Jeff
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 16:52
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I just picked up Allie's bike from the powder coater and decided to bike it in to my shop. Lately I have been commuting a lot to the store and my shop at Lemp and have been putting a decent number of miles on my MTB/Commuter. I used some alternative methods with my rack attachments and hopefully by putting a lot of miles on the frame it will give it a good shakedown for future builds.
Right now to complete Allie's bike I just need to get the wheel set in and install the brakes and chain. Also the decals STILL need to be ordered. With this frame I am going to forgo the typical [Fe][C]ycles decals for one with the letter "A" on the head tube and Allie's name on the down tube.
This past weekend St. Louis hosted the MoPro bicycle races. The MoPro (formally the Tour de Grove) was a three day even that involved racers from the Cat-5 level to the Pro's. I was only able to see the Friday night pro races for the Men and Women, and they were amazingly fast.
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Jeff
Wednesday, 09 May 2012 19:15
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After some minor cleanup work on Allie's bike this morning it was ready for me to drop off at the powder coater. I am glad that the 20" wheels worked out as I know the 16" wheels were presenting way to many problems. The frame should be ready for me to pick up on Friday and as soon as I get a set of wheels for it the bike will be ready to ride!
The other project I am working on is the "Vittorio Strada" frame repair. Once I got into the frame and had the chainstays cut out I was able to see just how much rot this frame had truly suffered. The dropout ends were completely packed with rust and all along the chainstays you can see many different rust spots. The worst of course being where they rusted all the way through.
I am not sure if this particular frame is just a result of someone not taking care of it, or if this is a result of the frame not having any proper vent holes at the dropouts. With vent holes it allows airflow throughout the tube and for the inside of the tubes to dry out. Inversely however it can also let moister in. While both schools of thought hold some merit I personally believe that moister will get in no matter what and it is better to allow some air flow to dry out what moister does eventually get in. That and a good liberal dose of frame saver never hurt either.
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Jeff
Monday, 07 May 2012 20:14
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I was recently contacted to do some repair work on a vintage "Vittorio Strada". Unfortunately the bike had not been correctly stored by one of its previous owners and some rust holes had developed through the chain stays.
Typically with a custom lugged frame the lugs and tubes are put together with silver, as the tolerances are much higher. However with a more production oriented frame the tolerances are a little "slacker" and silver is not an option so brass is then used (also brass is 1/10th of the price). Unfortunately with this bike the builder decided to use brass, meaning I am going to have a far harder time removing the chainstays due to the higher melting point of brass than safety silver.
The first part of this process was placing the frame in my jig and set the jig up so it fits the existing frame. This was done so that once the stays are removed I can then put the new ones in and keep the same frame dimensions that the bike previously had.
Once the jig was set up for the frame I removed the chainstay brace as well as cut out sections of the drive side chainstay. With the drive side chainstays cut into segments I then started removing the stay from the lug. Now due to the high temperature that brass requires it was not possible to evenly heat up the bottom bracket lug enough to remove the chainstay in one piece.
My next step is going to be slowly cutting up the chainstay in pieces inside the lug and heating them up individually to remove them.
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Jeff
Sunday, 29 April 2012 17:38
| Allie's bike is coming along pretty nicely. I just had her give it a test ride and she seemed pretty excited to be able to ride a "Big Kid" bike. There were a couple of changes I had to make to the frame from the original design. When I first put 16" wheels on the bike the pedals were, as I had previously feared, too close to the ground. However when I put the 20" wheels on the frame they were at a perfect height. The pedals were still low enough that I could have a much lower seat than normal but high enough that they allowed for pedaling without any fear of them striking the ground. Unfortunately by using the larger wheel size from the beginning it means there is no opportunity for the bike to grow. Which in hindsight may have been an idea that was not completely feasible in any case. The biggest problem with the 2" larger wheel radius is that it places the seat at 17" above the ground instead of the desired 15". While the seat height is an inch shorter than her current bike (with 12" wheels!), she still has to jump a little on the bike to get on it and start riding. Anyhow, it seems that for anything out of the ordinary there will need to be some form of compromise and in this case a little inconvenience is worth having a bigger bike than what she currently has. Now all that needs to be done is cleaning up the brass, adding the brake mounts and getting it to the powder coater! |
Jeff
Thursday, 19 April 2012 18:59
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With Easter and everything I have been unable to spend that much time at the shop. Fortunately that is something that I was able to remedy this week! With Allie's bike I was able to finally get the seat/chain stays brazed to the frame and now I pretty much only have to work on the fork and the bike will be ready for its test ride. With the design of this bike being so far out of the range of my comfort zone I am really hoping everything works out. As a basis for comparison a "Specialized" sixteen inch kids bike will have almost no bottom bracket drop (the distance the bottom bracket is bellow the axle line) on this frame I dropped it down a whole 50mm to help with the stand over height. Unfortunately if you drop the bottom bracket too low you can have an issue where if the bike is leaned over too far while pedaling then you can have instances where the pedal will strike the ground. Now, this is something that I have taken into account should not be an issue, however it is still something I am worried about.
If you look at the chain/seat stays you will notice that they extend overly long past the seat post. By extending them this long and then making sure the braces are pushed further towards the seat I will then have plenty of room for the larger twenty inch wheel.
I should have the fork pretty much finished tomorrow and hopefully will be able to have Allie test ride the bike before I get it powder coated.
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