August Bicycles
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Right, this is my first bike thread here, hopefully I won't babble on too much.
I Got this bike back in 1994 if my memory serves me correctly, I was 14 years old and racing a lot of local XC and CX, pretty successfully too. I had outgrown my Cannondale M1000 and was in need of a new bike. A couple of riders from the club that I was racing for had commissioned builds from this guy called Greg Fuquay. He was an American builder and was only about 50 miles down the road on the outskirts of Ipswich, we were Norwich based. So my Dad (who was funding my racing along with my pitiful paper round income) got on the phone to Greg, we payed him a visit, I made some decisions on specs of the frame, I got measured up for sizing and Pops left him a cheque as a deposit. A few weeks later we were told It was built and to choose a colour. I chose this metallic purple that I guess at the time was pretty cool, I'm not so sure about it now though! The frame somehow made its way from Gregs workshop to Aerographics paint shop only a few miles from my house. A few days later, Greg gave me a call and told me the frame was ready to collect, It needed to return to his workshop for some finishing work before I could assemble it, he also asked if we would collect another customer frame whilst I was there and bring it with us, of course! Well, the other frame happened to be Chipps Chippendales Smokey Bacon flavoured frame! pretty cool!
My build was spec'd as a Cromor OR tube set, Gumbo Fork and Bar/Stem combo. I believe that mine was the first aheadset fork and Bar/Stem that Greg had ever built. I also have been told that mine and Chipps frames were the first to have this style of decal too. The predecessors had the original diamond head tube decal that Greg told me that he had sat and drawn himself with a pencil and a ruler and the downtube decals which were an old Macintosh font called "Hobo"
Anyway, the bike was originally built with XT derailleurs, Sachs wavey grip shifts, XT canti brakes with SS5 Brake Levers, Sugino Impel (I think) Cranks, Generic seatpost, Flite Titanium Saddle, a dia compe aheadset and Campag Atek rims laced onto Hope Ti glide and lightweight hubs. It was also running the Gumbo forks.
Anyway, throughout is hard life, things wore out, got broken and therefore got replaced. I think the cranks came loose during a race and killed the square tapers so ended up with what you seen there now, V Brakes were invented so these XT parallelogram items found their way onto it with some cheap Tektro levers with the correct cable pull, The shifters were useless so some XT thumbies were fitted. I crashed and bent the handlebars playing in the woods one day, so I had to purchase a pair of 531 bars from Reynolds and had a local welder who built Chassis' for Lotus cars (where I later ended up working) TIG weld them in place, I also removed the canti cable hanger before they were resprayed.
I began to get bored of Cross country racing and eventually got into Downhill, the Fuquay was great for training at local XC races, but my heart was no longer really in it. In 1996 or maybe 1997 I won the Junior National Shortcourse championchips at P.O.R.C. One of the sizes was a pair of USA Made RST forks. After finding a correct 1" steerer for them, I removed the Gumbo forks and fitted the RSTs along with an FSA orbit headset.
After that the bike was used for XC races at Downhill events, S.A.M.S. races used to have the DH race on the Saturday and then I'd ride the XC race on the sunday for a bit of training. Nothing really to do with this bike, but in 1997 I was chosen to ride on the GB team and go to the World DH Champs at Chateux D'eux in Switzerland, I only raced DH for a couple seasons more after that and kind of got out of cycling for about a decade. My Fuquay literally just hung in my Parents garage for all that time. I did get back into riding, nothing competitive, just for fun, I also quit my job as an Engineer at Lotus Cars and actually began building Bicycles and Bicycle wheels for a living under the name of August Bicycles (Hopefully a little self promotion isn't frowned upon, if so, I can remove the link, if not, We carry out lots of frame repairs and modifications along with wheel builds for all types of bikes ;-) ) which kind of brings me to what I should do with the bike now.
I'm thinking about several potential courses of action to take with it.
1 - Leave it as is, just do some maintenance and refit the Gumbo forks - try to figure out setting up those rear V Brakes with wide stud spacing and narrow rims!
2 - Do a resto mod Dadbike build, 1x Groupset, Vans Tyres, build a Porteur rack for the front and make a new fillet brazed bar stem combo thats higher/shorter than the Fuquay built one - No mods that are irreversible though.
3 - Try and restore it to as close to new in its original guise as possible. The paint is far from perfect and the top tube is dented too.
None of the above options will happen quickly due to Work/Family/House commitments, though it would be great to have my own bicycle project rather than building bikes and wheels for others!
Anyway,
I better attach some pics and get on with some real work! I hope that its been an interesting read (if you have gotten this far) I'd like to hear everyones suggestions on what to do going forward.
