A poorly treated Geoffrey Butler gets another makeover

I bought this frame when I first moved to London, and I'm ashamed to say it's had a hard life. Steel road frames in London during the mid 2000's often got butchered and converted into fixie whipskidders, carelessly locked up around the mean streets of Shoreditch - this one was no different. Skids all over the place, so many skids in fact, that I actually broke one of the chainstays. It got fixed by Ted at some point, respaced for track hubs, and when asked if I wanted all the braze-ons removed, thankfully my conscience got the better of me and I said no.

Thank fuck. Because I've decided to mangle it into another horrible bastardisation of a bike, this time at least slightly closer to what its creator originally intended. The plan is as modern a groupset I can get my hands on for as little money as possible, the more incongruous the better, and the widest alloy wheels the chainstays will allow.

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Speaking of chainstays, the first job was... persuading... them back to modern width. A few minutes of treatment by Dr. Two-by-Four and we're in business. I won't be using those wheels on it, so don't get too excited.

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This was a frustrating 20mins. Then I remembered the stem wasn't 26.0 like I thought it was.

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This one is though.

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I'll keep updating as parts arrive. I'm not in too much of a rush to get this finished really.

Frame looks lovely, am curious what it looked like in its whip-skidding guise.

Postie dropped off a few things today, and also didn't deliver some stuff. Long wait til Monday for it.

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Groupset bits have arrived, as have my favourite tyres ever. The frame is currently at a bike shop having the BB threads chased, rear bridge drilled out for modern calipers, and dropouts realigned.

Also made an error and bought some wheels I thought were 11spd, turns out they're 10spd with no option to change the freehub, whoops. However they're too nice to let that put me off, so while I wait for a new 11spd hub to swap in, I read up on machining the back of an old Ultegra cassette to make it fit as an interim solution. I don't have a lathe so I just belt-sanded it a bit and ta da! It worked. Whether there's enough clearance for the derailleur is another question...

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There is an 11 speed 105 cassette designed to work on 10 speed hubs.

I know. But 34t looks really odd on road bikes, and by the time I'd bought that and then another rear mech as mine is short cage, its the same price if not more

Hub arrived today so I'll get it swapped in soon as I get a mo

Just for edification the 6800 ss and gs have the same length body, it’s the cage that was different. Even though they are supposedly maxed out at 30t I’ve never had a problem setting one up for 34t.

If it’s 8000 I’m not 100% sure if the body is the same between them as they’re listed with different max cogs. But Shimano is always a bit conservative on those measurements. I could clear a 30t with 7700 and 32t (I was tempted to try 34) with 7800.

And well I like big cassettes on road bikes ;)

Yeah it's 8000. I got the short cage and not planning on putting anything bigger than a 28t on the back

Been fun reading up on 11spd Shimano widths though!

Spent the afternoon in the sun putting the new hub into these. Hoping to have the frame sorted out by tomorrow and then the real build starts

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Found a few hours to piece this together this morning.
Almost entirely second hand Ultegra, not fussed about scuffs because it'll get them anyway in time. R8000 is a bit fiddly to set up (and I managed to get a cable stuck in the 6800 shifter last night) and then it works so well. Still needs a bit of tweaking, but first ride on it was really nice. I'd forgotten how slow steel frames are to pick up, and how comfortable they are once up to speed.

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I feel like it needs a black quill stem, so if anyone has one for sellz then let me know

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