1987cp

Haven't gotten any really recent pics, but this was taken immediately after adding the Gary bars and Lambda pedals:






Since I've been having a pretty bad time with rack attachment, I whittled this ugly little brace out of some 5/16" rod to extend the usefulness of my junky little rack. One end was reduced in diameter by chucking the rod in a drill and spinning it against sandpaper until I could run it into a M6x1.0 threading die. I made the threaded area longer than intended, but that let me use a nut to set the depth with respect to the recessed brake nut on the back of the fork crown rather than having to weld or braze some sort of washer-and-fillet affair, which would probably have gone rather badly (and it turned out the full 5/16" rod diameter didn't fit in the crown hole anyway).



The middle was heated and bent, and the other end was heated and flattened and tapped for M5x0.9 like the front fork eyelets use. I'd actually had the whole thing shined up pretty well with the sandpaper routine, but it of course darkened thoroughly during the heating cycles. Oh well ... it was free, and it's still by far the best and simplest rack attachment I've ever had.



Thinking I may try to get a Sheldon nut so I can return the beat-up T nut pictured to its original home on my '84 Record.



One other recent development was cleaning and waxing the old chain, and scrubbing the freewheel pretty thoroughly for the first time. It bugs me that the old 14-30 freewheel is bent (entire body wobbles back and forth slightly), but a nice new IRD (or similar) freewheel will probably have to wait a while.

1987cp

Most new additions should be obvious from the pictures, but include in a nutshell:


- Nashbar moustache-style bar
- Nashbar springy saddle
- Velo Orange "Porteur" twin-leg kickstand
- Velo Orange steering stabilizer
- "BBB" cartridge-style brake pads
- Sheldon fender nuts (so my Raleigh fender nut can go back on the '84 Record)


I also finally came across the old Suntour XC-LTD crank arms from my Paramount, which were quickly reunited with their original 24/36/46 round chainrings and installed on this bike. The Q-factor is wider than the Sakae turbine spoke crank, but I've decided that for me that's not such a bad thing.


Installing the Porteur kickstand turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. First, there's no kickstand plate. Second, the chainstay bridge is too far forward to use the sandwich-style arrangement really conveniently, and I ended up securing it with a 5/16 bolt and nut with bits of innertube underneath and the shift cables still rub. Third, it's now impossible to put my bike on my cheapie Nashbar service stand that cradles a bike by its bottom bracket shell. And finally, once the $&#! thing was finally on, I found that my chain was rubbing on the starboard kickstand leg unless I adjusted the leg stop pretty much all the way down. After spending some time despairing that I'd just be stuck rubbing my kickstand on the ground every once in a while, I realized that a shorter derailer cage would bring the chain back up out of the way. So I swapped on the shortest-cage working derailer I had laying around, a Shimano Sora intended for a double chainring setup, and solved the problem. The other annoyance about this kickstand is that the setscrews on the adjustable legs don't seem to do anything, making it easy to accidently adjust one, which leads to the bike leaning, which is exactly the problem I'd been trying to get away from! Still, at least I can load my son in the back without having to hold the bike up at the same time, so that's nice.



Anwhoo. Hm. So far, I'm pretty sold on the moustache-style bars, since they provide a relatively upright position with my hands out by the shifters but still allow a fairly aggressive position with the hands in the curves. The Gary bar was a huge improvement over the stock bars, and this one is an equally huge improvement over the Gary. A shortcoming of this exact bar is that the reach and drop are both more than the original Nitto, so I may need to try a proper Nitto setup if I'm ever feeling rich or can get one cheap enough. It'd also be better if I hadn't lopped an inch off this chromo stem back when I first got it and thought the change in height was too radical, but not much to be done about that now other than getting another stem. I do have a notion of trying an upright swept-back bar, either on this bike or my other Raleigh, but options for those are slightly confusing since V-O's are narrow, Rivendell's Nittos are expensive, and I don't know if any others can be had to fit bar-end shifters.


I'm also pretty sold on having a springy saddle. This one's the first one I've ever had, and it seems awfully good considering that it's one of the very cheapest saddles you can buy, period. Not a lot of padding, but according to some people that's a good thing, and at least it's not no-padding combined with no give like the two stock Raleigh USA saddles I've got. The shape could be better, but on the other hand, it's a comfortable, no-maintenance saddle that cost me $15 and looks like it'll be reasonably durable.


Surprising change from installing the new pads. I've never heard of "BBB", but a set of four was just $10, and my brakes no longer either grind or shudder, but stop smoothly and confidently. And since they're cartridge-style, I think I can buy Kool-Stop cartridge refills to fit them. Win.


Random goofiness, I'd previously secured the front of the rear fender to the bolt on the stock kickstand via a bit of scrap metal, but now I had to find a different solution. After finding that I now had access to the hole in the kickstand bridge, and that a 7mm tap should fit without drilling, and that my local Ace Hardware stocked 7mm bolts that were just long enough, I now have a rather niftier arrangement.


Other random goofiness, I finally gave up on my homemade kid-seat brackets so I could position the kid so he's not bumping me with his knees all the time, and got out the bogus seatstay clamps that came with the seat. This arrangement works surprisingly well, with the exception that the brake arms now protrude into the foot area! Pretty sure the little guy's been making me get a little extra exercise on occasion by lighly applying the rear brake with his toes!


