similar sale in 2015, where I got the Raleigh Rapide mixte, which is still in the queue.  I don't need another project but I thought I would go look in case there was something really special.

There were lots of folks, I got there just before it started and was about 20th in line and lots of bikes and frames and stuff - fenders, racks etc.

I spotted a scruffy Centurion Dave Scott Ironman which intrigued me....

..until I spotted the twin rust spots that are usually indicative of a front end collision.  It had no price on it and bikes were going for $35/$50/$75, I might have pointed out the frame issues to lower the price in order to buy the bike to harvest the full Shimano 600 group, but my heart wasn't in it.

I was intrigued by the Bridgestone XO-3 frame, they were only $15, but I kept on walking.

I did stop for this Specilized Sirrus, I picked it up and looked closely at it.  I have long thought an Allez or Sirrus would be nice to have but I think this frame was a bit small and it was made in Taiwan rather than Japan so I put it back.

In the end not even a cool Raleigh Sports could tempt me.  I walked away empty handed, back to my large queue of projects.  I hope to write more about them soon if I can get the Ritchey finished.

Ride.Smile.Repeat.