Originally Posted by
masi61
Pantah - really nice looking Klein. The 105SC triple components with the RSX (3x7) shifters sound durable and versatile. Also - that Salsa stem repainted (or powder coated) looks great. You must be a person 6'2" or taller.
I have a Quantum (all white) and 2 Stage frames (plain red). I don't possess any of the exotic paint job Kleins unfortunately. I do applaud your attention to detail in making an effort to color coordinate things. If if were me, I might keep going and try to somehow get a saddle that completes the look you are after. Also, the seatpost could be played around with to get something more dramatic and complementary.
Thanks for the compliments. First off, yes, I am quite tall. 6'3" to be precise, with a 35" inseam, so long is the name of my game. It's a 61cm frame, not sure if I mentioned that. And yes, I went with the early RSX shifters as they're built very similar to the equally aged early 8 speed STI's and those have served me well on other machines. Not the crispest shifter ever, but I believe to be the most robust and fully rebuildable. The hoods are quite comfortably shaped too, much more so than the 9 speed stuff. And the Salsa stem is powder coated by a local place, only cost me 50 bucks for sand blast and powder coat. The original paint on it was in sad shape with the decal worse, so I didn't feet bad changing up the color.
The exotic painted Klein's are hard to come by these days, especially the early pre-Trek ones. I got extremely lucky with this.
All of your points on how to further compliment the period look have crossed my mind many times. I'm still on the hunt for a reasonably comfortable seat from the 90's with some wild colors to it. It's currently on its third saddle in as many rides, probably going to rotate through a few more in the near future.
I've thought about getting the upper portion of that 600 seatpost, the part which is narrower than the seat tube, painted to match the frame, either purple or orange. I'm a sucker for wild and contrasting colors, it'll probably happen at some point.
Originally Posted by
onyerleft
Great project and bonus points for the triple crank.
With the hills around here, the triple is the only way to do it, at least for me. On my normal loop out my front door, there's 4 climbs which require low/low gearing, so I'm taking full advantage of it. There's also more than one descent where I'm in high/high gearing, so every single cog and chianring gets exercise.
For what it's worth, that 1056 triple crank was stupidly hard to find. Ebay had a total of two. One in the US, one outside of the US, Europe somewhere. The one here in the States looked good, but close inspection of the backside photo of the crank revealed a wallowed out taper. Big no-go, but the one out in Europe looked much better, so I bit the bullet on the 40 or 50 dollar shipping and got it. Well worth it, the crank and chainrings are in fantastic condition. Still missing the center caps though, that's my next fun vintage parts hunt.