I Got this bike back in 1994 if my memory serves me correctly, I was 14 years old and racing a lot of local XC and CX, pretty successfully too. I had outgrown my Cannondale M1000 and was in need of a new bike. A couple of riders from the club that I was racing for had commissioned builds from this guy called Greg Fuquay. He was an American builder and was only about 50 miles down the road on the outskirts of Ipswich, we were Norwich based. So my Dad (who was funding my racing along with my pitiful paper round income) got on the phone to Greg, we payed him a visit, I made some decisions on specs of the frame, I got measured up for sizing and Pops left him a cheque as a deposit. A few weeks later we were told It was built and to choose a colour. I chose this metallic purple that I guess at the time was pretty cool, I'm not so sure about it now though! The frame somehow made its way from Gregs workshop to Aerographics paint shop only a few miles from my house. A few days later, Greg gave me a call and told me the frame was ready to collect, It needed to return to his workshop for some finishing work before I could assemble it, he also asked if we would collect another customer frame whilst I was there and bring it with us, of course! Well, the other frame happened to be Chipps Chippendales Smokey Bacon flavoured frame! pretty cool!
My build was spec'd as a Cromor OR tube set, Gumbo Fork and Bar/Stem combo. I believe that mine was the first aheadset fork and Bar/Stem that Greg had ever built. I also have been told that mine and Chipps frames were the first to have this style of decal too. The predecessors had the original diamond head tube decal that Greg told me that he had sat and drawn himself with a pencil and a ruler and the downtube decals which were an old Macintosh font called "Hobo"
Anyway, the bike was originally built with XT derailleurs, Sachs wavey grip shifts, XT canti brakes with SS5 Brake Levers, Sugino Impel (I think) Cranks, Generic seatpost, Flite Titanium Saddle, a dia compe aheadset and Campag Atek rims laced onto Hope Ti glide and lightweight hubs. It was also running the Gumbo forks.
Anyway, throughout is hard life, things wore out, got broken and therefore got replaced. I think the cranks came loose during a race and killed the square tapers so ended up with what you seen there now, V Brakes were invented so these XT parallelogram items found their way onto it with some cheap Tektro levers with the correct cable pull, The shifters were useless so some XT thumbies were fitted. I crashed and bent the handlebars playing in the woods one day, so I had to purchase a pair of 531 bars from Reynolds and had a local welder who built Chassis' for Lotus cars (where I later ended up working) TIG weld them in place, I also removed the canti cable hanger before they were resprayed.
I began to get bored of Cross country racing and eventually got into Downhill, the Fuquay was great for training at local XC races, but my heart was no longer really in it. In 1996 or maybe 1997 I won the Junior National Shortcourse championchips at P.O.R.C. One of the sizes was a pair of USA Made RST forks. After finding a correct 1" steerer for them, I removed the Gumbo forks and fitted the RSTs along with an FSA orbit headset.
After that the bike was used for XC races at Downhill events, S.A.M.S. races used to have the DH race on the Saturday and then I'd ride the XC race on the sunday for a bit of training. Nothing really to do with this bike, but in 1997 I was chosen to ride on the GB team and go to the World DH Champs at Chateux D'eux in Switzerland, I only raced DH for a couple seasons more after that and kind of got out of cycling for about a decade. My Fuquay literally just hung in my Parents garage for all that time. I did get back into riding, nothing competitive, just for fun, I also quit my job as an Engineer at Lotus Cars and actually began building Bicycles and Bicycle wheels for a living under the name of August Bicycles (Hopefully a little self promotion isn't frowned upon, if so, I can remove the link, if not, We carry out lots of frame repairs and modifications along with wheel builds for all types of bikes ;-) ) which kind of brings me to what I should do with the bike now.
I'm thinking about several potential courses of action to take with it.
1 - Leave it as is, just do some maintenance and refit the Gumbo forks - try to figure out setting up those rear V Brakes with wide stud spacing and narrow rims!
2 - Do a resto mod Dadbike build, 1x Groupset, Vans Tyres, build a Porteur rack for the front and make a new fillet brazed bar stem combo thats higher/shorter than the Fuquay built one - No mods that are irreversible though.
3 - Try and restore it to as close to new in its original guise as possible. The paint is far from perfect and the top tube is dented too.
None of the above options will happen quickly due to Work/Family/House commitments, though it would be great to have my own bicycle project rather than building bikes and wheels for others!
Anyway,
I better attach some pics and get on with some real work! I hope that its been an interesting read (if you have gotten this far) I'd like to hear everyones suggestions on what to do going forward.
