Two Wheels - Six Strings: New Bike For Burd

Burd Phillips (my website guru) decided he wanted a bike with multiple gears, a while back. Recently, he mentioned it,again, and I showed him this 1984 Centurion ProTour 15 I had hanging around World Headquarters. It's a 63cm frame, and pretty much all stock. It was only missing the rack.

Burd thought it was pretty cool, so I told him I would send it to him. I also told him to let me know what modifications he wanted on it (rack, etc.) and I would get it done ASAP.

A rack, fenders and aero brake levers were requested. So, I went down into the catacombs and searched through my parts. I found some late 80's Shimano aero levers with black hoods, and the fenders from a Peugeot 3-speed, with an integrated rear rack.

The fenders fit on the bike, but the mounting hardware didn't really work on the Centurion. No problem, I thought, I'll just find some clamps for the fender stays and get 'em on. Of course, the more I thought of it, the less I wanted to put clamps on a touring bike which has threaded eyelets for all kinds of accessories. Time to do a little fabrication (and I ain't lying).

Step one: Take some aluminum bar stock and drill holes for the bolts and eyelet clamps.

Step two: Cut the bar stock into 4 pieces, each with two holes.

Step three: Shape the fittings roughly with the angle grinder.

Step four: A little filing, and you have four mounting brackets.

Then, with the addition of some spacers to provide some clamping action, it's possible to securely mount the fenders and adjust their position.

The next step was very straightforward: Replace the old-school brake levers with the aero versions. Jut to add a little complexity, I decided to also install some cyclcross-style "interrupter" levers so Burd can brake from the tops of the bars, as well as from the hoods or drops. I figure if he's commuting around Indy, he might want to keep his head up.