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Always loved the look (heh) of these frames. Kinda weird, but in a loveable and unique way. Love that build too, bonus points for silly matchy matchy bar tape and saddle

Surly forks aren't light, but they're relatively affordable and I think the ride quality flatters a build like this. Not too stiff.

Hell yeah this is gonna be cool. Being in the process of making similar updates to my old GT, I have a couple of tips:

•68 mm BB yes, but you need to make sure that road crank arms will clear the chainstays. On my Palomar a set of GRX cranks has about 1 mm clearance each side and they hit the chainstays if you're pushing hard uphill.
•you could go for a fork that suspension corrects the frame like the ECR, or go for a shorter fork like a Straggler or Disc Trucker that effectively steepens the headtube and make the bike handle more aggressively. Mine has a Straggler fork and it's always worked great

On a slightly more sacrilegious note, here's my partner's headshok Cannondale that we've recently finished turning into a drop bar comfy commuter.

She wanted to buy a bike during the peak of covid bike drought insanity, and asked me to help out, with the brief that it had to be "unique, comfortable, and have drop bars". Nice and easy then...

I found this on eBay and got it for dirt cheap - basically everything bar the frameset was fucked. The seller gave me 2 broken wheelsets which I turned into one passable set, and built it up as a parts bin special using the absolutely knackered 105 5700 group that I originally ran on the Look when I was a poor student. Still running the knackered Coda crankset that it came with, may switch that out and/or put a front derailleur on if there's a need for it.

For some reason 26" rim brake bikes are cool now, so maybe this is on trend? Maybe it's puppy murdering? Who knows. It rides great and she loves it.

This is my Look X85, I got it for an absolute steal a few years ago in a clearance sale from Merlin Cycles. It's size XL but is only a size 58 in terms of seat tube, so it's on the smaller side for me. This is it in "gravel" mode with 650B x 40 tyres, this is probably my favourite setup for it. It absolutely floats along trails and climbs like a goat. I have another carbon 700c wheelset with 30 mm tyres for road riding with mates, bit it's not so inspiring as a road bike. That said, I love it and I'll keep it till it falls apart.

Might as well post some of my other bikes in the meantime

Super cool. I've run a similar setup on an old MTB frame and it makes for lovely riding.

It sounds like you don't like the mudguard aesthetic so maybe you could spray em black to hide them better? That way they kinda blur into the tyres

Trying to work out if you can get QR adapters for these. I want these so bad.

So I've run the GT fixed gear for the past two years (where has that time gone...) during which it has given me many smiles, endured a couple of wintery crashes unscathed, and generally been the perfect commuter. However, my homemade paintjob never really fully hardened and it's been chipping like an absolute bastard. I love the rat look but I can't bear to see it rust for another winter, so it's off to Alfano in Leicester for some frame work and a nice dark blue powder coat.

In my defence, this was the tail end of a trip from the top of Hampshire down through the New Forest, which was all very "gravel"-oriented. It was not the right bike for Purbeck though, I walked most climbs and cursed my lack of gear range/squishy tyres. I stayed at Burnbake, nothing special but the scenery onto the bay was stunning.

Love that route. Did it on a cross bike and yeah, felt massively underbiked for a lot of those climbs. Stunning route though!

One thing to remember though is that rust converter does turn all the good metal that it touches purple - you can very gently abrade that off though if you're wanting to clear coat over.

I would be wary of rust remover for deep pitting - you can get rust converter solution instead which I prefer to use if I can. That way you can fix the rust without removing material and deepening the pitting.

Also I have a Magura MT4 on the front of my commuter. Has been bombproof and maintenance free in the two years it's been on there

The subtly different colour might clash disgustingly. Or it might look wild.

Do it!

Unreal! This is super cool!

Do you have the means to force test it? I've done some generative design in the past and it's always super satisfying to see if you can get good correlation between your model and what you actually make.

Get in the bin

In my (admittedly very limited) experience of playing around with topology optimization using a Markforged 3D printer, I've found that a sensible set of loading cases combined with not optimising too aggressively goes a long way. It's not hard to see how something like those lugs with tiny little 2-3 mm tendrils wouldn't be very impact tolerant...

I've seen this in the past and I think it's stunning. I'd love to see some in depth evaluation of stiffness, weight, durability etc vs conventional lugwork.

I wonder if anyone on here has experience using one of those 2 part lacquers that are supposedly far more hard wearing? I've always wanted to try but been scared off by the extreme cancer death warnings on the safety datasheets

In my experience that's just how spray.bike comes out. You can flat it off with fine grit sandpaper before clear-coating over the top, but it's a faff.

Totally depends on what you're after, but it's definitely much easier for amateurs to use than normal paint. I've done a few small components using it and had great results.

I might be interested, got any pics?

I hadn't thought about this till now, but the caliper definitely won't have been designed to act as a stressed member like that. It's probably fine (lol) but I wonder what magnitude of additional stress you'll be exposing the caliper to.

(Edit: I guess you could get a lil brace machined to protect the caliper from buckling)

Goddamn that's elegant. I've never seen a disc tab design like that, one little boss on each stay. Does this guy do steel too? I've got an old GT that I've wanted to do a disc conversion on for years

Awesome, I'll give it a go!