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.