Centurion Pro Tour 15

Every now and then someone emails me saying something along the lines of, "I checked out your blog and I really dig your work. What do you have in a size xx cm for less than $xxx?" Apparently, the impression they get from this blog is that I'm some kind of bike hoarder with a warehouse full of choice frames and parts. The reality is a tad more mundane, I'm afraid.

I live in an apartment and I do nearly all of my wrenching on a stand that I set up in my bedroom. The stand's clamp occasionally serves as a makeshift vice. My dresser doubles as a workbench. Chemical treatments happen in the bathtub or sink. I store my spare parts in plastic bins that slide under my bed. I make the most of my available space by hanging bikes, frames, and wheels from hooks in my tall ceiling, but there's only so much space at the end of the day. Recently, I slimmed down to one personal bike (that I now keep in the foyer) but still, I pretty much max out at three additional project bikes and an extra set of wheels or two.

So when someone sends me an email request like the one I described, my response is usually that I don't have anything like that but that I'd be happy to help him/her to find something of quality and then perform the necessary tuning  up and/or restoration. Since I skim through the bike section of Craigslist almost every day anyway, it's no big deal to forward the link for anything fitting someone's criteria. Occasionally, the result is a purchase. Such was the case with this Centurion Pro-Tour.

Of course, without knowing the particular proportions of the person in question,  I make my recommendations based on whatever the person says they're looking for. In this case, the buyer--I haven't asked him about sharing his info, so I'll call him Lonesome Cowboy Dan, or LCD for short--was looking for a 54-56cm frame, so I recommended this one, a 54.5cm (ctc) '83 Pro Tour 15. As it turned out, the 56.5cm top tube was sized alright for LCD (maybe a tad long), but the seat tube was quite short for his legs. Of course, we only put this all together after he had bought the bike and brought it to me. So we made the best of it. He complained, not surprisingly of having too much seat-to-bar drop and a bit too much reach, so I recommended a tall Technomic stem with a shorter extension to help level things out. He also wanted wider bars, so he bought some lightly used 44cm Noodles.

This will serve as LCD's all-purpose commuter/hauler, so he wanted racks. I recommended this Nitto M-12. He also wanted fenders and after some discussion, he settled on Velo Orange smooth stainless steel ones. This was my first time installing steel fenders and I learned they have their own pros and cons as far as installation goes. On the plus side, they don't scratch as easily; on the other hand, they're much harder to bend and drill. (In order to get the front fender to mate up properly with the fork crown I use a technique involving a long bolt, some nuts, and several fender washers to reshape the fender. In this case, on my first attempt the bolt actually bent before the fender. Whoa.)

Borrowing from one of my internet idols, Colonel Lloyd, I used alloy spacers in addition to a leather washer to mount the fender to the front rack. That little hole took about 30 minutes to properly drill and file, by the way, much longer than it would have taken with aluminum.

I wrapped the Noodles in Toshi blue cloth wrap and hemp twine, coated six times with amber shellac. The resulting color is a deep navy blue.

Lonesome Cowboy Dan wanted wide, grippy pedals and felt enamored enough of these ones from VP Components to pony up the $70 that they cost. They have a very low profile and don't scream modern, so they fit in pretty well with rest of the bike. LCD even pointed out that the blue Loctite on the studs matched with the frame color (and also with the "Nitto" decal on the front rack.) Sweet seredipity!

The 47mm-wide fenders shouldn't have any trouble accommodating larger tires, should LCD want to update to 700c wheels in the future. For now, though, I convinced him to ride the original 27" wheels which are nearly unused. I figured he had spent plenty already on the rest and for his purposes (city riding, not touring), there's really not much benefit to 700c wheels.

Miyata Porteur(ish) Build

I've been jonesing to do a porteur-inspired build for a long time now. When I recently came across a good deal on an '86 Miyata 210, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a go. The 210 was Miyata's entry-level tourer throughout the '80s, and while it featured a number of impressive specs for its pricepoint (splined-triple-butted tubing, cantilever brakes, forged dropouts, double eyelets front and rear), it's not exactly collector material, so I felt free to reinvent it to my own liking.

The previous owner had ridden this bike hard, so the paint was quite rough when I got it.

