“Ages since I've been ill”, I thought. A snotty cold had me under the weather for several days. Colleagues at work had similar symptoms and tested positive for the 'vid. I checked myself - negative. It passed and I was feeling back to normal, until a rumbling in the intestines. Three weeks off work - wiped out - the intestinal pain the sort that has you gritting your teeth and grabbing on to something in desperation. Tests for bacteria came back negative, a virus most likely the cause. Many days without eating has done wonders for the waistline though - I'm giving mid-noughties Michael Rasmussen a run for his money.
It's been going on for a month since I've ridden a bike, hopefully be back riding soon, but in the meantime I've done a little work on the pub bike (a.k.a. the-bike-that-never-gets-built). The heart of it is a Specialized Stumpjumer frameset from the 80s. A previous owner had it repainted blue and when I came into possession of it it had significant patches of rust. I did remove these and planned to leave them be, passing them off as patina. Second thoughts had me scouring the internet for some touch up paint. Not an easy thing matching paint using digital images, but I struck lucky and bought a perfect match in the form of a colour for Ford vehicles called Dive Blue.
Pure chance that the colour worked so well, here's the left chainstay before:
And after:
Not perfectly blemish free but the colour matches, and it's certainly good enough for a pub bike. I did start to lose track of the bike’s purpose (one to be locked up outside the pub/shops and not be too desirable to be stolen) and started looking at period correct bullmoose bars. A costly option that I soon talked myself out of, instead sticking with the stem the frameset came with (despite it being black and not matching with the silver of the other components - some yet to be acquired). I also bought secondhand brake levers, shifters, and saddle. This is the bike to date with a North Road handlebar I had in the spare parts bin:
The brake levers are Shimano featuring their Servo-Wave Action (they've got to be good with a name like that). The cable can be adjusted to three different lengths, modifying the braking power. The H setting gives the longer pull and stronger braking, the L setting the opposite. The instructions I found online for them only refer to V-brakes (which I intend to use) but I assume the L setting allows for use with cantilever brakes?
The left shifter is a Shimano Deore, to be used to friction shift across a triple crankset. The right shifter is one by Suntour that can index for 9 speed but will friction shift with clicking (!?!) according to the people at Rivendell. Looking forward to see how that works.
For the saddle I went with a honey coloured Brooks B17. Well Smethwick isn't a million miles away from here, so nice to have a reasonably locally made addition to the bike. Giving the saddle a wipe with some dubbin has it looking in very good nick.
I do have a front and rear derailleur already, in the form of NOS Shimano Nexave from, perhaps, the early 90s. The rear derailleur is Rapid Rise (another Rivendell influence) so shifts in the opposite direction to “normal” rear derailleurs. It sits closest to the wheel when the cable is at its slackest and tensioning the cable pulls it from the largest cog to the smaller cogs. “Normal” rear derailleurs sit over the small cog when the cable is at it slackest and increasing cable tension pulls them across the larger cogs. The rest of the build I've still to source (on the cheap I hope).
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