Fillet brazed off road adventure bike of unknown origin.

retrobikeguy said:

Gotta love a DX groupset, proper workhorse kit.

Just got my 88 Roberts out for an annual trip to Brid, just noticed it too has the squared single hole cantilever boss too.

Does the fork steerer have anything stamped on it by chance?

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It's out for painting, will check when it comes back.

PhillB said:

Its that the Black Leopard? Just went back and read that thread - gorgeous restoration !!

My money was and still is on this unknown frame being a Roberts

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As much as I'd love it to be a Roberts, surely the frame number eliminates that possibility. Maybe the fork will give us more info.

Here's the wheelset, DX hubs on Campagnolo Thorr rims.
Tyres are in rideable condition but I'll probably switch them out for some new rubber for bike-packing.

Nice rims, the slender profile makes fat tyres look even chunkier, slightly hard to mount tyre beads adequately and narrow overall so you have to adjust cantis a lot, look great though

pwebb said:

Nice rims, the slender profile makes fat tyres look even chunkier, slightly hard to mount tyre beads adequately and narrow overall so you have to adjust cantis a lot, look great though

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Agreed, I had trouble setting the brakes up with this wheelset for that exact reason.

I was thinking of 1.75 - 1.9 tyres this time. I've got a pair of Rene Herse 1.8s that have been fantastic over their lifetime. They're close to the end though now so I'd need to sell some bits to fund a new pair.

There is such massive tyre clearance on this frameset, it easily takes 2.3s, seems a shame not to exploit that. Maybe I'll set up a wider rimmed wheelset with fatter tyres to see what works best.

I'm planning several trips to very different places, road/off-road ratios will vary wildly as will types of off-road surface. It would be great to have a bit of flexibility with how the bike can be set up for each trip.

hmm RH rat trap pass all roads very pricey but highly rated - but they look kind of 'smooth' where knobbly would look more in keeping with this age of bike - Conti Race Kings are highly rated for bikepacking / mixed surfaces, are fast , light and come in 2.2 - mid range cost iirc. My all time faves for this application were panaracer mach II SS "semi slick" which are stupidly fast on tarmac and able to cut it on gravel etc. I wouldnt trust old tyres for bikepacking though. I see you have the hardox anodised version of the Thorr rims so these would probably look extra mean with dark rather than amberwall tyres IMHO. Edited because I remembered that Simworks in Japan is re-making the panaracer SS tyres as 'The homage' https://store.sim-works.com/collections/tires