frankenbike's frankenbikes

Haha what’s important is that now you’re even safer on the road!

Yep, going all out with the fluoro in the 90s style. They're alright actually, there are some few-hundred-metre stretches on my commute that have no cars and dead flat, I rode them with no armrests and they were pretty comfy. But yeah, shifting is a nightmare. A 6 hour Deliveroo shift will be the true test

Here's some luggage, will investigate a bit tonight...

Fork

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On the fork crown it looks a bit like the Ekla "H" Crown Oval, except mine also has the cutout on the front/rear of the fork rather than a straight section and no raised diamond shape on top (it's flat, just about visible in second photo above).

None of the Ekla lugs match, though I can't find anything better on the "lugs" section. Particularly the BB is completely unadorned so I don't know what that means.

@Jonny69 you know what you're talking about, any advice? Do I just poke through the "Builders" section until I find something similar or is there a sensible process to go through?

PS. really wish it hadn't been coloured in

Tried a 650b×42 tyre + rotor in Marin. Looks like I could go up to 2" without too much trouble. If I weld on disc tabs I think this is the way to go, giving me some synergy with my gravé bike, as both take 100/135mm QR 650b. And same tubes etc. but different tyres.

Current 26" rear wheel has disc fittings though so could retain that for even fatter tyres, just not sure it's worth investing the money in a 26" disc front wheel...

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One of the difficulties here is the semi-horizontal dropouts, I think I'd just have to fit the caliper so it works with the axle as far back as possible. Would be great to replace the whole dropout with sliders but that's well beyond my abilities.

Haha, keep on tinkering! Great stuff.

Thanks :)

I discovered the problem with 650b, I can't get the bloody wheel out without deflating it! I guess there's no good reason to remove your wheel unless you get a flat or whatever, so maybe I'll just live with it...

@Jonny69 you know what you're talking about, any advice? Do I just poke through the "Builders" section until I find something similar or is there a sensible process to go through?

Pretty much just that. You’re looking for the combination of the lugs and any way they have been filed to a custom shape (‘fancy lugs’) as this was usually unique to the builder. Also look for any frame numbers on the BB shell, rear dropout or fork steerer.

Also ask here: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/238801/

Thanks, I'll do some more investigating tonight!

£8 PlanetX mudguards irresistible. Not an especially great fit but seems okay. Unfortunately I broke a bunch of the mounting bolts, as I left out the plastic bits in order to get the lengths of the stays right, so can't fit the front one. I guess I'll replace them with something else.

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Also got an 8-speed 11-40 for £15. Gears are very skippy at the moment, I think partially due to the wrong quick link (think it's 8-speed on a 10-speed chain and 9-speed cassette...) and the chain is very worn. New chain and cassette will hopefully sort it. Haven't finished polishing those cranks yet but think I'll do that and do the complete drivetrain swap all in one go.

Combining my other thread into here as well...

Did the "5 Ferries Challenge" on my Kona yesterday. Aero bars for the laughs, which paid off on some of the flat sections. On One Midge and aero bars is a pretty funny combo. I was sort of worried that I'd have a hard time riding into a headwind, which is partly why I added the aero bars, but the "drops" don't feel too bad and if I keep my elbows in it doesn't feel like the width slows me down a lot.

Ride was about 120km all in, as we connected up the Wemyss Bay to Ardrossan leg, some decently fast stuff but I was shockingly slow uphill compared to my friends on the fancier/lighter bikes (Fairlight Faran on the left, proper carbon roadie Ribble on the right). I have always been pretty slow uphill, aside from a brief period when I was training for a 100 mile sportive on a 8-9kg bike, but even by my standards the weight of this bike is noticeable. Oh well - aside from racing to catch a ferry I don't do any riding where it's important to be fast and that's partly why I went for this bike in the first place really. (But I do feel there's an aero road bike shaped hole in my roster... think my next bike will be a TT frameset sort of thing built with spare parts and used as a normal road bike and maybe a few triathlons or something. Not for another year though I reckon.)

Hit my lowest gear (30/36) on the steepest uphills and top gear (46/11) on most of the "long" descents so it's perfect for my sort of riding. Love it. And loving the downtube shifter too, I only ended up changing rings about 10-20 times I'd say. Cassette is a good range and most short hills are fine in the big ring. You only need to shift to the little ring on long steep climbs that you can't sprint up. Really glad I had that as we were all flagging by the end.

Had a deep fried pizza in the chip shop before the drive back :) think I earned it

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Lovely! Well done.

Got a few bits for welding on to Marin. Plus some tubes to practice on, kindly donated by the guy who I bought the bosses off

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Just need a bunch of hourglass bosses and cable stops + guides I think.

Thinking I might try and bodge one of these tunnels onto the seat tube, then have a cable stop at the end of the seatstay, so it'd be an exposed cable all the way from top tube shifter to seatstay. Not sure yet though.

