The Mountain Bike Becomes A City Slicker

A while back, I got a '90's Cannondale mountain bike for not very much.  I could have ridden it as-is, replacing only the shifter.  But I decided to make it into a second city bike-commuter, sharing duties with my Fuji Allegro.

One thing I really didn't was the suspension fork that came with the bike.  For my intended purposes, I don't need a suspension fork.  Also, I didn't want to hunt down parts (like elastomers) for a fork that hasn't been made in about 20 years.

I know the steel fork that's on the bike now looks out of proportion to the oversized aluminum tubes of the frame.  But it'll do the job and I'm not too worried about the looks of this bike.  If anything, I'm hoping that its steampipe visuals will allow me to park it on the street without too many worries.

Some of the parts--like that seatpost and seat collar--I had lying around. (I'm not lying.) As was typical of mountain bikes of the time, the Cannondale came with a quick-release seat collar--which makes it easy for casual thieves to take your seat and seatpost!

I would have kept the wheels, which consisted mostly of no-name components. But I got a really good buy on a pair of Sun CR18 rims.  They're a 26 inch version of the 700C rims on the Fuji, which have served me well.

Whatever this bike lacks in aesthetics, I think it more than compensates in simplicity and usefulness.   Yes, that's a Velo Orange Porteur handlebar, in the 22.2 size.

On a bike like this, I don't expect a ride anything like that of any of my Mercians.  For that matter, I didn't expect anything even as nimble as the Fuji--which isn't set up for that.  But I have been pleasantly surprised.  My commutes and errands don't seem any slower than they've been on the Fuji.  An added bonus is that I can ride through just about any pothole or other obstacle without a second thought.

If You Can See The Difference....

One of my favorite bloggers is The Retrogrouch.  So, I intend no disrespect to him with this post.

He is, of course, not the only cyclist to refer to himself as a Retrogrouch.  I am mainly in sympathy with him and the others who so identify themselves:  I ride steel frames, hand-laced wheels, downtube shifters (on my geared bikes), pedals with toe clips and Brooks saddles (except on my LeTour).  And all of my cranksets have square tapered axles.

On the other hand, I ride cassette hubs on my geared bikes (though the Trek 412 I'm building will have a screw-on freewheel).  The chief reasons are convenience and availablity:  No high-quality multiple-sprocket freewheels are made today (All of the good ones are single-speed.)  and most of the new-old-stock freewheels one can find on eBay and in other places have gear ratios that are useless to me.  (I am "of a certain age" and don't race, so what can I do with a 12-13-14-15-16-17-18?)  The unusued ones command exorbitant prices, while buying a used one is risky:  Your chain may or may not play nice with it.

And, as you can see from the photos in my sidebars, some of my components are black.   Some see that as a sign of a "sell-out", but there were indeed black components in the '70's and earlier.   Even the high priests of "shiny silver" at Velo Orange (which is actually one of my favorite online retailers) concede as much.

So, having said my piece about Retrogrouches, I want to introduce another species or clan or tribe (depending on your point of view) of cyclists.  I will call them Retrogeeks.  

Now, Retrogeeks and Retrogrouches are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, many can be identified, and would identify themselves, by both monikers.  One notable exception would be the late, great Sheldon Brown:  His encyclopaedic knowledge of all things bicycle made him a Retrogeek but, although he rode mainly steel frames and many older components, he did not think old is always better than new.  So he is not a Retrogrouch, though some have called him that.

One hallmark of a Retrogeek is that he or she knows authentic vintage bikes and parts from ersatz ones, and can tell whether or not an old bike or part was modified. Today, I am going to conduct a sort of Rorsach test that might help you to begin to figure out whether or not you are a Retrogeek.  Take a look at this photo:

Now take a look at this:

They are both images of the old Zefal Competition pump.  With its color scheme, you probably wouldn't be surprised to know that many pro and semi-professional French bikes of the '60's and '70's came with it.  The only other portable bike pump that was considered its equal (or, in some eyes, its better) was the Silca Impero.

What is the difference between the two Competitions in the first two photos?

If you look at the first two photos in this post, you will see that the pump in the second has the traditional press-on valve fitting, like the ones available for Silca pumps. To my knowledge, all Competitions came with it.  The pump in the first photo, in contrast, has a thumb-lock fitting--from a Zefal HP pump, the Competition's successor.

Pity that poor HP.  Had it been functional, I probably would use it on the Trek 412 I'm putting together:  It was the pump of choice at the time the bike was made.  Apart from the finish (polished on the Competition, silver anodized on the HP) and the color scheme, the only difference between the Competition and HP is in the head.

One nice thing about the Silcas is that you can change the head simply by twisting it off.  A Zefal head, on the other hand, attaches to one of the strangest-looking screws ever made

all the way inside the body.  Zefal used to make a tool for the purpose.  The only one I ever saw (or used before today) resided on Frank's toolbench in Highland Park (NJ) Cyclery, where I worked.

From Yellow Jersey

A screwdriver with a long flat blade would unscrew it--as long as the shaft is about 400mm long. (At least, I think that's how long the Zefal tool was.)  My longest screwdriver is only 12 inches (about 300mm).  So I resorted to another implement

or, I should say, collection of implements.  Assembled, it makes me think more of a crane--or of something made with an Erector Set-- than of any other hand tool I have ever seen or used.  

