rustystrings61 

I burned the midnight oil the last two nights and got the Lighthouse assembled.

Sunday evening I swung by Grille 246, the new enterprise of the owner of the now shuttered LBS Bikes & Boards. I had earlier asked him if he could round up brake and shift cables and housings for each, because I'd rather give him the money instead of some corporate behemoth. Coleman did not disappoint, and later that evening after dinner and family time I went to work. The biggest hassle of the evening was threading the cables into the Tektro levers and getting the wire through the deeply-buried ferrules left behind by their previous owner. But I managed. Then I cut the front brake housing too short as well as the cable, so into the stash of useable cables I went for a replacement. That done, I added a two-inch bit of housing and fitted it right out of the lever, ran the cable through it and the too-short bit, butted and taped them together inline and lashed it all to the bars with packing tape. It works nicely now.

The shifter cables were next, and they went reasonably smoothly. Threading the front cable through the three-segmented tunnel under the BB could have been smoother, and there's a kink in the wire where it's visible right before it goes into the cable clamp, but it works and I'll live with it. I might have done better to have added one more inch to the loop of housing from the chainstay stop to the rear derailleur, but it works smoothly and I should stop second-guessing myself.

I haven't bought bar tape yet, so I dug into big bin of recycled bar tape and emerged with enough white stuff from the '93 Eros that provided parts, wiped off the worst of the dirt and started wrapping. There are a couple of voids I will live with until I get some new tape and start over. That done, I sat back and admired the bike for a moment. This was how it looked Monday morning before I went to work -



Monday afternoon's mailbox was a jackpot - a new KMC 9-speed chain and a new, unused, unmounted Stronglight JP 400 ISO 113mm bottom bracket. The latter was a score, a gentleman bought it, opened the box and realized he'd bought the wrong one, so $11 and shipping and it was mine. I was delighted to see it is a Made in France Stronglight, and the spindle color had that purplish cast I remember from some old Stronglights in years past. I used a nylon bristle brush and some citrus cleaner to get the last of the crud out of the BB threads, coated them with fresh grease and screwed the Stronglight into place. It was very smooth feeling going in, and I feel good about it. Next up were the cranks, a set of T.A. Alize arms that came to me with a 48T ring in trade to our own @hazetguy. I'd snagged a 44T T.A. ring and a 30T Shimano granny off the 'Bay and fitted them earlier. They went on smoothly, and then I ran into my first snag.

The SunTour Cyclone Mk. II braze-on front derailleur assumes a 72 degree or so seat tube angle. On this bike with a 74 degree seat tube, the front of the cage was fine, but the towards the back it kept kissing the teeth of the big ring. I tried adjusting it, making sure I had the whole thing shoved up as high on the mount as I could get it to go. Finally, I took a shifter cable remnant, wrapped the last 1/2-in of it with tape to hold it together, snipped it off and taped it to the bottom front edge of where the derailleur engaged the mount. When I screwed it all back together my impromptu shim worked to even out the line of the cage with the chainring, and everything was good. I had to Google setting chain length and found several citations of St. Sheldon, so I did his big-to-big-with-one-link-more thing, threaded and joined the chain with the magic link.

My cheap and cheesy bike stand's bottom bracket rest interferes with the bolts on triples, so I worked for a while using the little Nitto stand seen above and tinkered. I used the barrel adjuster at the shift boss-mounted cable stop and with three clicks dialed in the rear derailleur, silencing the chatter. I went over everything, tightening and adjusting. Then I rested it on its stand in front of my couch, sat down and gazed up on it for a few minutes.

This morning after walking the dog I pumped the 32 mm Paselas up to 70 psi each, shoved my bare feet into my cycling shoes and took it out for a spin around the parking lots.

Oh. Oh, my. It feels a lot like the Specialized Sirrus I sold Sunday, but cushier. It just glided along, it handled intuitively, it changed gears cleanly and quickly, the brakes worked ... it felt stable and calm at slow speeds while making tight turns, and it felt like it just fits, just right. Finding time to ride it and shake it all out may be challenging, but I will work my way around the hottest week so far this year and do all of those things and more.

It needs new bar tape, and I think I'll go white, unless I decide on red or a red and white pattern. I'll want white bottle cages, just because. Maybe raise the saddle 1 cm. That's it.

And now that you've suffered through all these words, here are the obligatory pix!


The sun wasn't entirely up when I took these but you can still get a sense of the lines of the bike.

It makes my heart happy to have a French crank and a French bottom bracket at the heart of this bike's drivetrain.

I love the angles of this bike.

I ran the same sort of levers, shifters and cable routings on my Rivendell in 2000.

I bought this saddle in 2000 for my old Rivendell, and it has graced several bikes through the years. I may decide to add red paint to the seatpost flutes.

If you look really closely you can see my cable fragment shim and the red tape holding it to be clamped down. The original low limit screw, mounting screw and hardware were also missing, so I raided the front derailleur bin for parts and added a brake caliper shaped washer to boot.

I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Mr. 66

I use to do tapping with the BFH, then I ran into a stuck Italian cup. My wrench blew apart tapping, with a shard whizzing past my my ear. These days I'm using an old Aluminum LL bat from 66 jr's team as my cheater.

A very impressive build! Thanks for sharing

mpetry912 

this is a real special bike and well worth saving ! Glad you got it back on the road.