So ... yeah, I think that's all for now. Sorry for the long-winded update, but I fiddle with the bike pretty often but hardly ever post about it!

1987cp

Right, what was it I was whining about ad nauseum? 27" wheels? No more! I stopped at a yard sale where I saw a whole bunch of bikes lined up, and in the assortment I found a pair of wheels sitting around without a bike attached. Looked like they'd been left in a field for a year or two, but I discovered medium-width 700c rims, 36 spokes, 7-speed HG cluster, and even a new-looking pair of Kenda 38mm tires! I have my doubts as to the exact identity of the rims and hubs, and I need to get around to truing them a bit one of these days (maybe I should learn something about spoke tension eventually?), and the bearings could use servicing, and the tires are cheapies labeled max pressure 50psi, but after tossing on most of my 32t HG50 cluster that I've been wanting to run on this bike ever since I got it, I'm pretty impressed! My son especially likes that he's not quite so jostled constantly by every little crack and pothole we run over.

It's weird how cushy a "38" tire seems compared to my old "37" knobbies, but the only downside seems to be that fender clearance has gotten really tight (as in, a lot of guys wouldn't bother trying). Looking at the tire-to-stay clearance, I have my doubts now as to whether I'll be able to physically fit a 40mm tire even without fenders, but these are enough of an improvement in ride comfort that I might not ever really care.

Another odd thing I've noticed, my braking has improved quite noticably! While before it was smooth and predictable, I would always grab both brakes with the kid on board. It's possible I just happened to get the pad adjustment better this time around, but now I can haul ~300 lbs of bike, dad, and kid to a stop with confidence using just the front brake. That'll take some getting used to!

Oh yeah, I need to get an 8-speed chain now. Should've gotten one instead of the "6/7" speed chain I bought last summer, but oh well. Maybe a LBS will have a HG50 chain in stock for $20 ....

1987cp

I happened to upload some current pictures since I removed the fenders and baby seat to put on my new-to-me tandem. The 38-622 wheels and tires, Albatross bar, and '90s Deore crank went on sometime last summer. The fork crown mounted "diving board" came with my Civia Market Basket that's on the tandem - the idea being to be able to easily swap that rack over on occasion.

jdefran

How do you like that Nashbar RD?

1987cp

I think it's great. I originally bought it to solve a cog-clearance problem on another bike, which it managed fine. It's made by Microshift of Taiwan ... pretty sure it's identical to this one except for the markings and the price: https://www.rivbike.com/product-p/d41.htm


Took this bike on a pizza run today, first time really riding it this year since I've usually been on my new tandem with the kids. Felt crazy-zippy, and I spent a surprising amount of time on the big chainring!

1987cp

Annnnnd, it's over. Well, maybe.

Saturday I had this out with the big Civia Market Basket on the front, and was zipping down an asphalt trail while my wife tested her new-to-her Detel mixte frame.

Turns out I very stupidly had not checked often or diligently enough that the bolt holding the "diving board" to the fork crown was tight. It came loose, and the basket, pivoting about the mid-fork eyelets, swung down and slammed me into the pavement.

First, the good: I did not actually eat pavement as I had feared. My worst damage are some abrasions and heavy bruising from where I landed on my left hand.

The bike wasn't so lucky. The basket hitting the wheel seems to have instantaneously bent the fork backward, and then crumpled the downtube at the location of the quickstand. Ironically, this happened immediately after finally putting on a good rear shift cable and shortly after doing a nicer job of rewrapping the bars with my recently-purchased Velo Orange city brake levers. I'll probably post pictures of the frame and fork eventually. The downtube may be repairable or replaceable, but that will be a question of whether I should undertake that repair or pass the frame to someone much handier with metalwork.



Yesterday I stripped off everything except the brakes, since they're no use on another frame because the springs are on the "wrong" side. The rear wheel is currently on my '75 Grand Prix, as will probably be the front wheel once I get it straightened.



Amusing: Walking back up the trail Sunday morning, I was able to collect the Sheldon nut that had come loose from holding the diving board to the fork crown, as well as the wire bit of the Quickstand, which cracked when the downtube buckled. I was not able to locate the bolt that fell out to see if it had any damage, so maybe it flew into the grass or someone scrounged it.


Will I get another '80s touring frame? Will I go the spendier route and get something as similar as possible to a Soma San Marcos? Will I just ride the Grand Prix and call it good? We have yet to see!

Peruano

Damn. Congratulations on not doing more bodily damage. Other bikes will come along.

Chris_in_Miami

Wow, pretty spectacular way to wrap that saga up, glad you weren’t seriously hurt! A few years ago, I was installing a front rack and realized that this could happen. I ended up getting rid of that rack, it spooked me too much to use it.

1987cp

Looks like you were smarter than I was in that regard. The Market Basket seems quite safe when used with the curved strut attachment that goes behind the fork crown (and which I keep attached to my tandem), but with the diving board, apparently much less so. I'd also used the diving board with a simple board-and-struts rack I made for free ....... which come to think of it, could have possibly caused a very similar accident. Yikes!


My blue Loctite should maybe find its way into my bike toolbox from my car toolbox .....



Anywhoo. Already on the lookout for possible replacements ... vintages span from early '80s (I think) to the past decade, price points from $130 shipped to about $1000. Might be the right time to start a thread about that ......

https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...l#post21568188