It consists of a 3/8" socket drive with two extensions--  one of 10 inches (250mm), the other 6 inches (150mm), a 3/8"-to-1/4" adapter and the blade assembly from one of my reversible screwdrivers which--wonder of wonders!--fit into the 1/4" socket.

Getting the screw out wasn't difficult.  But reassembling was a bit trickier.  I dropped the screw into the pump shaft and jiggled it until the threads protruded from the bottom.  Then I inserted my contraption and held it against the screw and screwed the head on for a couple of threads.  You can't screw it on all the way since the hole at the bottom of the pump has a hexagonal shape, into which the inner lip of the pump end fits.  

So, after threading the head onto the screw for a couple of threads, I rotated the pump body until the hexagonal lip of the pump head skid slid into the hexagonal hole at the bottom of the pump body (easily yet snugly:  the parts were well-machined). Of course, I lightly greased the hexagonal parts and the screw threads before re-assembling everything--and, between disassembly and reassembly, I cleaned out the shaft and gave the inside a light coating of fresh grease.

The "operation" was a success:  I pumped two tires to full pressure (90 PSI).  Yes, I cleaned out the head before I re-assembled the pump.

I know I could have kept the Competition as it was.  I ride only Presta valves, so the press-on fitting would have worked just fine. (I know:  I used both Silcas and Zefal Competitions for years.)  But it is easier to pump high-pressure tires with the thumb-lock attachment.  Plus, I now have a pump that nobody (or, at least, hardly anybody) else has.  Don't worry:  I saved the original Competition head and screw, just in case I decide to convert it back.

Now, if you've been following this blog for the past few weeks, you can guess which bike is getting this pump.

A Conversion That Should Have Been 650B, Perhaps

Today I am going to recall another bike from a respected one-man builder.  Like my LandShark, it didn’t have his name on it. In fact, when I acquired the bike, it didn’t have any name on it at all.

After deciding that my Raleigh Competition was too big for me—and wanting a bike I could ride on paths without getting a mountain bike (At the time, mountain bikes were still clunky.)-- I ended up with an accidental conversion.

Frank, my old boss at Highland Park Cyclery, had a Ross Signature frame.  Now, you might ask, “Since when was Ross a one-man operation?”  Actually, it never was.  However, for a time, they contracted builder Tom Kellogg to build a series of bikes that would rival the best of any other builder.  Like Trek, Ross seemed to have designs on becoming the Great American Bike.

A Tom Kellogg bike.

In spite of its high quality and the sort of clientele to whom HPC catered, the frame gathered dust.  It may have had to do with having been painted a color (grayish-green) nobody wanted.   Also, the bike frame, which was built for touring, didn’t have braze-ons for cantilever brakes, racks or shift levers (or cable guides for bar-end shifters:  STI and Ergo were still a decade or so on the horizon).  It also had only one pair of braze-on mounts for a water bottle cage.

Frank sent the frame back and asked for braze-ons.  By that time, Kellogg was no longer working for Ross.  For all Frank or I knew, the bits may have been brazed by whoever welded Ross kids’ bikes.   The frame came back painted in a pewter color, which I rather liked, and with the requested braze-ons: for a rack, a water bottle cage and cantilever brakes.  The latter were exactly where they should have been on the frame—for a 26” mountain bike wheel.

The only problem was that the frame was built for 700 C wheels. So, the there was more vertical clearance between the seat stay bridge or the front fork crown and the tires than on just about any other bike I’ve ever seen.

That would have been great if it were possible to ride large studded tires.  However, that wasn’t possible because the clearance between the chainstays (at the bottom bracket) and the front fork blades was too narrow for a true off-road tire.  They could have accommodated, at most, a tire 38C (1.5 inches) wide, which was still wider than most touring cyclists (at least here in the US) were riding at the time.

 So I set up the bike with some of the earliest mountain bike “slicks” from, if I recall correctly, Tioga.   Later, when Avocet introduced their slicks with inverted treads, I switched to them:  They may have been the best city/commuter tires ever made.  And I installed fenders.  There was enough space between them and the tire treads to ride a Worksman Cycle through.

I used that bike as a commuter and on a couple of longer trips—including the one I took when I stormed out after an argument I had with Eva.  A lot of people gawked at it:  It was the bicycle equivalent of a platypus.  But I really enjoyed it:  Certainly, it turned out to be one of the more versatile bikes I’ve owned.  But, after about two years, it met its untimely demise at the rear end of a taxi behind Penn Station. (“And lead us not into Penn Station..”)

By now, you may be thinking what I’m thinking:  What if that bike had been a 650B conversion?  Given the state of bicycling and the bike business of that time (ca. 1986-88), I don’t think that whoever brazed on those cantilever brake bosses had even heard of such a size.  Rims and tires of that size were not available in the US at that time and were even, by that time, difficult to find in Europe. 

I tried to find a photo of that bike.  It really was like nothing else you’ve seen or ridden.

After I crashed it, I got the Miyata 912 I mentioned in an earlier post. Both of those bikes were worthy companions to my Colnago Arabesque.