My friend Andrew introduced me to Rosalie, who worked with him, and used to be manage the Berkeley Farmers' Market. She bought a bike as an upgrade from her mountain-ish hybrid bike. The bone of it--early 1980's Univega Mixte--is very good, and we were able to keep several key parts, but significant upgrades were required and demanded. The parts we kept are:
Suntour derailleurs, Sugino double crankset (and the bottom bracket), the original headset, the Weinmann brake levers, and the beautiful metal coil cable housings for the front and rear derailleurs.
We bought 700c wheels--front is a Shimano LX (equivalent to DH-3N80) dynamo hub laced to Mavic A319 rim, and the rear is a (black) Shimano 105 hub laced to a Mavic Open Sport rim. We got an 8-speed cassette and two brick-red Soma Express tires (with Pasela tread). The quill stem is old, but wasn't installed on the frameset, and the handlebar is Soma Oxford.The difficult part of the built was the shifters. Originally I thought about reusing the clamp-on downtube Suntour shifters that were already on the bike. However, these shifters are keyed to the clamp and can't be used independently. I found a pair of suntour friction downtube shifters that can serve the purpose to go with the bar-end pods. To use bar-end shifters with Oxford/Albatross bars one needs to have a way to recess the derailleur cable housings. We bought a pair of pre-grooved cork grips from Rivendell, which is glued to the handlebar and the housings recessed and tied with twine.
The drivetrain otherwise works well. The crankset has 52/42T rings, but the cassettes goes all the way to 32T, and the 42/32T combination should be low enough for most purposes.
We bought a pair of Tektro long-reach brakes (47-57mm) for the build and were almost foiled. The bike takes 27" wheels originally, and we created more clearance and tapped into better and more standard tire selection by going to 700c. However, the shrinking of wheel diameter by a mere 8mm almost made the rear rim not reachable by the Tektro brakes. I mounted the brakes on the lower seatstay, and facing the front. I then use Koolstop thin-line brake pads for V-brakes in place of the stock road cartridge brakes. The thin-line pads made it work. I could probably play with the adjustment screw on the caliper to give it a little more breathing room, but it works for now.
The Busch and Muller IQ Cyo head lamp, which is driven by the Shimano generator wheel, is mounted on the brake hole. Rosalie bought the near-field version to illuminate the area in front of the bike more.
The final touch came in the form of a old Terry saddle, with a long-haired woman wearing a dome helmet as the logo on the side. These old Terry liberator-type saddles are very comfortable, and my wife swears by them.
Unlike bikes I built for myself, I didn't try to ride the bike too much (it was too small), but hopefully I will get a more detailed report from Rosalie once she is settled and has more chance to ride it in San Diego.
6 comments:
What an absolutely gorgeous job. Well done!
The bike is a beauty and Franklyn's gorgeous work now pedals all over San Diego! In fact, with my various commutes and pleasure rides I've put more miles on the new bike in the last 1 1/2 months than I had on my old bike in six months (and I thought I'd been riding quite a lot before!).
Since I didn't get to test ride much before moving down, I have now made a couple modifications to ease my comfort. The first is that it turns out the cork grips were too hard for me since I have a repetitive stress injury in one of my wrists. I replaced the grips with "cork" handlebar tape. According to Rivendell's website the tape doesn't actually have much cork in it but it still looks lovely and is much softer for my poor wrist. And on the subject of soft, my bony butt just wasn't feeling liberated by the Terry Liberator so I replaced it with the Planet Bike A.R.S Classic - where did they get that name? :) Every expert at my local San Diego bike shop tried to talk me out of a softer seat but in the end, well, my end knows best. The Liberator, however, is now being put to good use. My partner Lars is loving it on her Bianchi.
On a funny note, I got my first flat a couple days ago on mile 21 of a 25 mile roundtrip to San Diego's famous Chino Farms organic vegetable stand. I was coasting over the bridge between Del Mar and UC San Diego with the sun sinking over the crashing waves of Torrey Pines State Beach, when whoooosh. It was a pinch flat from overpumping my tire. Probably the most beautiful place ever to get a flat. Within minutes of Lars and I turning the bike over and scratching our heads to see if we could fix the flat with our patch kit and rudimentary mechanic skills a very nice person stopped to help. He had the tire off in seconds but it turned out that there were multiple small holes and I really needed a new tube. So while Lars heroically pumped up the final really long hill back to UCSD my bike and I got a ride to my office on campus from this kind stranger. And it turns out we knew people in common! The best I could do if offer him some organic cucumbers and peppers in thanks. The lesson from this is that I must take a flat fixing class asap to refresh my memory, and maybe carry a spare tube instead of a patch kit.
Thank you Franklyn for the gorgeous bike!
Hello, I read the post about Rosalie's Univega. I have an old "vintage" Univega mixte. It's ridable, but I wonder what it would take to turn into a beauty like Rosalie's?
@ Vicki,
I will have to take a look. If you post a link to a picture in the comment section I can take a look. But if it came with original stock component, then probably at least you want to change the wheels. Anything more than that depends on your use and aesthetic taste. I will be happy to give you some pointers but will need to know what's on the bike right now
hi Franklyn, thanks for responding. I'll post a picture in the near future of my old bike. I imagine it'd need a lot of work to make as pretty as Rosalie's.
great Bike! what rear rack is that?
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