Recent content by dirttorpedo

The handlebar orientation is hurting my brain. Otherwise the bike has cleaned up nicely.

My advice is to know your size in the period of bike you are looking at - british style bikes of the 70's and early 80's fit differently than modern bicycles or Italian style bikes of those earlier decades. I personally would target a "sport touring" or "touring" bike because they tend to have a...

Thanks for sharing the story of your Dad's bike. It really highlights how even with a degree of neglect these old steel bikes just keep on going. It cleaned up nice. I'm sure it will find a new home with someone who will ride it and cherish it.

Any colour cotton bar tape with a couple of coats of dark shellack will look great.

I saw the video the other day and thought it was odd he was going to add writing a book to his workload. Its understandable that he got behind due to illness as a one man operation that offered frame building courses. The Pegoretti documentary published shortly before his death showed that he...

Its kinda crazy to think they weigh a kilo each - I think the 26 inch Schwalbe Fat Frank weighs 800g. Didn't vintage non-folding tires weigh around 600g each?

The challenge with Jan's testing method is consistent replicability. The rolling resistance fellow has a very consistent easily replicable testing method which gives people a lot of confidence in the results. I believe he's modified his methogology as well in response to Jan's testing results...

the racing porcs were very cool BITD - I never rode them. Don't think you could get them locally. I always associated them with US bikes being ridden in the SW. I was a Panaracer Smoke / Dart convert - they handled the local mud well.

Good Lord Matti, in what hellish Ontario backwater do you reside? Pettawawa? Haliburton?

Jan's tires are already being used by bikepacking / self supported adventure racers and performing quite well. I would imagine that his focus on riding roadish bikes with large tire clearance meant that his tires were affecting drop bars on dirt riders early on. Will his tires affect...

I guess we're the Portland of Canada so that makes sense. I would have thought Toronto would be awash in quality steel bikes gathering dust in suburban garages. Hell, the fellow who ran the "My Old 10-speed" webpage out of Thunderbay found lots of great old road bikes there over the years - and...

A Jan Heine thread is always good to get the blood pressure up. I personally don't care how Jan acquired the Rene Herse brand - he's obviously a fan of what Herse and the other French constructeurs did and I see it more of an homage as he produces replicas, other high end classic randonneur...

Amazing

Canada Close - I love that.

Nice bike - bummer about the 27inch wheels though. If it was a caliper brake bike you could do a wheel swap to 700c using long reach calipers from Tektro, but its trickier with cantis. I think there are some more modern cantis that have vertically adjustable brake blocks (or possibly mini...