Robvolz 

I am organizing a bike painting class at a local Portland body shop. All you have to do is bring the color and decals. They will provide everything else.

Message me.

Andy_K 

That's not an easy combination of attributes these days, but I think Mavic A319's check all your boxes. I ordered some from BikeInn in Spain last year and had no problems getting them delivered.

https://www.tradeinn.com/bikeinn/en/...19/136238893/p

rccardr 

A 319's are great rims. Easy to build, very robust, 19mm internal so you can mount bigguns.
A little heavy, but considering they are double-eyeletted and their intended use, that's to be expected.
I bought mine on eBay last year for less than $100 a pair delivered but they are somewhat pricier now and silvers are more $ than black ones.

Doug Fattic 

It was the style in the early to mid 70's not to put brake cable guides on the top tube. I did the same combination of bosses on the 1st frame I made at Ellis Briggs in the UK in 1975 (left the TT guides off). In fact decent looking brake cable guides weren't available from suppliers until a year or two or three later going by my memory.

Campy triples were/are not that common and the small ring was a 36. Jim's machining abilities allowed him to put on a 32. What is the inner chainring size on your bike?

RustyJames 

Thanks for the Mavic recommendations. Price is good compared to some of the other rims I was looking at.

The cable guide thing doesn’t bother me. I'll use what I have unless I go crazy and start moving cantilever posts. The water bottle mounts are a threaded stud with an Allen nut. Was this common?

Inner is a 36 tooth so I’m assuming no additional machining was done.

romperrr 

I guess I missed something, what happened to Jim? I saw him posted somewhat recently.

hopperja

There was an argument on another thread.

8/16/23 he wrote: "...Plus, it feels like a personal insult. It makes me want to pull the plug on Bike Forum. Jim Merz."

Unfortunately for all of us, this was his last post on Bike Forums. Hopefully he'll be back.

Doug Fattic 

No it was not common. Bill Hurlow built me a frame in the UK in 1974 that had studs instead of a hole for water bottle mounts. The purpose I presume was to keep water out of the inside of the down tube. This would be a bigger consideration on a touring bike with greater exposer to the elements.

It is easy enough for any frame builder to add whatever style of brake cable guides on the top tube you might want. That is if you are going to repaint it. A word of caution is that the popular style starting in the later 70's to have 3 open ended guides were water and sweat collectors. I've repainted a lot of bikes where that was the place rust started.

Andy_K 

That's the way they are on my 1973 De Rosa. I've never seen another frame that I noticed had them.

merziac

The water bottle studs were a Merz thing, don't lose the nuts, at least 3 of mine have them.

I have a Bottecchia that was owned by a PDX stalwart that has them too and was repainted but Merz and DiNucci said they didn't but them on it so others were obviously doing it too.

RustyJames 

Update -

I started cleaning the front rack. Pics show 1/2 of rack that was mostly cleaned up. Fair amount of chrome plating flaking off.






Next up, I’m trying to decide what color to paint the frame and fork. Darkish purple is a strong candidate.

merziac

Fantastic, lucky the racks are there and still viable given the condition, I would ask Jack about painting them unless you're prepared ti step way up on chrome, I think he can get that done too if you really want.

Maybe black racks and Deep Purple.

Portlandjim

I'm back on Bike Forums. The racks are pretty rusty. I would get a chrome shop, if any still exist in Oregon (they are almost all gone in CA), to strip the chrome/nickel plating down to bare steel. Then get the racks bead blasted. The cheaper way of refinishing them is painting, powder coating will last longer than normal paint if done correctly. Originally my racks were bead blasted and nickel/chrome "as is" plated, a very durable finish. This is much less labor intensive than a polished chrome finish, so is less expensive. But there are so many ways a chrome plater can screw things up. The plating must be thin, adding a copper base plating is to be avoided. If the plating builds up inside the threads then it's really almost impossible to fix without stripping and starting over. Any professional bike frame painter can obtain approved (by me) Merz frame decals from https://sssink.com/. They don't sell decals to the public.

Robvolz 

Here in Oregon, I use Oregon City's Silver Star Plating which ships weekly to Nampa Idaho. I've used them for Alfa bumpers and and have been pleased.

RustyJames 

Portlandjim I love chrome but there are few platers and quality seems to vary so I’m eventually going to have the racks powder coated. I also have concerns with the chrome plating process so PC is fine with me.

Also, you and I chatted offline about moving the canti posts for 700c wheels so I will add that to the to-do list.

merziac

Recently?

Robvolz 

yes. I use them all the time, including some vintage bath fixtures. 6 weeks is their turn-around.

I haven't used them for bike parts, because I use St Louis plating, so much cheaper but takes min 6 months.