A work in progress, part 1

Its almost like as soon as I finish up one bike I find another that fills a completely different area to work on.

All 5 of you who follow my blog will recall the light blue Schwinn Continental I retro-modded into something of a gravel bike earlier this month. It's continued to be a fun ride and good reminder of the work I put into my first Continental.

This new bike is something different: A 1984 Fuji Touring Series V.

 Photo courtesy of Classic Fuji.com

In it's day it was Fuji's top of the line touring bike, relaxed riding position, long chain stays, multiple spots for water bottles, fender/rack mounts and higher level SunTour components (Hooray for SunTour!). As they say in the business,  SO that's the good.

The downside to this frame, is it was missing a fair amount of parts and so far is probably the most in-depth overhaul and scratching together compatible parts on a non-existent budget.

What it came with: 56cm Frame (my size!) and fork, Nitto olympiade aluminum drop bars wrapped in red cloth tape and Technomic stem, Sugino AT triple crank and 50/45/28 chain rings, Dia Compe Gran Compe cantilever brakes, Avocet Touring II saddle.

Nitto bars wrapped in cloth tape, very 1980s!

 

Sugino AT 50/45/28 triple, this crank set the bolt pattern standard for triple cranks for a long time (110/74 BCD)

 

Some things this bike was missing: Brakes hoods, levers and cable housing (as might be obvious in the pictures), shifters of any type (original equipment was SunTour bar-ends), mismatched wheels; one aluminum rim 27" laced to Sunshine Gyromaster hub in front (also original equipment) and a Specilized high spoke count double sided hub with a 700c rim in back (no idea what or where this came from), a rear derailleur (originally equipped with the now rare and expensive SunTour LeTech touring derailleur) and a chain.

Overall though, by stripping some unused bikes and assembling parts I had laying around I thought this would be a quick build. Stay tuned for part 2.

It's been a long, long time....

It's been a while since I posted anything, integrating Google blogger into facebook/instagram posts automatically is not seamless. That and aside from commuting a bunch and riding the same trails it was starting to just be the same pictures over and over again. Which was getting boring even for me.

Some new things though, finally finished the 1973 Continental. Cleaned and re-packed all the bearings, new cables and brake pads, and threw on the Saturne HC19 rims I had laying around with the Panaracer Gravelking SK 700x35cm wheels.

This has turned out to a pleasantly fun bike set-up, stripped off the kickstand, aluminum rims, no water bottle cage, or rear rack keeps the weight down. It's a size smaller than the 1975 Continental I commute on, so it's feels a little "tighter" and like a race bike to me.

I am super impressed so far with the Gravelking SK tires, for a semi-knobbed (that's the SK...) they're still pretty quiet on the road or pavement, can feel the resistance compared to the slicks I run on my other bikes, but off road is where they really shine. Transition from trail to grass or gravel you don't notice a loss in traction, just a slight additional effort. The current set up is with some Bontrager tubes pumped to 55psi in front and 60psi in back.  I found a 3.75 gravel trail near my house that has lots of turns and when I first took this bike out to ride it was relatively wet from rain, so it made for a fun and technical ride. Looking forward to exploring more with this bike in the future. For any older or retro bike build I can only recommend the tan walls, I was leaning towards solid black but Jimmy at Oswego Cyclery convinced me otherwise, glad I listened.

I had decided to build this bike up in anticipation of riding the Rough Road 100 next April. Why use a 40 year old steel antique?
1) I'm crazy and a glutton for punishment
2) Bragging rights, sure you can do a 65 mile gravel ride on a modern Aluminum frame, with tubeless tires, and modern shift system and drive train. But lets face it, I'm not going to place in the top 100 regardless of what I ride so to just finish on this bike would be sweet and a testament to perseverance.
3) It's a sweet blue color.

We'll see what the future brings if I have a chance to get some major miles on this or any bike for that matter. I also recently picked up a 1984 Fuji Touring Series V that needs some work but which has the prospect of being an excellent replacement for a both Schwinns. The '75 was really always supposed to be a short term bike to see if I actually enjoyed it cycling before investing in something else.

Waiting to exhale.......and inhale, and exhale.....

Well it's been two weeks since I had a minor medical procedure done that kept me off the bike.

I've always been a creature of habit or routine, and once I break a cycle (no pun intended) I often never go back. It was that way with soda, I stopped drinking it one day after having a can at least every day for many years. So I was worried two weeks off and I'd feel the same way about cycling.