I wanted to take some sarcastic low-depth-of-field shots of Marin today.

But I forgot my memory card for my camera. And a storm rolled in leaving me trapped in the office until it was dark. Rode home at in shorts and t-shirt, no lights, in the bluster with no photos to show and only a little bit of work done. 2/10 productivity.

will try again tomorrow

Not really sure what this has turned into... also bars are noticeably wonky, couldn't be arsed to fix yet

Weird geometry on this thing. Much #untukt. Dropouts are bent too - rear wheel is noticeably not straight - but I can still ride it no-handed so it's obviously not too bad.

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I think I'd still like to build the 650b coaster rear for this but I do enjoy fixed as well... thinking maybe two setups:

• 650b knobbly on coaster wheel, 700c CX front, for an SSCX sort of setup
  
• fixed rear, get another front wheel, narrow tyres on both, for an urban fixie skidder setup
  
  

It'd be a faff swapping the rear wheels with that coaster clamp but with the front it only takes seconds.

(I'm going to put the old wheel back on its original bike and sell the whole thing on I think.)

I think the bars got wonked because I was trying to ride with my feet on the drops...

Built this lad for a trip to Majorca.

(sorry for bad photo, I really need to sort my phone out)

Thought I would add a bit more detail in here.

Frameset cost ~£275 so all in under £400 I think if you exclude parts I already had (e.g. shifters would've been quite expensive to buy). Weight is approx 7.5 kg according to my bathroom scales - definitely could get that down a lot with nicer wheels and better bars/stem/etc. but I'm not the type to invest a lot of money in weight. Nicer wheels would be first priority on that front.

Front wheel is Mavic Ksyrium that used to be on that fixie just above. Rear is borrowed off my friend. Tubes spare. Tyres are Mavic something bought for £15/set, basically new. Total: £15

Levers came off my Kona, and I subsequently reassembled the front shifter. For the time being Kona is going to get bar ends and single-speed levers out of the parts bin. So it'll be downtube front, bar end rear for a nice reliable setup. £0

Bars on Giant also are off Kona, which currently has the On-One Midge bars. Absolutely not right for this build but I don't care. Stem is Deda something or other 110mm, which came on a friend's bike but was replaced with a 120mm free-of-charge by Ribble. Didn't want to commit to buying a stem without riding it and getting some idea of required length, and didn't have a spare so borrowing that for now. £0

Crankset is Truvativ Elita (GXP) that ended up spare after my 1x/sub-compact experimentation on Kona. For Kona I have two cranksets: one triple with subcompact rings and one double with 1x ring. For the life of me I can't remember why I ever bought the spare set. But it's nice that they're all compatible I guess. Giant is press-fit which I don't like, but actually the installation was fairly easy using the Park Tool press at a local shop. We'll see if I get any creaking. €29.23 for BB.

Pedals are cheapie Shimano SPD-SLs that I've had for years. Bottle cages will be nicked from Kona, but I'm all in on the Tacx Deva train (30g, £7.50) so I think I'll just buy a bunch more of those when necessary. £0

Saddle, seatpost, brakes all came with the bike. Don't know what they are but the saddle is a Specialized something and seems pretty lightweight. Will be taking my Fabric Line as a backup but want to see how I get on with this saddle first. Brake pads are Koolstop Salmon that I had leftover. £0.

Cassette: cheap 10-speed 11-28 which was a Sunrace CSRS1 for €22.17 which is 267g. I like their wide range cassettes so hopefully this is decent too. I hate the fact that my lowest gear is 34/28 but that's just the way it is because of the derailleur, which is Rival short cage. Front is Rival too. Bought the derailleurs a while ago with a road bike in mind, think I paid £20? Not sure. Chain is KMC X10-93 for €18.14, probably splurged there.

Longer term I have all the parts for a cheapskate TT cockpit except a base bar, ie. clip on aero bars, TT shifters and TT brake levers. I think I will set this up with cable decouplers on both the brakes and gears. Then I can just unscrew the cable decouplers, take off faceplate, swap whole bar over and screw in the other cables if I want to do a tr**thlon or something (which is part of the justification for buying this bike). But as I need 4 decouplers for each bar that's £80, so I need a cheaper solution before I go down that road.

nice tinkering!! did you manage to make the marin disc brake compatible!?

Nope, I've been absolutely slammed with work and life admin for the last two months due to finishing my PhD. Might get a chance to do it in October but unlikely. Winter project I think!

That bike has been sat unused actually for the last month. Think the freewheel is dead. And BB is seized in as well - I was going to put those polished HTII cranks on it but couldn't get the old ones out so now it's sat crankless in the bike shed. Had no time to get it up and running!

But it will happen. Switching to discs is probably a good opportunity to pop a dynamo on it as well.

Big update incoming, including two new mystery bikes. Give me a minute