SantaHul
Retro Guru
a.k.a. The day I desensitised my legs to nettle stings
I can't sleep because I ate too much when I got home so I'll explain my day. My Trek totally gave up on me not long ago, and I'm waiting for the 2012 Cube range before I buy my next bike so I needed something in the mean time. I'd had this frame from a late eighties Claud Butler Cape Wrath for a while so I managed to largely build it up from parts I had lying around. The only things I ended up buying were cables, grips, handlebars and a front tyre.
The bike is made from Reynolds 531 Magnum which is apparently the successor to 531 AT. The forks look original, but they're Cromoly and the steerer is threadless so I'm not sure. The decals have been pulled off and somebody has done a poor job of painting the lugs. I'm going to get it powder coated at some point so this doesn't bother me. Much of the kit is from an old '98 GT Palomar and the new bits I bought are Halfords/Decathlon bargain stuff. The handlebars are particularly bad, they were on clearance and have 'Bikehut' written prominently on the front. The paint is so bad you're nail could bring it off.
Obviously when testing a home built bike, a ride of 5-10 miles would seem logical, but I was free all day so a 60 miler seemed suitably illogical. Despite being bodged together from random parts, some well past their sell-by-date, the bike performed impeccably, the only problem being a single brake block that I hadn't tightened properly. I had my allen keys on me so this took about 1 zillisecond to fix.
Here are some photos
Ten miles in and about to leave the road.
Weather said sunny and cloudy but I missed the temperature. Turned out it was so hot I almost evaporated.
The half way point. I was knackered from the heat by now, couldn't even get up to take a better photo. Luckily the temperature was dropping.
37.5 miles in, seriously rationing the water by this point.
10 minutes under 7 hours later, finally home.
I can't sleep because I ate too much when I got home so I'll explain my day. My Trek totally gave up on me not long ago, and I'm waiting for the 2012 Cube range before I buy my next bike so I needed something in the mean time. I'd had this frame from a late eighties Claud Butler Cape Wrath for a while so I managed to largely build it up from parts I had lying around. The only things I ended up buying were cables, grips, handlebars and a front tyre.
The bike is made from Reynolds 531 Magnum which is apparently the successor to 531 AT. The forks look original, but they're Cromoly and the steerer is threadless so I'm not sure. The decals have been pulled off and somebody has done a poor job of painting the lugs. I'm going to get it powder coated at some point so this doesn't bother me. Much of the kit is from an old '98 GT Palomar and the new bits I bought are Halfords/Decathlon bargain stuff. The handlebars are particularly bad, they were on clearance and have 'Bikehut' written prominently on the front. The paint is so bad you're nail could bring it off.
Obviously when testing a home built bike, a ride of 5-10 miles would seem logical, but I was free all day so a 60 miler seemed suitably illogical. Despite being bodged together from random parts, some well past their sell-by-date, the bike performed impeccably, the only problem being a single brake block that I hadn't tightened properly. I had my allen keys on me so this took about 1 zillisecond to fix.
Here are some photos
Ten miles in and about to leave the road.
Weather said sunny and cloudy but I missed the temperature. Turned out it was so hot I almost evaporated.
The half way point. I was knackered from the heat by now, couldn't even get up to take a better photo. Luckily the temperature was dropping.
37.5 miles in, seriously rationing the water by this point.
10 minutes under 7 hours later, finally home.
