Specialized Expedition

I travelled 170 miles to buy this '83 Specialized Expedition from an affable old gent who was duly proud of her but also willing to admit that he'd never do her justice himself. Apparently he'd purchased the frame, rear wheel and some parts  at a garage sale for just $10 (!!!) To anyone familiar with Expedition lore, this is of course the find you (wet?) dream of. By the time this beauty was passed on to me, it had been built up as a comfort-minded townie. Of course, I had plans of my own for it...

As it happened, I had a good friend who was on the hunt for an upgrade/replacement for his '84 Univega Gran Turismo, which had suffered a front-end collision. And as it happened, this one was just his size. Kismet.

My friend likes his drop bars, and fortunately the previous owner was nice enough to have included the original cockpit with the purchase, so on it went, with the modification of modern aero and cross brake levers.

The frame was stripped down and received a thorough cleaning and polishing.

I was able to convince my friend to make the change from skinny tires to fatties and I chose the folding version of Panaracer's Pasela Tourguards in 35mm width. I think they look and ride great and Anthony seems to agree. Also visible here are the "vintage" XTR cantilevers that were hell to set up.

I'd been saving an old Takagi XT triple crank that I'd stripped and polished and this seemed like the perfect occasion for it.

The rear wheel and bottom bracket got new cartridge bearings, on went fenders, rack, and leather saddle. Et voila!

For now Anthony just plans to use this beast for commuting--hence the medium-duty rear rack and plastic fenders--but don't despair: one day I'll convince him to take her for a loaded tour. 

At this point I've helped two of my good friends acquire and restore Specialized Expos, so I really hope that one day I'll have one of my own :)

Austro Daimler Mixte (Michelle)

I bought this late '70s Austro-Daimler mixte on ebay from a local seller. She got stripped down to the frame and rebuilt as a comfort-minded townie. The frame had a couple of interesting peculiarities worth nothing: 1) a really looong wheelbase of 107.5cm, owing mostly to the stretched out effective top tube; 2) a really short head tube that placed the top of the headset something like two inches below the top of the seat lug! The long wheel base didn't bother me at all, but that seat tube-head tube differential meant that I needed a really long stem to bring those handlebars up above saddle height. Nitto Technomic!

One of the nice things about these old frames is that they tend to have ample clearance for (relatively) wide tires. Cream Delta Cruisers!

I thought I'd use this build to try out a Gyes leather saddle. Gyes is a Taiwanese alternative to Brooks. Most Gyes saddles cost about 60 or 70% of what an "equivalent" Brooks costs. This one proved extremely tough. Not at all comfortable after a few miles. Some neats-foot oil helped with that issue, but when I sold the bike, there was still plenty of breaking-in to be done.

The MAFAC Racer brakes I chose not only look cool, they also allowed me to dial in the perfect length of straddle cable so that the yoke clears the seat tube while providing ample braking power. (The original Weinmann brake, like most centerpulls, had a fixed-length straddle cable that was way too long and sapped nearly all the potential braking power from the caliper.) The reach of the brake arms was a tad shy of ideal in the rear but angling the pads downward a little proved to be an acceptable work-around.

Ouch!

This had to have hurt. In case you can't quite tell, the back end of this seat post is sheared clean off. Actually, not so clean. What I don't understand is why the seatpost was still in this chained-up bike. Had the accident just happened, or was the owner now stubbornly riding around town like this, unable to sit down? I've seen some people remove their seat/seatpost as an anti-theft measure, so was this one guy's way of plugging up the resulting hole in case of rain?

A fine pair of stallions

When this '86 Pro Miyata (background) passed through my hands, I couldn't resist a few gratuitous shots with its big brother (my '85 Team Miyata, foreground).

Fuji S10-S LTD

This late '70s Fuji came to me for townie conversion. Her current owner had consulted me months earlier about the purchase. I said go for it, and let me know when you want to overhaul it!

She got Soma Oxford bars (very similar to the Nitto Albatross), Velo Orange fenders, MKS Touring Lite pedals, and a sprung Brooks B67. Fitting those fenders in with the tight (~5mm) clearance was no picnic. It involved machining custom hardware for the job, the questionable use of a hammer, and of course copious use of the f-word.

What happens when you swap brake lever hardware...

This is what happens when you're not careful about swapping hardware from one brake lever to another. Turns out those fixing bolts come in slightly different lengths, tailored to the levers with which they're meant to be paired. Now my precious Nitto drops may be destined for a flop-and-chop and a second life as bullhorns.

Miyata Alumicross

This one is an '89 Miyata Alumicross, one of those "screwed-and-glued" aluminum frames, that I built up as a fast-n-comfy get-around-towner. The story goes that the frame was ridden by a pro mountain biker in the early '90s and then boxed up for a while. That fellow later opened (or helped run?)  Recycle Bicycle, a nice little used bike shop here in Berkeley that, sadly, just closed down last month. Before that, he sold his Alumicross frame to a fellow restoration enthusiast who had more enthusiasm than free time. I traded him a Surly rack for the frame and promptly turned out this build using spare parts from the parts bin. The paint looked so gnarly when I got the frame that I feared I had gotten the sour end of the trade, but a good deep polishing took most of the scrapes and scratches right out. The creamy tires don't exactly match the pearlescent paint, and the black stem, pedals, and seatpost are stark color contrasts, but I felt like it all came together in a grungy, don't-give-a-$hit kind of way. I like to think that the young gent who bought this one was inspired to grow a handlebar moustache to match the moustache handlebars.

For this one, I followed ol' GP's suggestion of using non-aero levers with the moustache bar/cantilever brake combo. Oddly, I noticed no improvement in braking as a result.