Andy_K 

Spring isn't going down without a fight here in Oregon. @gugie and I were hoping to get a ride in today, but we had a backup plan of beer and bike butchery. Looking at the morning weather forecast, we decided to ride. This was not one of our better decisions. What started out as a drizzle got progressively worse until 10 miles in, amidst a pretty steady downpour, we decided to call it, headed back and had a beer at Uptown Beer Co. With time left in the afternoon that had previously been allocated for bike riding, @gugie graciously agreed to break out the torch and knock out a couple of small jobs I had asked him to take on.

First up was the derailleur hanger on my 1960-something Peugeot PX-10 Super Deluxe. This is the kind of thing that most of us look at and weep, asking "Why????!!!" But Monsieur Gugie looks at it and says, "Oh, another one of those."



Of course, most of us don't have a drawer full of Simplex dropouts to use for such a repair, to say nothing of even being able to imagine doing it.



After eyeing it up to make sure the donor dropout would work, the next step was to make a fresh cut on the frame. I've got to admit, this was a little bit difficult to watch, but it obviously wasn't going to make it worse.



Next, the dropouts got clamped together so the intended graft line could be marked.



Then the donor dropout went into the vice and met the hacksaw.



There was some filing of both parts (not pictured), before the patient was taken to the torch area and prepped.





Finally, the magic happened.





I've got a bit of clean up left to do, but it looks like a complete success!



The whole thing took 15-20 minutes.

Andy_K 

Project number 2 was bottle cage bosses for my Clunker 100 project Centurion Elite. Custom braze-ons for a Clunker 100 project, you may ask? Well, this is one of the perks of being @gugie's bike chauffeur and having recently schlepped his bike to Cambria and back. Plus, I have a really hard time seeing a frame stripped down to bare metal and not getting bottle bosses before it's painted, even if that paint is going to be something as transient as a rattle can job.

This, of course, is a much more standard procedure. We started by consulting the master chart for boss positioning.



Then a center-line was marked with a steel rule and Sharpie marks were made.



A bit of work with a centerpunch and a drill, and my frame had appropriately sized holes in it.





The bosses were tapped into place, and flux was applied.



A few passes with the torch and Bob's your uncle.



Throughout this process, @gugie was telling me all about it, how to tell from the cones in the flame when you've got it at the right temperature, how much heat needs to be applied and where, the importance of moving the torch around to avoid overheating, the whole process. Then after tapping in the second set of bosses and applying the flux, he asks me if I'm ready to give it a try! We'd talked about this before, and it is something I'd be wanting to experiment with, but I wasn't expecting it today. As he handed me the torch, I immediately bumped one of the regulator knobs, accidentally shutting off the flame. After he fixed that, I proceeded cautiously to heating the flux, committed nearly every error he had previously explained how to avoid, and just generally botched the entire process, but somehow he stopped me short of ruining the frame and only needed to do minor touchups to finish what I had done.



I also noticed that when I finished, smoke was pouring out of the head tube. I didn't notice that happening with the set that @gugie had brazed. I'm sure it's fine though, right?

Narhay

Of course it'll also get cantilever bosses, cable guides, rack mounts, new fork trail and and and....

I will award 4 extra clunker points for this bit of bike burning.

smd4

While I have built my own wheels, I don't think I'll ever be able to say I brazed anything onto my own bike. Well done..

RustyJames 

When I drop stuff off at the atelier to have it torched, kind of like sausage and laws, I don’t want to watch it made.

Dylansbob 

Someday I'm going to find someone to butcher one or more of my frames

bikingshearer 

Every so often, I think to myself "it would be fun to take a frame building class and build my own frame." Since the last time I held a torch was in junior high shop class, and considering the level of my manual dexterity in general, I realize that exactly this would my be my situation. And so, as when I have delusions of doing a double century, I take deep breaths until the urge passes.

Andy_K 

Be careful. It’s a slippery slope. You start out with something simple like bottle cage bosses or brake cable guides, and before you know it you’re asking for a re-raked fork, new seat stay bridges to match the curve of your fenders, and maybe even internal cable routing for lights. It’s highly addictive.

