Project three-ish - comfort revision

Plan is to give it a full rebuild, sort the fit and paint it

Sounds about right

Capos are cool and all but this is so good. I wouldn't personally keep both for the sake of it but then I've regretted selling frames before so...

Bikes looks ace man well done

Ha! I've learned my lesson after Super8gate. Paint is in really good shape on the 9, surprisingly shouty for matt black so i'll keep everything else simples.

Thanks dude, when you finally get hold of Jambon's old Capo you'll understand why i'm not selling, it's just so much fun to ride. The Dart is equally great but quite a different ride so i feel both make sense to keep. Capo for good weather blasts and maybe track duty and Dart will do crap weather and probably longer distances a lot better.

Cheers bro.

Dart looks great fun! Deserves a nice paint job IMO. I might be interested in the Surly - what does it look like currently?

Thanks, yeah it's a lovely ride with the 30's.

Steamroller will get built this weekend so i'll get some pics up asap. Paint is as seen in previous pics but i've recently checked it over and touched up any areas that were looking a little thin. Hoping people will dig it as much as me and it's great if you need to lock it up! It'll have a nice black Kinin XR31 wheelset, Easton risers (or can do drops and TRP levers) and quite a few new service parts.

when you finally get hold of Jambon's old Capo

That's my bike now.

you'll understand why i'm not selling, it's just so much fun to ride

You and Phil will understand why he's not getting hands on it anytime soon! ;)

I agree to a point though. It is a stiff bike with 25/26c max clearance front and rear. Riding these lovely English lanes I do yearn for a touch more compliance on occasion.

In my head I'd like to copy the geo into a titanium Wanty frame, but with clearance for 30/32s and disk fork. I'll keep dreaming, as its not happening any time soon.

You build really nice bikes. What are the bars on the dart?

Thanks, hasn't always been that way but they're getting better. Bars are standard fare off my old Pinnacle Iroko, they have a 9 degree back sweep which is super comfy.

Good work, these are nice. How wide are the rims on the capo? I was certain I couldn't fit bigger than 25mm tyres on archetypes on mine

Need to check but think about 25mm, maybe a touch more. They currently have GP 25's which come up about 27mm with no issues. 28C GK's are true to size and I have no issues with those either.

Hmm Archetypes are 23mm, maybe I'll be able to squeeze them in. Thanks for the info!

Think I'm allowed to spam my own thread, Steamroller now up for sale:

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/334171/#comment14743767

:)

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F223525196152

Sad times, if i hadn't just picked up the 9 i'd of bought it back.

put it up for sale for less time than the toothpaste caad and offer postage so you can a bit more for it :)

Frame back from Winston, there was some surface rust starting to take hold so I took the opportunity to clean it up and slap some paint on. This bike will get a lot of use but is mainly going to be my crap weather and lock up bike so the goal is to tidy it up but keep it a little rough looking.

Bare metal areas cleaned up and the rest of the paint flatted down for some adhesion

And a correct size seat post free cycled courtesy of @benjam to add to the aesthetic.

Not pretty but I've built the bare metal areas up with Zinc primer before dusting the whole frame with grey primer, matt black then 2 coats of lacquer. Sort of wished I spent longer prepping some of the chips but this is supposed to be an anti-theft paint job so it'll do.

It blows putting crap parts on a good frame so I've used my kinlin wheelset and although every other part has come from the beater/free parts bin they're all of decent working quality. The headset and fork are a bit of a give away and it's clearly not as good as when it was wearing carbons but I'm happy with the result.

Seeing I spent the day wrecking the looks of the Dart I thought I'd at least try and improve the Capo situation.

D.D cranks from @amey are lush, Sugino bolts, DA ring and Hope stainless B.B finish them nicely

And after Wiggle cocked my order up twice Ken Ellerker cycles did a great job in sorting me with what seems like the last 120mm 10 degree X2 in stock anywhere

Yoshida grips, KMC chain and Paul E lever for Brakey days on there way then this'll be done for now.

Woke up in a could sweat about what I'd done to the Dart. I'd been careful to use old 1200 grit to flat the paint and other than the bare metal areas only dusted lightly so I was hopeful I could sort it.

Luckily it didn't take much to carefully take off most the new top coat without damaging what was underneath. I hit a few areas with a polishing compound and it came up like new so was a huge relief. I'll need to the pop out the headset out to clean up the head tube and get some gloss black to sort the main tubes as these had significant paint removed previously. But for now I'll leave it as is whilst I decide what to do with it.

Essentially this is too good to be a ratbike and I need to decide (again) if it's the right bike for crap weather/lock up etc. Pretty sure I can get this frame back to it's best so if anyone is interested in it drop me a pm.

And finally stripped the 9. Frameset is a solid 8 out of 10, couple small chips and some paint that could do with a buff otherwise it's really good. Didn't realise until now there's a sparkle in the black paint!

thank god, the original paint is so much nicer.
don't sweat locking it up! I have a bright blue metallic paint frame that I lock up everywhere.
just use a decent lock, and some scuffed components.

Yeah, I'm gonna put it down to sunstroke, it's safely back to where it was when I got it now.

if you ever decide that you want to throw some sterling at this frame, i might part with my si forks :)

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