Thankfully that was not the case. Hopped on the Vitus and managed 7.19 miles in 25:29 with an average speed of 16.9mph. Honestly better than I'd hoped for, and didn't have any pain.

Glad to be back in the saddle again! (cue the Gene Autry)

Retro Gravel Build Part 1

Finally started on my retro gravel bike build, starting with the opaque blue 1973 Schwinn Continental I picked up earlier this year. Too many other things going on so this was on the back burner, like waaaaaay in back.

 

Went with some Panaracer Gravelking SKs in 700x35c size, they look great on an old bike with the tan sidewalls. Test fit went great, on to cleaning up and re-greasing the old bird.

Slow ride, take it easy

Sunday I rode 30 miles on the Continental, then another 12 miles on Monday and around 18 miles commuting to work and back on Tuesday.

I needed a break, thought I wasn't feeling bad or hurting I knew if I kept riding hard I would soon.

So today I ended up hopping on the '67 Collegiate and doing a slow 6 mile ride up and down the Fox River, with the weather we were having it was a perfect day for a cruise.

Concentrer sur le Vitus

The Vitus 979 was an attempt in the early 1980s to build a light aluminum race bike, the large majority of bikes up to this point had been made with varying weights of steel, heavy gas pipe like that found on many vintage Schwinn bicycles like the Varsity and Continental and thinner type found on many European bikes. But still, all things even steel weighs more than aluminum, and in a sport were dropping weight can chop seconds off a race split it was worth investigating.

What also made the Vitus unique or novel, was the approach in attaching the aluminum components , traditional steel bike were generally "lugged", that is the metal tubes ran into another metal pieces and they were welded together. This same concept was used on the Vitus except rather than welded into place a aerospace grade heat activated epoxy was used to essentially glue the bike together. In the pictures you can see the black anodized aluminum tubes run into bare aluminum lugs.

The rest of the components on the bike are popular hi-end parts that are 1980s appropriate for a "retro" or "L'eroica" build.

 Suntour was a Japanese company that made a wide range of components for bicycles and Superbe Pro was their top level in the mid-1980s. On the Vitus the cranks, chain rings, and shift levers are all the same group set. Even 30+ years later these components shift amazing and work just like you'd want them to.

Most people will be familiar with shifting bike gears and hearing "clicks" this is called index shifting and a mechanical limiter clicks the derailleur into the right spot every time. Index shifting was a new technology in the 1980s and many companies offered friction shifting, where you had to know and get a feel for where it needed to be, and index shifting in one component. These Suntour levers allowed you to select friction or index depending on what you liked.

Supurbe Pro rear derailleur and New Winner rear freewheel, an interesting fact about the New Winner series of gears was it was narrow enough to fit a 7-speed freewheel where previously you could only fit 5 or 6, it required a thinner chain but this set-up works pretty well. Having extra gears allows you to set your cadence to meet the conditions rather than have to choose something close but not quite right, current road bikes now often have 10,11 or even 12 speed rear clusters.

Limited Edition Cinelli "Colorado" bars, as far as I can tell there isn't anything too incredibly special about these but they are themed to make reference to the old Coor's Classic race that was run in the 1980s. The blue colored stem is just another neat small detail on this bike.

Royal Gran Compe by Dia-Compe brakes, the black colored arms are one of the harder to find colors. Dia-Compe made high-quality brake components for a number of years.

Gravel Grinder

There's a new trend in cycling called gravel riding, and like most things its an evolution and specification of some other style of riding.

Road cycling lead to cyclocross, cyclocross led to gravel. Bikes with wider clearances for bigger tires but not quite a full on mountain bike. But essentially you are taking a bike off paved roads. Another related trend is the "1x" drive train where the front gears affixed to the cranks only have one as opposed to the double or triple gear set you might be familiar with on your usual road or mountain bike.

This just seems like the purest form of riding like you did as a kid.

This is from a little short track near where I work, but transport back in time to mid-90s Houston, Texas and you'd be hard pressed to see a difference (Maybe less mosquitoes). Out behind my neighborhood was a portion of the buffalo bayou and from the years of people riding back there a dirt/gravel trail had been established. In recent years its been paved over so its a "proper" bike path, but for me I'd take an undeveloped path any day.

My only complaint is there aren't too many areas like this I can cycle too easily.