Late 70's Bob Jackson TT build

I've posted about this bike before but it's entering a new phase of its life so I thought it deserved a new thread. I've recently got into more triathlons and I've got a number of local TTs near where I've moved to, so I thought I'd give it a go next season with a 'proper' bike instead of my 531 Raleigh which I normally compete on.

History of this frame is I bought it off Old Ned a couple of years ago. I ran it in a number of SS and fixed gear guises. It's a bit small for me with drop bars but great with bullhorns and it's a good length for me with aero bars. Not sure what steel it is; it's incredibly thin wall tubes and too light to be 531, but it doesn't match up to any of the Columbus tubesets. Round track forks at the front as per the era. I took it out of daily duty in favour of a slightly larger frame with drop bars and kept this upstairs for maybe a TT build one day. This is my mockup so far:



So the spirit of the build is an amateur homebuilt pre- low-pro steel bike from the early 1990s. The sort of thing an enthusiastic TT rider might have rolled out at the weekend to compete on, but I'm intending to roll it out 25 years later and crush some modern competition on it

The disc wheel is in fact a HED despite the Corima stickers and is in pretty good condition with very few dents. Front wheel is a Pianni aero rim on a Mavic hub with 24 bladed stainless spokes. Tan wall tubulars front and back. I'm going to use the 52/42 Shimano Biopace cranks off my Raleigh and 6 gears at the back with indexed band-on downtube shifters. Saddle is a well used San Marco Rolls 'Non Slip System' from the era. Bars are 3TTT Moscow bars that a colleague kindly donated to the project and the brakes are a mix of Shimano SLR calipers with Exage levers so it should stop exceedingly well. Aero bars are going to be the only modern touch. The early ones aren't great for getting into a modern low aero tuck position so I'm modifying a set of Profile clones to mimic a modern position but with the old 'look'.

I think it's going to be really fast and I'm looking forward to slaying a lot of expensive carbon TT bikes next season

Re: Late 70's Bob Jackson TT build WIP

Some TT bikes were built of 531 main triangle with Columbus forks and stays BITD

Shaun

Re: Late 70's Bob Jackson TT build WIP

I had wondered if it was a mixed tube set. The main triangle is too thin to be 531 and the ring is different on each so I think they are different thicknesses. I did measure them a while back but I don't know what I did with the measurements

Tub tape arrived in the post today. Now, *cough*, where are those tyres I ordered Wiggle?

Re: Late 70's Bob Jackson TT build WIP

Remember by the late 70's there was 531SL (which morphed into pro about 1982 I think) and that didn't have the 531 ping but more of a lighter ting as it was thinner, I have a 531 pro TT frame which is lugless and it's noticeably different to normal 531.

My 70's Bob Jackson has Columbus stays as they are too round and wide to be 531, the forks are also Columbus with a track fork crown like yours

Shaun

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My new favourite thread!!

Love your bike. Any chance of a few more pictures??

Re: Late 70's Bob Jackson TT build WIP

Looking good .. Ironically mine was in TT guise when I bought it ... Now fixed wheel

Re: Late 70's Bob Jackson TT build WIP

Good to see the old girl is still in use! It's a pity that it was much to small for me but I did consider doing a 'lo-pro' version like you are. The first time I saw someone riding a small frame set up like this was Keith Boardman (Chris's Dad) in a 25 in Cheshire, probably in the early/mid 80's not long after the first track lo-pro's had appeared. It was before concealed cable brake levers anyway because he still had the cables out of the top of the levers which looked a bit strange and the bars were cut-down ordinary drops. Where he got the long seat pin from BITD I'm not sure, they were mostly still rather short then.

Keep us informed how you do on it.

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Here it is in a previous guise. As you can see, with deep track drops it was a bit of a handful at the front and I didn't ride it like this for long:



And here are a few shots of the bits and bobs in the current build. These are phone pics, so please excuse the quality.

Saddle:



General condition of the frame:



Lugwork. The frame is almost completely chromed under the paint except for the seat tube and bottom bracket. One of the reasons I took the bike off the road was because the salty winters were starting to take their toll on it:





And the bar setup:



I'll be trimming the ends of the aero bars to just long enough to comfortably get hold of, plugging them and wrapping with black cork tape. The elbow pads have mounts underneath the bar clamps because they are normally mounted up the other way, but this way up I can get it all lower. I'll need to drill and tap the the side we can see here. I'm quite tempted to drop them into place and bond them in position, because the adjusters etc underneath the pads add quite a lot of unneccessary height.

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Thanks for sharing the pics.

Can't wait to see how it progresses.

Re: Late 70's Bob Jackson TT build WIP

EPO and doping allegations aside (don't discuss that here ), the bikes in this video are inspiring me!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGPGm38wt5g[/youtube]

I think I need a pointy hat