Andy_K 

Even as much as I screwed it up, as one does on the first try of nearly anything, the frame survived with bosses newly attached. I think with enough practice I could do this. Lack of a clean enough space in my garage to be safe is the only thing stopping me runnng out to get a MAPP torch and brazing the daylights out of some old beater frames.

juvela

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header for a future thread -

"Andy_K now on the MAPP!"


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John E

Very nice! I probably won't, but I have considered having someone braze a derailleur tab onto my Carlton, which never had one.

Yes, the right dropout got spread sometime in the past. I have since remedied the situation, one advantage of stamped over forged dropouts.

Andy_K 

Someone suggested to me that given the age of my PX-10 it wouldn't be entirely out-of-line to just use a claw mount, and it's true that would have worked just as well. But I know that it originally had an integrated hanger, and I just can't leave well enough alone sometimes.

I'm having a similar fight with myself over the purity of the steerer. Some threads are broken off at the top of the steerer. There are barely enough threads to engage the locknut and definitely not enough to leave room for a front cable hanger.



I had been exploring options to have a new piece of steerer grafted on to solve this problem, but then Gugie asked me about the possibility of headsets with a shorter stack. The headset that's on there now (Stronglight Competition) has a 38mm stack height, so finding something short enough to accommodate a cable hanger seems unlikely. But as I was mulling this over in my mind, the significance of the phrase "the headset that's on there now" dawned on me. There's a headset on there now. If I leave it, what's the risk? I might break off some threads and have to replace the steerer. So basically, I was considering replacing the steerer to avoid the risk of something going wrong that would force me to replace the steerer. With that perspective, I'm now exploring alternate solutions like the Paul Funky Monkey that will let me clamp a cable hanger to the stem. That's perfectly functional. My struggle with it is that I really wanted to use an original MAFAC cable hanger. Right now, I'm leaning towards being reasonable in this case.

Andy_K 

Here are some pics of the repaired dropout after basic cleaning. I washed off the flux and scrubbed it a bit with steel wool and aluminum foil to get most of the scorch marks off. I wanted to start conservative because this bike has a lot of patina and I didn't want to end up with one shiny dropout. I didn't work as hard on the inside because there are no circumstances under which that will be visible after the bike is assembled.







I might shoot the grafted on hanger with a bit of chrome spray paint to protect it, though my experience is that for whatever reason forged dropouts don't seem to be very prone to rust. My Stella had this same repair and I left it bare and haven't seen any rust on it.

FWIW, here's the other dropout as a point of comparison.

bulgie 

Have you considered milling down the length of the head tube? I think that's a valid way to go, have done it plenty. Actually if I have far to go then I hacksaw first, and use the facer only to clean up the hacksaw marks.

Some say only cut off the top of the HT lest you alter the frame geometry, but a mm or two off the bottom will not make your pedals start scraping in corners if they didn't before. Change in frame angles will be minuscule, less than (for example) having the same pressure in front and rear tires, making the rear tire compress more under your weight.

One thing to watch out for is if you have 30.0 mm cups and mill it with a Campy cutter (or clone) made for 30.2 mm cups, then your cups will not fit tight anymore. I think Stronglight used 30.2 though, so you should be fine, but measure. FYI this doesn't vary with French/English/Italian, but does vary with brand/model, typically with higher-quality headsets using 30.2.

If you want to use a Campy-style cutter that reams and faces at the same time on a frame for 30.0 mm cups, the reamer part can be taken off and replaced with a smooth spacer/bushing that only serves to hold the facer on-center. That might require your butcher to have a lathe or some other way to make an accurately-sized spacer thingy, but extreme precision is not required there. A washer stack might suffice, perhaps sized on a belt-grinder. I have a Campy HT reamer/facer and I have a lathe, so if anyone in Seattle needs this done I can handle it.

Nervex Pro lugs have the cute little flanges at the ends of the HT, and those will go away if you take off more than a couple mm, but they aren't needed. I do understand though, if you don't want to lose them for their historical interest or just aesthetics. Me, I prefer the look of a lug that doesn't have a lot of "extra" room between the TT (or DT) and the headset. Looks more purposeful to me when the headset comes right up to the little fillet at the transition from TT to HT. Any extra there is (ever so slightly) less structurally efficient. Yes I know I'm over-thinking it, it's what I do.

