IT IS FINISHED (AND IT ALMOST KILLED ME)

The touring bike is finally finished, I think. Here are before and after pics. Today I finished mounting the ammo box panniers and cages. The only thing really left to do is re-adjust the rear hub that seems a little tight after my wheel randomly fell off while riding with the rest of the band to our gig last night. Fortunately I had a wrench in the backpack so I could at least get the wheel back on, but it was a scary experience none the less, especially on the way home, which involved an inebriated midnight sprint down a pitch-black Foothill Ave with Ta Tas in the lead with his banjo and a cigarette and Rog weaving around the tiny bike lane pulling a trailer loaded down with my guitar and the upright bass. At times like that you don't want a sketchy rear hub! I'll fix it soon, though, and then I'm gonna do some short 20-30 mile rides in the next couple of weeks to try to get in shape to ride Hwy 1 from Monterey to SLO. 

AMMO BOX PANNIERS

Despite the fact that everyone thinks I am crazy for wanting to use ammunition boxes as panniers on my newly rebuilt Schwinn touring bike, I have gone ahead with my insanity. I had to spend a few hours of trial and error in order to perfect the design, but I think what I came up with is pretty cool. Here's a step by step-ish breakdown of what I did.

1. I bought a Bontrager rear rack (50 lb max load) and installed it. About then I realized that in order to install the boxes, there needed to be some sort of shim to hold the box out from the rack at least 1/4" or so (this is because when the box lid is closed it overlaps the outside of the box.) I solved the problem by cutting up an old inner-tube, wrapping it tight around the stays of the rack in 3 places and securing it with electrical tape.

Next, I went down to the hardware store and bought some cable clamp U-bolts. These mounted easily to the rack stays; once they were secure I held the box where I wanted it to go, marked the position of the bolts, and drilled my holes. I used 2 U-bolts to secure the upper portion of the box- this turned out to be really strong, so I just drilled a couple of smaller holes toward the bottom and attached that section to the rack using heavy-duty zip ties.
I ran out of time to finish the other side, but I should be able to get it done today. The boxes are a bit smaller than I had envisioned (since I was originally going to use the more rectangular .50 cal boxes) but I really like how flat they lie to the bike. Plus I got them for $2.50 each at the army surplus store- saving myself a whole lot of money any way you look at it.
I will probably still buy a nice Trek bag to sit on the top of the rack, and I will need to somehow strap on my sleeping bag and bivvy sack, but if I need to I can always install a front rack too. For short trips, however, this is fast becoming a beautiful machine.

ALMOST THERE

I spent the portion of the week that I didn't have food poisoning working on the touring bike. It's coming along nicely, and today I am planning on getting the gears and brakes set up. This bike has been really fun to build.  I'm proud of the paint job, which came out pretty nice considering that it's impossible to find an outdoor painting location in SLO that is free of wind at any time of day or night. Another highlight is the complete mishmash of components that have been commandeered to get this baby running.  So far the list includes:

-Schwinn (?) frame circa 1975

-Araya 27 x 1 1/4 wheelset (steel, of course)

-Original Dia-Comp centerpull brake calipers

-New Tektro levers

-New Campy Mirage crank set

-Soma Bullhorns set up with a combo of Oury grips and Fizik suede tape

-New Vittoria tires

I'm taking her to Big Sur on our annual camping trip this week to put on some test miles. Next week- Ammo Box Panniers.

INSPIRATION

Well, it's been a while since I posted.  Things have been busy with Hank, school, and some much needed early summer vacation trips. We spent this last weekend in Ventura with my wife's sister and her fiance, Uncle Dirty.  After a few rounds of Red Stripe Dirty poured us some whiskey and turned on the Tour de France.  Suddenly, we realized that our calling, as brothers in law, must certainly be long distance cycling. The problem is, neither of us have a touring bike. He rides a beach cruiser, and I alternate between my hardtail mountain bike and my fix'd. Oh what a glorious problem to have! Today Dirty bought an nice older Trek set up for touring, and I dug around in the shed and found an old steel Schwinn frame that I bought for about $20 a while back. I hooked up a free Araya wheelset on Craigslist, and bought a Campy 34/50 nine-speed crank set on ebay.  I have a nice wide set of Soma pursuits and a rear rack laying around somewhere too, as well as a bunch of random derraileurs, brakes, levers, etc.  That leaves a pretty small amount of stuff left to purchase, so I'm hoping to do the whole thing for right around $150. 

The frame needs a new paint job, obviously, so I think I'm going to recreate the legendary 'Kalishnakov'- one of my favorite bike projects whose life was ended prematurely by a stop-sign running BMW a couple of years ago.  More to come on this as the design progresses, but suffice it to say that .50 cal ammo box panniers are in the works.

Our first ride will be Santa Barbara to Ventura in a few weeks to test our bikes (and our strength), and then we're going to try SLO to Ventura sometime in September.  

AH, SATURDAY!

Today Hank took a 3 hour nap in his bouncy chair on the back porch while I put down a couple of Coors Banquets and rebuilt this old Free Spirit Townie that I got out of a dumpster.  The whole project was a weird foray into the wacky world of gears.  The biggest challenges were de-rustifying all the chrome and overhauling the badly corroded bottom bracket. I also added new tires and tubes, replaced the chain, and topped it all off with an old crusty Brooks seat that I got from Vic at some point.  It looks downright classy.  I think I'll stick with riding fixed, but this bike looks and feels so sweet that it almost makes me want to keep it... Hopefully it will find a good home somewhere here in SLO.  For now though, it makes a good propaganda piece!

SCORE!

So I've been working on converting the TREK mountain bike I found in a dumpster (see post "Dumpster Diving" below) to a single speed, and, with the exception of the cranks, everything is pretty much done. Yesterday, I drove down to GoodWill to see if I could score a cheap bike to pirate the final necessary parts from, and I came across a near mint condition Schwinn Sprint, circa 1975, which I bought for $70.  The bike must have come from some sort of estate sale or something, because it had an auction tag on it.  My trusted colleague TaTas reckons some old guy owned it, never rode it, and then kicked the bucket, causing it to be sold to someone else who never rode it and who eventually donated it.  So here's why it turned out to be such a sweet score:

  

First, I took off the bitchin' vintage Christophe toe clips (made in France, worth about 20-30 bucks) and put them on my fixie. They are shallower than my old clips, so my toes don't rub the front wheel on sharp turns, which is a definite plus.  I also took off the near perfect wheels (27 1/4 Arayas) and traded them out with the older, crappier set on my wife's World Sport, thus making amends for arriving home with yet another random bike. Then I tuned up the brakes and front derailleur and re-sold it within 24 hours for $150.00- an $80.00 profit. Not too shabby. Here are some pics:

Schwinn Sprint (as it was when I bought it)

Christophe clips

A SCHWINN RESURRECTED

This bike was an old Schwinn World Sport that I bought for my wife at a thrift store a couple of years ago.  For Christmas '07 I took it apart, painted the frame, buffed out all the rust from the components, and put the whole thing back together.  This was the first bike project that I undertook on a large scale, and I think it came out pretty nice.  I still want to apply new decals and put new rims on it at some point, as well as some chrome fenders and whitewall tires (both hard to come by for 27" wheels.)  As always, thanks to my dad for his advice and assistance.  I definitely caught the rebuilding bug on this one.