I mean LOOK at that thing in the side view. It just looks "right".

/markp

rustystrings61 

Ha! And all this time I thought those aluminum baseball bats had no sporting purpose! Cool hack that works with wider tool handles than the length of galvanized pipe I've been using for socket wrenches - thanks!

due ruote 

It’s a very cool frame. I like how the stripping away of all superfluous details allows the functionality to exist as an elegant design. Maybe if the Shakers had built bikes, they would have looked like this.

rustystrings61 

It DOES have a kind of Shaker vibe! I think of it as a lugless fillet-brazed rando bike with a bit of attitude - the frame's angles are a bit more aggressive than what I usually ride, but the Sirrus opened up my eyes to how much fun that can be! Now to find some early morning ride time ...

merziac

BBBBB cheater, brilliant!

I have a 4 ft. thinwall pipe with one end pinched to go over the bullitproof Sugino wrench, no hammer needed, ever and never fails or damages any parts, pieces, tools, frames or flesh, ever, period.

himespau 

For one particularly stuck BB (cartridge BB fused to Ti frame - apparently no lube or antisieze when assembled) after lots, and lots of ATF:Acetone soaks for several months, a deadblow hammer on a 12" wrench (park BB tool bolted onto BB), and several cycles with the torch, I clamped a Park FFS-2 Frame and Fork Straightener tool to the wrench for a 3'+ cheater bar and just muscled it out. Was sure I was going to tear the threads or something before I got it out, but it came out and the shell threads were still in great shape. After lots of cleaning (and lots of antisieze - and plumber's tape), a new one went in nice and easy like butter.

rustystrings61 

Pix from today's ride - I really love this bike! Still mastering half-step+granny, maybe get different stem and bars for one more inch of height, but otherwise, this simply works. The drive train feels like a new bike (except for where the right shifters gets a bit mushy in the middle of the cassette), the handling is sublime, and the 32 mm Paselas soak up the road shock. And besides, it's pretty.

merziac

Wow, great job, looks fantastic.

rustystrings61 

I made a trade with a fellow BF'er, sending me a 90mm Nitto Technomic stem for a 110mm version of the same. I then swapped out the too-short SR Custom for the Nitto, raising the bars to a more comfortable level. Unfortunately, the shifter cables and housings were too short to go as high as I really wanted, and the extra tautness interfered with smooth operation of all gears. Still, it rode great, as seen here -



A few days later I revamped the cabling, using the old rear cable as the new front and fitting a brand new wire for the rear mech. I also cheated and grafted new short lengths of housing to the existing ones, butted them together and taped the joints securely to the bars where it would all be hidden - handlebar tape covers a multitude of sins. This also allowed me to get the bars up just that extra little bit more. I am very pleased with the fit of this bike.

Piff 

A perfect sports tourer, love it.

What is that extra hole/nut on the non-drive side seat stay? Apologies if this already was asked earlier in the thread, I haven't yet read through it carefully.

bOsscO

It looks great and bonus points for getting it to where you want it fit wise.
Hard to tell in post 26 but do the different housings rub the headtube? Would some frame protector be in order?

rustystrings61 

That appears to be a generator lamp mount. There are small loops for wiring on the underside of the down tube and the back of the seat tube, and I am assuming the original owner planned to run the wire up the underside of the left seat stay, down the back of the seat tube, underneath the BB shell and up to a headlamp. No boss for a headlamp, nor for front racks of any sort. If I decide to electrify it, I'll build a front wheel around a dynohub and shorten the wiring, and probably in the near future I'll use the generator boss to mount a battery-powered blinky tail light. If I ever have it repainted, I'd consider having small bosses added to the fork for a rando bag and its required rack, and mount a headlamp on that.

Probably. The last time I had a nice bike with bar end shifter cables routed like this, I put short lengths of surgical tubing over the bottom bits of the shift cables to protect the head tube, and that seemed to work. Or I could get those little discs of clear plastic and put them where the cables touch the frame.




I ran the Rivendell with this setup from when it arrived new in late 2000 until 2006, when I switched over to Silver downtube shifters.

In many ways, the Lighthouse picks up where the Rivendell left off, and in other ways it is what the Rivendell was meant to be, but never quite achieved. No fancy lugs, but really finely-crafted fillet-brazed joinery combined with a fork that I fell in love with the moment I saw it. There is a certain stark simplicity honed by the lack of lugs, raised fork crown, etc., and the term Shaker sensibility comes to mind, a kind of artistry in making everything clearly functional and elegant at the same time with zero adornment. The standard diameter 531 tubing is a lot springier and livelier than the OS stuff on the Rivendell, which I wound up selling in 2012 after realizing I hadn't ridden it in 50 miles in three years.

On the road the Lighthouse captures all of the best traits of my 1982 Mercian Colorado, which started out as a team-issued bike for the Harvest/The Spoke/Mercian team - zippy, eager feeling on the road, but shockingly stable and smooth - but the greater tire width of the Lighthouse soaks up road shock better and makes it surefooted on gravel and hardpacked dirt as well, something I discovered when I had to take a shortcut home after biting off more than I could chew.




The bike really needs fresh bar tape and two white cages, and I may later on splurge and build up some fresh wheels on CR-18s - but it's fine right now, and I'll be riding it for some time to come pretty much as it is.