How To Turn Your Touring Bike Into A Racer

In one of my early posts, I talked about a Romic Sport Touring bicycle I had in my youth.  For a time, it was my only bike, so I did my "fast" riding, touring and even my errands on it.

"Fast" riding included everything from actual races to informal contests with riding buddies that ended with one of us buying the other beer and/or lunch.  Sometimes the later were part of vigorous club rides; other times, they were training rides that turned into impromptu competitions.  "Touring" could mean anything from a day or weekend ride to a longer trip with panniers and a handlebar bag.  

The Romic had a geometry and build that made it suitable for many different kinds of riding:  rather like Arielle, my Mercian Audax.  I did my first European bike tour on it, with the first pair of wheels I had built for me:  Campagnolo Nuovo Tipo hubs, Super Champion 58 clincher rims and Robergel Sport spokes.  I also had a pair of tubular (sew-up) wheels with those same hubs and Super Champion Arc en Ciel tubular rims, which I used for racing and "fast" rides (the planned ones, anyway!).  

In addition to switching wheels, I would  move the adjustment screws on the dropouts:

If I wanted to ride faster, I would move the screws inward to bring the wheel closer to shorten the wheelbase.

Now, many new frames come with vertical dropouts

which don't allow for any adjustment.  So, if you have a sport touring bike and want to shorten the wheelbase, you're "shitouttaluck" as we used to say in my old neighborhood.

Or are you?  Apparently, someone came up with a way to shorten his wheelbase:

At least, that's how an e-Bay seller in described his 1978 Motobecane Grand Jubile's encounter with a sewer grate:

"Good condition for its age but frame suffered an impact (hitting a sewer grating) which caused the wheelbase to be shortened slightly."

Hmm...Maybe the next time someone steals a pedal or wheel or saddle from one of my parked bikes, I'll tell myself that the thief did me a favor by lightening my bike.  I'm sure that will help the bike (and me) to go faster! 

How A Windsor Became A Raleigh

Sometimes “parts bin bikes” become other “parts bin bikes”.

That’s how it seems to work for me, anyway.  In any event, that’s what happened to the Windsor Professional I built up.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I didn’t like the ride.  So I sold the frame and transferred the parts to another.

Back in those pre-Internet, e-Bay and Craig’s List days, we learned who was selling what by word of mouth, bike club newsletters and bike shop boards.  And, here in New York, we checked the board at the American Youth Hostels store on Spring Street.

It was on the latter that I saw a listing for a Raleigh Competition frame.  Built from Reynolds 531 tubing with “sport” geometry, it was, in concept as well as ride, similar to the Peugeot PX-10.  Actually, I’d say the Competition—at least the one I had-- was a bit stiffer, but not harsh.

I’m not sure of whether Raleigh sold only the frame.  During the 1960’s and into the late 1970’s, it was equipped with quality French components such as the Specialtes TA three-pin crankset, Normandy Competition hubs, AVA tubular rims and Huret Jubilee derailleurs. The brakes were Weinmann centerpulls, as they were on all derailleur-equipped Raleighs except the Professional. In the late 1970’s, the wheelbase was shortened a bit and, possibly, the angles were tweaked a bit to make it stiffer.  At that point, Raleigh started to equip the Competition with Campagnolo Gran Sport components and Weinmann Carrera side-pull brakes.  The rims were switched to narrow Weinmann concave clincher rims.

In both incarnations, the frame was finished in glossy black with gold lug linings and graphics.  The lettering and other elements of the graphics were updated when the Raleigh changed the specifications.  My frame was the later version, from 1978.

I liked the ride quite a bit:  not quite as aggressive as the Colnago I owned at the same time, but stiffer and quicker-handling than my old PX-10. And it didn’t have the hard, dead ride of the Windsor Pro it replaced, or of the Cannondale I rode a couple of years earlier.

Actually, it was like the Romic I mentioned in an earlier post, and a slightly less aggressive version of my current Mercian Audax Special, a.k.a. Arielle.

So why did I strip and sell it?

 If I recall correctly, the frame measured 58 cm or 23 inches.  Normally, I ride 55 or 56 cm, depending on the design of the frame.  I believe that by the time I bought the Competition, Raleigh stopped making it—or, at least, they were making a very different bike  and calling it the “Competition”.  Also, around the time I bought the frame, Raleigh had shifted most, or possibly all, of its production out of England.

