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Yeah it probably is a bit of hassle but it’s better than just brazing useless practice joints and it means I don’t have to face the dilemma of keeping the shopper frame sat around incase I find a use for it versus putting it on eBay and having the trouble of posting it etc.
So with that in mind I got started today.
Bb height with the stock 26 x 1 1/4 wheels was 275mm or 10 3/4” so track legal. I think. It’s 10.5” innit? I should really know haha.
Mmm, Manchester site says 11”. Oh well, with 700s on there it was raised to 11 1/4” anyway and I think I’m going to make some ‘gains’ in this department in just a minute.
With the guards off and a skinnier tyre in the frame it became apparent the rear end is looooong. I also looked at the current dropouts and realised they are horrible cheap things and the method of attachment to the stays is basically that they’ve flattened the end of the stay around the dropout and then welded them together.
Easy solution, chop those suckers right off. I’ve also had to chop the seat stay bracing plate out in order to get the wheel closer to the bb area.
I’m thinking shortening the seatstays will actually mean I gain a bit of bb height though we’ll need to see what track ends I use...
The seatstay/dropout junction was equally as cheap and nasty plus the stays are now terminating in the middle of nowhere so I just removed these at the seatcluster. Debrazed as much as I could but have left the area a bit rough and needing some cutting/filing so as to avoid over heating the area.
The forks are going to be a challenge. Unfortunately there isn’t as much room in them as I’d hoped so I don’t think chopping the curve out is really going to work. If dropouts are cheap enough I might just have a go at shortening them for the fun of it but I think I’m really going to need to replace the fork. That of course means the toptube might have to go but I’ll figure that out later.
I think I’ll get some track ends onto the chopped down chainstays and mock it up again with the current fork and see where the bb height is. I don’t think changing the fork to a less raked one necessarily means loosing any height.
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M_V
@FredyCro
To me it sound like a lot of hassle, you might have better chances of building a enough straigth frame with a home made jig. Plenty of people have done it with wooden jigs and eyeballing.