Millenium Falcon

I've just finished pimpin my Falcon framed commuter bike.

The frame was built around 1979 and I bought it second hand for £25 in 1989 before I started my transport design degree in Coventry.

The first build used mainly rusty old steel parts since the idea was to discourage thieves, anyway the thieves didn't want it so I still had the bike which I decided to continue using as my commuter when I started a car design job in France back in 1996. I spent a little more money on alloy parts although usually bought the cheapest, the only time I spent lots was to buy thr Mavic CXP 30 aero rims which I had built up with some shimano 600ex hubs and a 6 speed cassette. the original metallic paint was flaking so I resprayed it myself with an aerosol in blue.

That paint job didn't last long so i had it sprayed fluorescent orange at work, that paintjob and set up survived until this spring when I looked at it with the intention of converting it into a fixie since there are no brazed on bits, unfortunately my journey to work includes a 170 altitude gain so I decided to keep my 12 gears and brakes. i still wanted the pure fast looks of a track bike but with convenience and safety of a city bike (gear and brake levers easily accessible) reaching down to operate downtube gear levers didn't feel so safe while riding in traffic. My bike has had that fixie look for 15 years (straight bars and v shaped rims) so i went for bullhorns - the Nitto RB 021s look so dynamic!
I looked at many solutions for gear shifters and brake levers but finally decided on JTEK engineering's clamp on aero lever with Dia compe bar-end shifters. I did a photoshop sketch to see how it looked but didn't like the upward pointing points of the shift levers, so I decided to remove the straight tip of the Nitto bullhorns, then I sawed off the radius which left the handle part of the bars looking rather short. I clamped the JTEK levers to the end then attached the tips between the brake levers and the gear shifters, the Dia-compe expansion system was long enough to hold everything firmly together.
The JTEK aero levers needed to be modified to fit and work correctly.

Nokon cables are used for the gears and Chrome cables are used for the brakes.

A clamp on cable stop was required on the down tube to allow bar mounted gear shifters.

The stem is a chrome plated 120mm ITM Eclypse and the Bar tape is Deda chrome tape, wound over gel padding.

Since my forks are chrome, the wheels and most of my parts were silver covered, i decided to go for a monotone silver look. Hutchinson actually make metallic silver coloured tyres so I bought a pair - fusion at the rear and atom comp at the front.

I use Shimano SPD pedals on my mountain bike commuter so i wanted some compatible pedals for this bike so that I can wear the same shoes, so I got the lightest and cheapest I could find - Exustar.

the saddle is a Fizik Pave which I found for half price, it's the best good looking saddle in a metallic silver colour that I could find.

Other new bits include the Wipperman chain, iRD 6 speed freewheel, Alloy seat post and Miche headset. the brakes are cheap shimano Exage action, which where stripped of their metallic blue epoxy paint and hand polished to a mirror shine ( took hours!)

The paint job is mega flake silver over a metallic silver base. The Falcon stickers are from H. Lloyd cycles and the gold badge at the front came from Cyclomondo (ebay) in Australia.

The Millenium sticker was created in Adobe illustrator using the Space age font available at dafont.com, it was printed and cut out in self adhesive vinyl then they were all lacquered over.

There was never an official Falcon cycles "Millenium" model, I thought it would be fun and it suited the modern silver look.

More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/84315388@N03/

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