More important, even if I could have found another used Competition, it probably wouldn’t have fit me.  You see, Raleigh had this habit of sizing their bikes in two-inch (five-centimeter) increments.  So, if the bike was offered in a 23” frame, the next-smallest would be 21”.  I probably could have ridden that size with the seatpost extended.  However, other proportions of the frame might not have been right for me.

I know someone—whom I mentioned in an earlier post-- who has a Raleigh Competition just like the one I had.  He turned it into a Randonneuse, with fenders, racks and an Acorn handlebar bag.  He loves it.

On The Way: More Memories Of Bikes Past

I'm going to start making good on a sort-of-promise that I made (or was it a promise I sort-of-made) in the early days of this blog:  I'm going to write posts about the bikes I've owned and, perhaps, a few that I've ridden and  haven't owned.

My bikes probably won't appear chronologically, or according to any other kind of scheme. However, I do plan to make a list of posts of my bikes past, and make that list available on the sidebar of this blog.

I've been looking through my old photos for some images of my old rides.  Now I just need to buy a scanner, or find one that I can use somewhere.  I don't have photos of some of my bikes; for those, I'll use old catalogue illustrations or borrow photos from other websites. 

If any of you have a time machine, I'll go back and take photos of my old bikes.  So far, I figure that I've had about sixty bikes during my lifetime. 

In case you're interested, here are some links to posts I've already written about pedals past:

Royce-Union Three-Speed

Nishiki International 

Schwinn Continental

Romic Sport-Tourer

Bridgestone RB-2

I don't know how long it will be before I post all of my old bikes on this blog, but I intend to do so.  I hope that you'll continue coming here, not just for those posts, but for all of the scintillating wit and wisdom I plan to write in between them.

Remembrance of Bike Past: Romic

So why am I posting a photo of a weird bike I've never seen in person?


Well, believe it or not, it's personal for me.  


Those of you who know me, whether in person or through this blog, know that I have never owned a bike that even remotely resembles that one, and that I've ridden such bikes maybe a couple of times in my life.


Did some hipster use his fixie in an anger management class?Or did some messenger smoke too much of, shall we say, something that's not made by a subsidiary of RJ Reynolds?


Actually, the original owner of that bike had the frame built that way.  Apparently, it was built as a pursuit track frame.  

One thing that makes it more interesting is that the frame was built by a builder with a conservative reputation (in building practices, anyway:  I know nothing about his politics!).


Romic bicycles were built by Ray Gasiorowski in Houston from the mid-70's until the mid-90's.  On some frames he used Nervex-style lugs; on others, he used plainer but elegant long-point lugs.  His work was very clean and solid, if not blingy.  

     
This is a road-racing bike he made, apparently, some time during the early '90's.  Like most of his bikes, it was constructed of Reynolds 531 tubing.  


Here is a Romic touring frame:

Some non-Reynolds Romic bikes were made of Columbus or Tange tubing.  Some of the builder's touring and sport-touring frames had Reynolds 531 main triangles and Tange rear triangles and forks.  I suspect that such was the case with the pictured bike.


My suspicion is an informed one: I had one of those bikes.  It was a sport-touring model, which featured geometry somewhere between the racing and touring bikes in the photos. It was the first frame I ever bought and built up.  


At the time, it was my only bike.  And it was the kind of bike you wanted to have if you were going to have only one:  I toured and raced with it.  The rear triangle was surprisingly stiff for a bike with its geometry; it gave a zippy ride when I put a pair of tubular wheels and tires on it but was remarkably stable when I rode it, with a rack, panniers and handlebar bag, through England and France.  


One of my youthful follies was deciding that I needed a "racier" bike.  So I sold my Romic and bought a Trek frame made from Columbus tubing.  In those days, some Trek racing frames--including the one I bought--had even shorter chainstays and wheelbases than most Italian criterium bikes.  A few cyclists still seek those Trek frames from the late 70s and early 80s for their stiffness.   However, some of them had a problem that could prove painful:  the seat clusters broke off them.  


As far as I know, nothing like that ever happened to a Romic.  Better yet, I still remember the bike--and, more important, the ride--all of these years later.  When I ordered Arielle, I had that Romic in mind.  You might say that my Mercian road bike is an updated, somewhat tighter, version of that Romic from my youth.


Note:  Romic mountain-bike shocks have no relationship to Romic bicycles.  In fact, I think the first Romic shocks were made after Ray Gasiorowski died in 1996.