A 2000 Kona Cindercone parts-bin gravel bike

Probably not in budget as you said this is parts bin only, but another way of potentially making it work would be to get a touring bike fork and leave the steerer long. Have a massive stack of headset spacers and a 50mm, or shorter, stem.
I used the disc version of this on my explosif cruiser/klunker build.
You could find something with 26" brake bosses if you tried I'm sure. Surly make heaps of forks.
 
Probably not in budget as you said this is parts bin only, but another way of potentially making it work would be to get a touring bike fork and leave the steerer long. Have a massive stack of headset spacers and a 50mm, or shorter, stem.
I used the disc version of this on my explosif cruiser/klunker build.
You could find something with 26" brake bosses if you tried I'm sure. Surly make heaps of forks.
Hmm that is nice -- but a bit costly for this project! Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm going to press on with what I have and see if there's enough potential to upgrade any bits.
 
Managed to find the bar-end shifter I needed to finalise this build, then spent a stupid amount of time messing around with various bits and pieces to get the cantis working.

There were various options for cable stops etc. stashed away, but finding something that would work took a bit of time -- and the result is something of a bodge.

For the back, I realised there was no hole through the seatstay bridge to bolt a cable stop to, and I didn't have anything to adapt dog-collar style, so tried a bit of a Heath-Rpbinson arrangement with a clamp meant to fix a rack to your forks. That was too flexy, but was consoled by the thought that the black cable stop would look better on the black forks up front.

Then I found a rear hanger designed to go on the seat collar, held by the bolt. But squeezing it into the existing Kona collar brought it too close to the seatpost, making it protrude at an odd angle. So -- more rummaging around and I found a 30mm seat collar which would tighten down just right on the seatpost. That makes for a very short hanger -- it would be much better to have one of those nice long Paul ones, but those are costly. Let's see how this version works in practice.

In front, the hanger fitted too snugly against the fork, so that it fouled the lower headset cup. It also needed a surprisingly long bolt -- and my combination of a crappy mild steel item with a couple of washers to make it fit not only looked horrible, but failed miserably to do the job. As soon as the lever was squeezed, the tension pulled the hanger upward and twisted it sideways -- to such an extent that the horrible bolt bent.

I briefly considered a hanger that fits below the stem, but it would need to hang down a bit more, like a Paul Funky Monkey to get the cable in, so that was no go.

So I had to resort to a less attractive-looking but beefier version made by Tektro. It's the wrong colour which doesn't really matter, but it is shaped with a concave surface where it meets the steerer, making for a more secure fit. And I used a spare bolt from a Thomson seatpost which is more rigid.

So preliminary braking arrangements are sorted. All it needs is that bar-end shifter which I may be able to fit later today, and it'll be ready for a test ride.


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Finally got everything connected up and wrapped the bars. In a moment of inspiration, I swapped out the long roadie stem for a shorter one that was on my Inbred. That bike has Surly Sunrise bars which don't require a 31.8mm stem clamp, so the no-name shortie is now on the Cindercone. Pity it's silver but all attempts at colour co-ordination have long gone out of the window!

First impressions are that it's quite comfortable to ride; the friction shifter works very well with the LX derailleur; the brakes are a bit hair-raising, in part because the pads are old and hard, but also because the rear one is rather spongy. That's because of the tortuous and overlong cable run, I think. I will replace the brake pads next and trim the rear cable, as well as thinking about how to improve its routing. I think a better rear cable stop would help.

But for now, we're ready for a test ride, so will report back on that in due course.

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Well that's come together rather nicely. Silver stem / shmilver shtem, who gives a crap... In fact, I think it looks alright on there. It ties in with the brake levers.
 
Took this thing out for a quick 10-k ride this morning before work. It bore out the points made above: it's lovely to climb on, getting me to the top of a nearby hill in record time, but the brakes need work as they wouldn't be close to sufficient in traffic or super-technical terrain. Annoyingly, the gears decided to start ghost-shifting halfway up the hill having been really dialled-in a couple of days ago.

Most importantly, though, is that those handlebars are definitely too deep in the drop -- they're great on the hoods but that's as low as I'd like to go, so the drop aspect is essentially wasted. I could just have put some bar-ends on a flat bar and be done with it.

That said, I'm happy enough with it that it'll stay in this guise until the right steep stem or Surly Corner Bar appears to improve the riding position.

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More tinkering with the canti brake cable stop situation. I found a cheap seatpost collar online that has a nifty little cable guide built in, so took the opportunity to trim th rear cable outers and generally shorten the overall cable run. It's neater -- not sure if I've gained much better braking feel or stopping power but there's a certain satisfaction in a neater solution.

(Oh, and that seatpost doesn't look half as crappy IRL as it does in the pic).


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