Often when I buy a bike with rough paint, I'm able to rejuvenate it with a mild abrasive wash and a polishing. You'd be surprised what's possible with this simple method. This bike, though, was just too far gone. Even after cleaning it up as much as possible, it still looked like hell:

First order of business, then: a fresh powder coat. After some consideration, I settled on sage green as my color of choice. I had in mind something like this ANT bike. Unfortunately, that color wasn't available at my local powder coater, Melrose Metal Finishing. Much to their credit, they offered to special order a small amount of the next closest shade for a reasonable charge. (This is particularly impressive considering that this was only a very small job compared to their usual fare.) Nonetheless, picking a color from a small swatch on a computer screen is dicey business and I learned the just how dicey when I picked up the freshly powdered frame:

Much brighter (and bluer?) than I expected! Needless to say, I was pretty surprised. Once the initial shock wore off, though, the color quickly began growing on me. After awhile I decided to embrace the vicissitudes of fate. In other words, f*ck it, I'd go with the flow.

My initial color ideas (silver housing, cream tires, dark brown saddle, all silver brake levers) went out the door and through a combination of happenstance and deliberation I settled on: light brown housing, tanwall tires, honey-colored saddle and bar wrap, bars that are halfway between the classic porteur shape and the north roads style (VO Belleville), a tall positive-rise stem, French stem shifters, and inverse brake levers with gum-colored bodies. As usual, I favored silver over black components, but after scoring some very nice Campy-Mavic wheels, I opened up to the possibility of grey rims on the this build. I think the dark grey anodizing contrasts nicely with the frame color.

The VO Porteur rack was sort of the impetus for this build. I've long admired it's design so it was a pleasure to actually handle one. Of all the modern porteur racks that I've seen (Soma, Cetma, Gamoh, Pass & Stow), I think this one looks the best. It remains to be seen how well built it is, but I'm optimistic.

The tall stem puts the bars higher up and closer than is traditional on this sort of bike, but I thought that the resulting upright-ish posture would be appreciated by the average urban rider. From what I understand, the French newspaper delivery men who engendered the porteur bike were highly competitive, so it makes sense that they would have favored a more low, aerodynamic riding stance. For regular folks, though, upright makes sense for city riding.

My initial plan was to wrap the bars all the way up to the VO insignia to allow for more padded hand positions, but I compromised to be able to use this honey-colored wrap, which I had already pre-cut with another use in mind. Anyway, I figure that if one wanted to, one could still place the hands farther forward or closer to the stem on the bare bars (as long as it's not too cold out!). I've done this before for fairly long distances on my Soma Oxford bars with no trouble.

A warning to those installing these Dia-Compe inverse levers: be sure to abrade the inside and outside of the little metal "shim" that goes between the bar plug and the inside of the bar, and grease the threads on the fixing bolt to allow a little extra torque. Otherwise, you'll probably find it impossible to install the levers tightly enough to resist twisting. It's not the best design--I much prefer the expanding plugs that came on Suntour barcons and that are still used on other bar-end shifters and levers--but, with a little extra care, it seems to work well enough.

The Brooks B-17 Special saddle is still up for debate. It fits right in aesthetically but I'm not sure it's comfortable enough with the bars mounted so much higher than it. I may spring for a sprung saddle. We'll see.

It's worth noting that in addition to the obvious cockpit alteration, almost all of the 210's original parts got upgraded. These crank arms came from my '88 Miyata 615. In order to restore their look, I removed the worn anodizing and polished the aluminum to a satiny finish. The previous owner had ridden almost exclusively in the middle chainring, so I replaced it with a nearly new one of the same size (44T). The original pedals were lost to time, so I chose to go with these street-shoe friendly MKS touring pedals.

The headset had been upgraded by the previous owner to a well sealed Shimano 600 model, still in very good shape.

My second favorite bit on this build (after the porteur rack) is probably the silky smooth 36H Campy Record hubs. I suppose they're overkill here, but I got a good deal on them and with the Mavic G40 rims, they make for a bombproof wheel set that shouldn't require frequent maintenance.

The 700c rims also comprise an update from the original 27" ones, and they necessitated a brake upgrade as well. The original Dia Compe 960s were replaced with a set of Shimano AT50s that offer greater up-down adjustability.

Even with 35mm tires, there's still plenty of room for fenders.

The original Light Action derailleurs are, along with the seatpost, the only original components. The derailleurs got a thorough cleaning and re-greasing. With a new Shimano ramped freewheel, new chain, lined housing and slick stainless cable, the friction shifting system is as crisp as any I've used. The ratcheting Simplex shifters probably contribute further to a feeling of precision.

The final touch: a hand-fashioned chainstay protector to match the grips.

After a little further testing, she should be ready for her new owner. As always, it's been a ton of fun to build this one up. What do you think of the results?