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(and a horrendous black seatpost - what was I thinking?)
haha this made me chuckle. The hegemony of black parts sucks, and you got tricked into thinking it was OK!
Totally hear what you're saying about lack of modern silver drivetrains. I just built a wide spread 1x10sp with a friction, parts are black and silver mostly, happily found an all-silver Deore 46-11, which I AM LOVING.
Skülly
Hi all, I'm not 100% sure that just-completed projects qualify as a "current project", but here goes. In 2011ish, as a 19yo student, I bought a 1984 Claud Butler Super Dalesman from @hilarystone for a hair under 200 quid. A lovely lugged Reynolds 531ST touring frame, this bike was the first incarnation of the Super Dalesman built by Holdsworth in South London- I have yet to see others of this vintage, any that I've found online are later versions. Based on the 1985 catalogue, it appeared to have all its original components (see photos). I wish I had weighed the thing for comparison, dear god. Despite quite a bit of rust, the frame was actually in really good nick considering its age and had probably been sat in someone's garage for 20 years.
As soon as I got Claud, I replaced cables, chain, bottom bracket, sanded all the rust I could off the crankset and rear mech, and put some Shimano RS100 wheels on. He later saw a horrendous black seatpost (see photo below), some new brake levers and pads and some clipless pedals. Many thousands of miles and even a jaunt from Bristol to Paris with the original canti brakes and drivetrain were mostly enjoyed, but plagued with terrible shifting and braking performance and less-than-ideal comfort.
As a now-28yo with marginally more pennies to rub together, my other half @mutsj and I spent this last stretch of lockdown carefully choosing and buying parts to completely overhaul Claud before a summer of touring (hopefully). All that remains of the original components is the headset and front brake hanger. I decided to convert to an indexed 1x11 with a bar-end shifter for simplicity, weight savings, and the overall aesthetic appeal of having a "cleaner" frame. We started dismantling him over the Easter weekend, but little did we know what we were in for... The cranks were fused completely to the BB spindle and required hacksawing off after destroying one crank remover. We thought it might be plain sailing from there, but we didn't realise that the derailleur mount on old Campagnolo dropouts are not even remotely optimised for modern rear derailleurs. We had what we will call "negative clearance" between mech and cassette.... The wheel axle would have to sit as far forward as possible, and the assistance of a Wolf Tooth Goatlink11 would be required. However, the drive-side dropout screw was rusted completely into the frame and fixed way too far back for our needs. With some commendable ballsy-ness from our pal @popdown and his drill, and a quick trip to Screwfix for an M3 tap, we salvaged the dropout and everything came together in the end.
Without further ado, the before photos... photo from the original catalogue, 2 shots from the ad I purchased from, and the final photo is in 2016 or so after a few years of use (and the disgusting black seatpost - what was I thinking?)