1978 Centurion, waltworks, other projects and rack building.

Picked this frame up off a friend about 8 years ago and has been a slow build ever since but I think 2021 will be the year I finally get it rolling.
Most of the pro tour's came with canti mounts but for about 3 or so years they came with braze on centre pulls, this is one of them.
Over the next few days I'll upload what I've done so far (mostly done over the last year) and what I intend to do to get the project finished. Mainly so I can keep a record of it all.

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Decided on a more modern build than what the frame originally came with. I had a bunch of stuff in the parts bin which drove this, as well as the fact that I will probably ride it more with a slightly newer groupset.
The parts i had that were earmarked for this bike are as follows.

• White industries vbc cranks and Phil wood bottom bracket.
  
• GB 40mm fenders.
  
• Grand Bois 30mm extra light tyres.
  The frame was originally for 27inch wheels so 700c 30 with fenders should work nicely.
  
• Velo orange front rack that I picked up second hand that had been modified by kumo cycles to mount a dynamo light.
  
• Schmidt son edelux front light.
  
• son 28 hub laced to h plus son archetype rim. I also had a spare archetype rim so just needed to find a rear hub.
  
• ultegra ten speed shifters.
  
• 7800 ten speed dura ace derailleurs.
  
• UBI stem that I liked the angle of but really wasn't a fan of the finish. So I found this stem that I thought could be like a poor man's Rene herse.
  

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Sounds pretty good to me.

Sub’d

It's a Sakae MTB stem which would have the desired angle but once it arrived it became apparent that it wasn't going to work without some modifications.
The clamp was 25.4 and the clamping area was too wide to get it around the bends in the nitto bars.
I also picked up a rear hub that needed modifying as well.

I'd check how the 700 + 30c tires look first. 27 inch wheels used to have 32c (1 1/4). Bigger wheel + bigger tire. Perhaps you can fit 35 even 38s and end up with same diameter as original

I did a mock up pretty early on and any bigger would require larger fenders and they would need to be cut to fit the chainstays. Maybe something to look into later on if I don't like how it rides with the 30's.

The frame is totally not what I was expecting. Looks really nice.

Pretty sure @spotter needs to see this!

Great build, will follow with interest but that Sakae stem is a no-go after I saw a video of some one flexing one with great ease.

Interesting, I'll make sure to keep an eye on it and change if needed. I've had a Cinelli grammo on a bike before and there's no way it could be worse than that.

I moved back to NZ at the start of 2019 and had access to my father's "workshop" when I visited my parents, so used the opportunity to modify the stem.
I made a sanding drum that I could mount in the drill press and used it to to take away material on the clamp until I could get it around the bends in the bar. I then made a similar one to mount in the lathe to change the clamping area from 25.4 to 26.

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I got pretty into the Alex singer stem Caps so picked up some material to have a go at making something similar for the Sakae stem. I had a bit of time so I also got enough to make a quill stem adaptor and spacers.
The stem cap came out pretty good, it uses a rubber O ring to stay in place. The stem adaptor works but will probably end up using a nitto one. It was fun to make though and allowed me to see what it would look like.

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Liking this mucho so far. i hope the stem works out, it looks so good.

Great bodge!

Wow, that's a cool stem, and it's always nice to see mods like these. Very well done.

Thanks! I'm not huge on the look of threaded to threadless stems but maybe this one will be ok.

