Keeping Physically and Mentally (?) Fit

   I’m determined to clear out the majority of my finished bicycles before moving onto some of the projects that have been in limbo for a while. The shop rafters are pretty full, and I'm frustrated by having to lean bicycles around the walls - it doesn't look great, and I don't want to worry about knocking something over accidentally. I am still trying to find a few reasonably-priced parts for those bikes “in waiting”, so delaying the builds is not that much of an issue anyway.

   I have been doing plenty of riding in the meantime, including the previously-mentioned route in the Brandywine Creek area just north of Kennett Square, PA. The course featured a balanced mix of asphalt and gravel roads with an up and down profile providing nearly 4000 feet of climbing in only 60 miles. There was very little time to recover at all in between the hills! It was supposed to be an organized group ride, but the scheduled day ended up being windy and rainy, so I took on the route by myself on a beautiful afternoon a couple days later.

   Another NYC-area cycling adventure is in the works, this time starting in Brewster, near the Connecticut border, and following the Putnam, North County and South County Trailways back to the George Washington Bridge. I also have three more of my Philadelphia tour rides to complete this month.

   As usual, I have had a fair amount of springtime repair and tune-up work, and I have also had a couple of custom builds come into my shop. My friend Jordan made a return visit with a red Vitus 979 that we had built together in my shop last November. He found that the 58 cm frame was too large and had bought a purple replacement onto which he wanted me to swap the parts, with a couple of changes.

   The majority of the components are Shimano Dura-Ace, but unlike me, Jordan has no problem mixing brands and/or equipment of different eras. He had a set of lesser-quality SunRace brake/shifters, and bought a set of Shimano Sora levers to replace them. He has requested installation of an FSA carbon crankset instead of the vintage Dura-Ace version he had on the red Vitus.

   He had also found a carbon fork with a 1" steering tube, and was hoping to go to a threadless headset, but the tube had been cut for a shorter head tube and didn't leave enough room to safely attach the stem. He asked me to purchase a quill adapter with which he could use the shorter threadless stem, providing him a more comfortable reach.

   The two frames he dropped off were actually from different model years, as the purple 979 had the slightly more modern grub screw at the seat post mount, as in the left photo below, instead of a more conventional split seat tube lug with a through-bolt on the right.

   The previous owner had taken the bolt out completely and didn't thread it back in correctly, as you could tell that it was not straight visually and it wouldn’t rotate freely. The steel screw had simply cut its new path through the existing hole in the softer aluminum lug. I told Jordan we had little alternative but to tighten it as best I we could, as the chances of stripping the bolt or damaging the aluminum lug would be pretty high if we tried to force it out.

   I had Jordan take a saddle height measurement from what he considered his most comfortable bike, so that we could set this seatpost in the correct position for him and not have to make any further adjustments after it would be locked it in place. I used a pipe on the end of the Allen wrench so that I could get good leverage to twist the grub screw in tightly.

   A gentleman named Tom brought an intriguing Univega mixte build project into my shop the other day. Iraqi immigrant Ben Lawee started the Univega company during the 1970s bike boom in order to design and import bicycles initially manufactured by Italian brand Italvega and Japanese maker Miyata.

   Tom’s frameset has a raw steel finish, and he provided a wild mix of parts to go on it, including a set of 650c wheels with fat tires and a set of carbon riser bars with 9-speed trigger shifters for an upright cockpit arrangement. The really new twist for me was the inclusion of a SunTour Superbe front derailleur with, what the company called, an “endless band” mount.

   The mounting hardware had the appearance of that included on a set of brake/shift levers, but I immediately thought, “I understand how to slip the band onto a set of drop bars, but how do you put this onto a seat post. There was no obvious way to open the ends of the band without prying the metal completely out of shape, either.

   I turned to the ‘net for help, first with a visit to Velobase.com to see if more details could be found on this vintage part and then to a couple bicycle forums to check if someone else posted for some help for this puzzler. In the only discussion I could find, someone informed another confused cyclist that there was either a slotted or Philips-head end on the stud, and it could be backed out of its base. The two ends of the band could then easily pop apart.

It seems that every day I’m learning about technological advances in cycling, but every so often a vintage part will teach me a little lesson of its own!