Mildly interesting things to report. First off, I drilled the steerer, so all of you conspiracy theorists can start building that inevitable pine box for me.
The walls of the steerer tube increase to nearly 2.5mm thick here, so I'm not really concerned. Softer steel too - more likely to stretch or bend than crack catastrophically. I'm sure a structural engineer out there has also written a dissertation on how much stress this area actually is under during braking (or cornering) vs. the headset bearings.
I also installed the clips for the shifter cable. The clips did not come with hardware, so had to fend for my own screws. Said screws are (sadly) not stainless. The captive nuts would not thread onto the existing stainless hardware I have, though the nuts started spinning anyway. I may swap out the nuts.
They look really sharp though, and not out of place at all. The top one was placed to mimic the location of a factory clip-on cable stop.
Next problem is whether I can find a nice, discreet set of clips to keep the cable in place on the chainstay:
Originally Posted by
Ged117
That is a great find (and at an incredible price). The B66 on my '50 is original, with no deep cracks but well broken in after 70 years. After some proofhide treatments it is supple again and is very comfortable. However the springs squeak with every leg stroke. How to remedy that? I took a two hour ride the other day, and inspected the saddle after to look for stress seams but all was well. The B66 is CAD$200 new here. I think I would go with a second hand one from ebay if the original had a failure, or seek out rhm. I like the black rails of the original.
The '60s B.66 I just replaced squeaked all the time too - I just tolerated it. The earlier saddle has an additional, thicker strip of backing leather under it; perhaps the squeaking is from the leather shifting other under pressure, rather than the springs?
I'd put a bit of oil on the spring/frame interfaces to see if the sound temporarily goes away or not.
-Kurt