Next up was building a rear wheel for the bike. I'd tried to find a white industries hub to match the cranks, but didn't have any luck, so when a friend offered me a no name silver, sealed bearing hub for $10, I jumped on it.
The hub was anodised but looked like someone had a crack at polishing it before but had given up pretty quickly. A polished hub would match the build so I read up about stripping ano and got to it with the oven cleaner. After the anodising was gone, I hand polished using different grits of wet n dry sandpaper and also some stuff called Miracle shine that I'd gotten in Japan. I'm pretty sure it's the same as Silvo and the hub came up a treat. This was a long process and in future i will buy a polishing wheel.
About this time I picked up some work in a bike shop and decided it was time I finally learn how to build my own wheels. I made use of having access to wholesale accounts and got myself a truing stand, spoke keys etc.
I measured up the hub to order spokes and found out that it was 135mm, the whole time I had thought it was 130. The frame was originally 126 but had obviously been used with a 130 at some point in its life as it was now somewhere around 128mm. 128 to 130 would be fine but to 135 was going to be a stretch. I wasn't keen on cold setting out to that amount so talked to a engineering friend and he was willing to have a go at turning the end caps down to fit. With that done and making sure the chain wouldn't run on the frame with a ten speed cassette, I ordered the correct length spokes and built up the wheel.
I spent way to long on the wheel build but was happy with the end result, it was a bit like solving a puzzle and rather rewarding.

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I'm almost up to where I currently am.
Sorry this has turned into a bit of a novel.

With the wheel built, I finally opened the packaging of the Grand Boi tyres that I'd had for years and mounted them.
I then treated the frame with frame saver and gave it a good clean to try and remove the built up grime. It really is is good condition for something that is over 40 years old.
I'd ended up with a spare Chris King 2nut headset that I installed and had also found at some point some replacement springs and plates for the braze on brakes. The old springs were ok but I installed the new ones with the idea of having the old ones as spares.
I'd purchased a nitto 28.6 seatpost and stripped the ano off it and gave it a polish. I'd also picked up some new GB fenders from the commuter cycles garage sale for cheap because the ones I had for the bike had dents in them. I wasn't really that worried but the new ones were stupidly cheap and I figured I could repurpose the dented ones to 650b at some point.
I installed all the components that I currently have onto the bike.
I'm waiting on front derailleur braze on adaptor from problem solvers and need to come up with a way to mount the rear mudguard to the brake bridge. I'm not keen to use a bracket and will try to come up with an alternative.
Other than that,I just need to get some compressionless brake housing, some bar tape, fender flaps and decide on which saddle to use.
I'm sure there's a bunch of other things that I haven't thought of or I'll need to change but I guess that's part of the fun.

Edit: also looking for recommendations for brake pads/holders to use.
Also looking at the innicycle headset to clean things up but have also started to play around with brazing so maybe a custom stem could be on the cards.

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Wow, this is going to be a looker!

Edit: also looking for recommendations for brake pads/holders to use.

Koolstop Salmon would be my choice for pads. They come in all sorts of shapes so I'm sure you could find a holder that would work for you.

Also: I like your cassette collection!

This is really lovely!
What are the canti pulley type straddle cable holders? DIY? They look great, I've been looking for these and only found the dia compe, which are pricey and bulky...

They are Gran compe, maybe an older model? I'm not sure where I picked them up from but I don't think they were expensive.
Just looked at the photo and I'm actually holding it upside down. Whoops.

I'll have a look. I think I checked what the distributors had a while ago but they weren't bringing anything in that would work. I might just have to buy online.
I'd love to find some Scott Mathauser Super Brake holders and pads. I think Yokozuna maybe still make them, but are stupidly expensive and to get them to NZ would cost far too much.

Thanks regarding the cassettes! Could never seem to keep a scratch off a CD when I was younger so tapes were the go. I was really happy to find the display cases in a secondhand music store and managed to talk the owner into selling them to me.

Almost certain this is a novatech hub, also sold as Ambrosio.

Also on a previous build I bought some cheap down tube shifters, ditch the levers and with a little gentle application of a file managed to get DT bosses on it for easy adjustment with STI shifters.

Re: padholders get cheap BBB, polish and drillium them and then put koolstop salmon.

Please can I see mor photos of the bikes hanging up? They look great!

Yours are from the 80s apparently . Loic iirc Berthoud is working on some prototypes atm. Maybe next year?

Great job on the bike so far.