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• #27
Quite a few things happened in the last few months. I did some more shaping, that went poorly, so I decided to fill the gaps with braze alone. Turns out, it's really hard to braze thick steel to super nice thin tubes.
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• #28
I got better toward the end, but they still aren't great. I'll file and shape a little once I'm happy with her function. That all happened about a week ago.
Today, I finally cut out the slither of metal stopping me reinstalling the rear wheel. I didn't braze the ring in that straight, so it's a bit asymmetric- but I'm happy with it. I slapped the wheels in and then decided to just rebuild the bike. I'm chuffed. It's come out cool. Most people that are it just laugh, which is fine, but I think it's got a certain punk feel going on, so I'll still with it. Going to ride it for a week, have it blasted and paint it something cool.
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• #29
Plus it fits my requirements of a massive tyre. Was thinking about lengthening the head tube and replacing the top tube, but might leave that for now. We will see.
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• #30
I’ve been riding this bike over the last 6 months, including a tour around Devon. It has the following problems:
-Adding a massive ring to the chainstays was a bad idea, the gear cable gets hung-up on it all the time and gives miss shifts
-The rim flex's enough that it scraps on the ring
-There’s way too much flex in the frame to have this bike heavily loaded in the rear. With a topeak explorer rack, tent on the top with two panniers on the sides, it was wiggling all over the place. That on its own doesn’t bother me that much, but I feel its shortening the life of the frame more seriously than I already have.
-I never got around to painting it at all, and the fresh sea air wasn’t kind to the exposed steel. Not too bad, but now requires more effort than a quick sand down and rattle can.Since having it with flat bars, it was cool to cruise around on, and reasonably comfortable, but I wanted to give it a whirl with drops, so that’s what I did:
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• #31
Nice job on the tube-chainstay idea. Not sure what the resident framebuilders would have to say about it but if it's strong enough, then all good!
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• #32
Love the “Fuggit, let’s just start cutting” attitude around this project. Absolutely wonderful. Bikes looks great and may just not be destined for rear-loaded touring.
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• #33
Your other build led me to this. Creative idea, shame it didn't work out completely!
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• #34
Thanks.
Lessons learnt:
Don't start with a frame that's to small. Get a better place to coat the fork, and never place brakes at the bottom of their travel to mount mudguards. All in all, useful project, I still commute on this, but it will be stripped for the new project.
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• #35
Insane project, you should be put under observation.
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• #36
Reminds me a bit of graeme obree though his was a bit more “refined”. Bet you learnt a lot doing this. 👌
Now that I've ruined more than 50% of the paint, I will happily take suggestions for new colours or paint jobs. Was thinking 80's splatter, but that's a large amount of effort.