Team Miyata circa 1979

For all you classic bike junkies out there I'm going to occasionally feature an older bike , some from my own collection and others that just happen to come by my shop when I have my camera handy. This one was a project I took on a number of years ago. I got it as a frame, fork, headset and derailleurs. I had to find everything else and it wasn't easy. The old Dura Ace EX equipment was not really popular and never produced in great quantity. It took especially long to find the brake calipers. I still have to put on the AX wheelset I found for the bike and I really need to find the Dura Ace stem to complete the bike. As it is now, it is nearly complete and it is one of the best riding bikes I have ever owned.
Here's that ancient EX drivetrain , the seldom seen EX crankset and really hill unfriendly gears.
The top mounted 'Bunny rabbit' shifters were actually a great invention at the time-great they were but the buying public for the most part were not impressed. Moving the right shifter actually trims the left shifter a fraction....an innovation that would foretell the direction of Shimano's 'integrated shifting system' of the future.

Road frame, fork and stem

Way back in the '70's the thing to do with your custom frame was to have a Silca pump painted to match. The paint of the day was not powdercoat but Du Pont Imron catalyzed polyurathane enamel , a paint that when sprayed on properly yields a really smooth surface and deep luster. The metallic blue was a very popular color back in the day and though this frame is a more current design, the paint really harkens back to the era when I first became aware of custom frames.
The head tube collars are also something from the past, this time from the '80's and the dawning of mountain bikes.

The color didn't photograph properly as my camera has been acting up lately but you can see that I did a little work to the fork crown to make it look a bit like a '70's Ron Cooper fork.
The customer asked for a matching stem so I built one-one of the two or three stems I built in 2010. This one is made for a 31.8 mm handlebar , pretty much the standard these days.

Another Della Santa

This Della Santa road bike was made in 1978 and it is mine. I lucked into it around 8 years ago-a friends housemate was selling it. It's pretty close to my size and it is in really good shape. It is the only bike I own built by another American builder.

Tall road frame ready to build up.

This frame may be tall but it is under 4 lbs. True Temper S-3 builds up very light. I used a lighter head tube and brazed on some collars for a little strength and style .
When a frame is this tall I leave the seat stays straight rather than put some bends in them.
The rider is 6'5" so the head tube is really long . The build will be Dura Ace with Enve fork and seatpost . I'm also getting some Reynolds carbon clinchers for it......this should be a really quick steel bike.

Big tire road bike gets dirty

After a long wait I finally got the time and resources to build up the 'Big-tire road bike' that will hopefully find its way to a magazine this winter. To prove that the bike was at home on any type of road surface, I took it out on a short ride that involved HWY 1, some dirt road along the railroad tracks and a muddy stretch of double track along the ocean where the cyclocross team trains in the late summer. Getting a bike this dirty on the first ride is probably not the best idea,especially considering that I built it with the purpose of attempting to get a review in print.
As you can see, I did get it pretty muddy in short order as the recent rains have turned the normally dry dusty conditions into a quagmire of slop . Although the Challenge Parigi-Roubaix tires are well suited toward dry dirt conditions , they were a bit slippery in some of the muddy corners , almost letting go completely and sending me into the muck. Fortunately , a season of 'cross racing has made me a little more centered on the bike and I didn't fall. The mud was sometimes so deep that I had to stop and carry the bike over sections that would have swallowed up the wheels up to the axles.
Shortly after these photos were taken I hosed off the bike and got it looking nice and new again. Now I'll get an email out to the media and see if anyone else wants to get this bike all muddy again. The whole idea of a bike like this is having the ability to ride just about anywhere without having to compromise on comfort and efficiency. This bike goes down the pavement pretty fast, even with the big tires ( 700x27c). Although it isn't a proper cyclocross rig it still handles the dirt well , if not a little bumpy with the 70 psi tires. It's a nice comprimise and a classic looking machine that will make people do a double-take when it is seen on the single track.

Travel bike fully assembled

I have been working on building up this bike today and it is ready to roll at last. The photos do not really do it justice as I feel this bike really came together looking better than I imagined it would. The bottle cages were a request from the customer......kind of a throwback to the mid-90's when Elite cages were on every pro's bike. They still are the most stylish, if not the most current.
The bike is the 'Big-tire road bike' that I have been seeing a surge in popularity as of late. The S&S couplers add a bit of weight but will really pay for themselves over the next few years of plane rides.
Matching Chris King hubs and headset make this a bit classier of a build than the stock 6700 group. The King stuff is also lighter and needs less maintenance. The couplers blend into the frame almost seamlessly. Not being a very large frame, it should pack easily.

The 5 foot solution

This is not the first one of these that I have built. This particular edition "low standover 'cross frame" will have disc brakes. I like taking phots of frames in this state as they look really clean before all the cable guides and other bits are welded and/or brazed on. This is the first steel frame I have built in about three weeks so I'm going slow and the welds are pretty much as good as I like to see. The rider is 5'1/4" with a 27 3/4" stand over. She likes her handlebars up pretty high so the front end of the bike will accomplish that with no headset spacers and no need for some spastic-looking stem reaching up to the sky. Lots of spacers and/or a wacky stem usually means that the bike isn't as good of a fit as it could be.
This part of the frame has a bit more going on than usual. The extra tube that joins the top tube to the head tube will keep the bike strong enough for some rough dirt riding.
It's always a happy day when I can put the frame on the drawing and see that I actually built what I set out to build. A long time ago it wasn't always the case ! Bike frames can fight you many steps of the way......nothing fits , everything needs to be clean and you can't be pissed off and expect to do good work. I used to play a lot of Nirvana in the shop years ago but i found that I would really get angry easily while listening to it. I figured out that really funny stuff is a problem, too......trying to weld a delicate pass while cracking up to some really stupid music usually yields some sort of embarrassing tatoo on the frame where you slipped and melted something you shouldn't have.