Thanks! I might reach out after I get some miles on this frame or run out of my tin of matchy paint.
Some updates: The bar tape, foam pipe insulator and full wrap of electrical were epoxied on to the silver ergo bars on top of half a black rattlecan paintjob . I peeled of half of one side with the help of a carpet knife and some solvents, discovered an XXL margarita worth of human salt under the tape and cut the bars in half to avoid finishing the job. The clamps on the brake levers are deeply pitted from the salt exposure - Ill probably drop on some different levers when I put on some rando bars.
Did a lot of rust removal today on the cable stops and cable hangers and will be painting them tomorrow.
The anno on the cranks is peeling, which is whatever. There is some kind of offwhite buildup on the chainrings I can’t yet identify. Its not water or alcohol soluble, very resistant to steel wool, and shows some crystal structure Its a bit evident in the album, but the buildup is inside the drillium holes too, and is difficult to pick out. Anyone have a hunch what it might be and the best way to tackle it?
It’s like an old house with good bones. There’s a great bike under all those layers. I took down my Irish great-grandad’s fiddle today and played some Irish tunes for the bike to make it like me better
Great report! I love weird finds like this. ATMO this is great because it is just not perfect enough that you won’t feel bad modifying it or repainting.
Sounds like standard aluminum oxidation, which makes sense as if those rings were home drilled then those holes are bare aluminum and ripe for corrosion.
The off-center threaded boss for direct mounted rear fender is sure interesting. Can you please take a picture of what’s going on under the fender? I was too chicken to figure out how to do this to my Nordavinden when raising the bridge recently.
Is it really two brazeons with profiled spacers adjacent to the brake bolt? That seems like there would be two large non perpendicular bolt heads under the fender if so
Oh you sweet summer child - they are brass, flathead screw heads
I just took that off yesterday and put it back on in the evening and it was a pain in the ass. It is indeed two threaded bosses. There are two holes in the fender. They grey bits are two pieces of profiled plastic tube - two brass screws go through the tube and into the threaded bosses in the bridge. Its a bit fiddly to get everything lined back up, but it is a pretty solid and low profile interface as long as you never want to adjust the way the fender sits. They are reasonably perpendicular.
cut the steerer extension
Strong maybe here. I’ve got one of these dickaleurs on my gravgrav bike, and I’ve made a suite of ortlieb-equipped bags for it already. I probably will make one to replace some of those spacers with. I might chop it if there’s more than one spacer of room left.
Brake reach isn’t much beyond a 700c rim at the moment. I don’t think I could squeeze 650b’s in, unfortunately.
Looks like Soma makes a knockoff of that rack too. I’m not sure what other brakes I would go with - 32’s with fenders is pretty ideal for a rando bike for me. I’ve had Mafac racers on bikes in the past, but I can’t really remember the difference between those and the Weimann’s that are on there. I will not be spending Paul money on brakes unless a set of the dark green anno racer brakes comes up for hella cheap, because they almost perfectly match the paint. I’ve basically never had anything but cantis on most any of my bikes, so I’m not super hip to the options for centerpull stuff.
The holes in the fenders are dramatically oversized. The screws sit on a flaking “gasket” made from silicone sploodge directly on the fender.
Honestly, after seeing all the pothead decisions that PO put into this bike, I almost never want to touch the stuff again for fear that everything I do is secretly just as shoddy and I’m too high to notice.
It could be worse, I’ll post pics next time I have the wheel off. This is 100% something I’m going to forget about until I’m on kilometer 300 of a ride and it fails. I eventually will cut some reinforcement and glue it to the underside of the fender as a sort of washer.
I’m being a bit of a debbie downer on all the details here and I need to stress that with one’s eyes closed, this is a freaking fantastic bike - the drivetrain is smooth as butter, plenty of stopping power and nice comfy geometry. But those details…
I tried really hard to figure out how to do that well and pretty much figured the one clean way is to use brazed on posts and a single centered vertical boss for the fender. Like brake bridges don’t really want to also handle direct mounted fenders.
I think the margin of error the way it’s done is just too high- fractions of a degree at the front or trailing edge of the fender mean that small holes for bolts aren’t gonna be dead-nuts on the brake bridge and you’re gonna have to enlarge the holes. I admire the effort that went into trying though. Now if only the maker had tried to clean up that brake bridge braze while he was fucking around down there…
I guess the flipside to this is that, despite it being imperfect, it’s the most solid fender to brake bridge mounting I’ve seen. I feel like the little wraparound fender clips that insert horizontally always have some slop to them - this is perfectly solid.
These racks seem dumb as hell if you don’t have brazed on center pull posts. In the second example the whole rack is just levering on the single fork crown brake mounting bolt.
galaxy brain: when you’re refinishing the frame, add brazeons to the bridge that are perpendicular to the fender curve so you can use a button head fastener and non profiled spacers
I’ve seen a bridge that took a brake bolt and also had a thread to accept a fender bolt but it must have only had a couple of threads engagement. Have also seen a bridge with a brazed on male thread to fit a nut inside the fender, much stronger.
shimano direct mount brakes would help clean that area up also
The bike allegedly had direct mount brakes when built and they were replaced with centerpulls. Some shit got moved around apparently by the second framebuilder and I don’t wanna move it back.