Mark B

juvela

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Andy -

just fit a Verot P3 and "Robert will be your uncle"

it has a stack height of 34

has the merit for C&V purposes of:

a) staying frankish

b) staying Verot

c) staying period

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Narhay

Could you braze a piece of the mafac cable hanger to the serrated tooth spacer?

I think the stronglight p3 headset has a stack height less than the competition at 33mm. You could probably find one with an attached peugeot U-08 for less than a single one on ebay goes for.

juvela

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the U08 not fitted with the P3

it came with the stock Peugeot proprietary design headset which has a stack height of 38.5

when one gets back into the early 1960's PX10's were coming through with the P3 as the V4 had not as yet been launched

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droppedandlost 

Perhaps I could help? Some of my handiwork:

Andy_K 

I've heard of people doing that, and the lugs on this frame do indeed have the flanges you describe, but I'd really prefer to leave the frame intact. If I can't make it work "as is" I'll be looking for someone to graft on a new piece of steerer. (Rumor has it you've done a few of those.)

In any event, I prefer the hacks to be hidden as much as possible. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Andy_K 

That's an intriguing possibility. I need an extra 3mm for the hanger. I'm probably about 2mm short on the stack as it sits now. With a 33mm headset stack, I could file the steerer flat and have just about enough threads to make it work. Hmmm. The search begins.

Reynolds 

Have you considered taking the locknut and maybe also the cup to a lathe? If what you need is just a couple of mm, it could work.

gugie 

Just realized that there is a great workaround for the short steerer. I do believe that there was a CLB cable hanger with integrated serrated washer.

Stole this pic from the interwebs so you know it happened.

79pmooney

I like that freewheel! Chains last so much longer when you can have 5 of your favorite cog.

And closer to the topic - I could start a thread on all the crazy things TiCycles has done for me. (Two frames, three forks, two seatposts, four stems, custom chainring bolts, a "dingle", repairs and mods on three non-TiCycles bikes, lockrings tapped from ISO to Miche/Campy, ...)

And (Edit) speaking of stack - I just had TiCycles shave a little of the headtube of my avatar fix gear. Bike came with a Chris King Gripnut that drove me nuts. (Ran perfect after adjusting for 200 miles. 400 was the outer limit. Didn't matter whether I did the adjustment, one of Portland's best mechanics or the Chris King factory. At 8000 miles I'd had it. Went Tange but to get the stack down I used parts from three different models. Relief! 10,000 miles later it was time for the next one but this mix and match was getting old. After shave, a Levin just drops on. I paid for a couple of Chris Kings that go millions of miles just to be able to run $30 headsets that will go 10k. My (fortunately fictional) accountant is still kicking me. But I get to ride my favorite bike with perfect and silent steering!

bikingshearer 

Here is another possibility, although you would probably have to pay gugie in pizza and beer to get it done. Step 1: Remove the fork. Step 2: Cut a little off the end of the steerer tube, chase the existing threads and extend/cut more threads to as long as you need. Step 3: Cut the fork at the midpoint (aerospace precision not required for this measurement). Step 4: Braze a plug into one of the recently-cut middle-of-the-fork ends. Step 5: Braze the other recently-cut end onto the plug such that the resulting plugged steerer tube is the amount longer you want it to be. Step 6: Reinstall the fork with the headset, spacers and brake hanger you need/want. Step 7: Give gugie his damn pizza and beer.

Ed Litton suggested and did exactly this me for so that I could use a fork from a ~1960 59cm Cinelli frame on a ~1965 64cm Cinelli frame (not the blue one you saw at Eroica CA; the silver one that runs Campy 10sp triple that gugie saw at Fauxrica last September). Well, Ed didn't have to modify the threads and I gave him cash money instead of pizza and beer, but otherwise it was this process. I turned out great. It adds a little weight, but you've seen me - at my size, a few extra ounces on a bike are seriously insignificant in the overall scheme of things.

Oh, and if you want to add some extra height to the steerer tube to get the bars a touch higher, you can build that in to the calculations of how much you extend the tube. I did. Or should I say, I asked Ed to.

nlerner

Just drill a hole through your stem for a cable stop. You can make it fancy by tapping some threads and inserting an adjusting barrel (pic from a web search):