Did A Bit O' Bike Work, Yesterday

I had the day off from work, yesterday, so I decided to get some bike work out of the way. I have a bunch of projects in the works, a couple of which were near-complete. So, I thought I'd finish them up, while I waited for Brad to come over and work on yet another bike.

First up:  The Miyata 310.  I had decided to keep this bike, since I haven't had an actual road bike, for the past few years. While the Funk bike is as much of a road bike as I'll ever need, I missed the aesthetics of an old-school roadie. The lugged steel Miyata, particularly with the stock paint, really is a good-looking bike, to me, and I figure I might as well keep it around, to satisfy that need.

But, I don't want a bike to be just a display piece, so I modified it, just a bit, to make it more rideable for me.

First, the drop bars had to go. I prefer the mustache-style bars on pretty much every bike I ride. I installed some new hoods onto the brake levers, and wrapped the bars with new yellow tape. The stem is just a tad long, but I can live with it until another one comes along. I am keeping this build as low-buck, as possible, so I don't want to order in a new stem just for this bike.

Secondly, I converted the bike to 700c wheels, and installed a wider range, 7-speed cassette to give my tired old legs a bit of break, on the hills. The 35c slick tires seem like racing tires, to me, compared to the tires on all of my other bikes!

Finally, a leather saddle and some platform pedals completed the bike. I had planned on installing bar-end shifters, but I don't have the necessary bolt-on cable stop lying about, at this point. When I find one, I might install the shifters. Or, if I find that the downtube shifters suit me, on this bike, I'll just leave them. They are pretty cool shifters, and I sort of want to leave them on, just for looks.

And so, the complete bike, ready to ride. I love the looks of it, and I plan to ride it a bit, today or tomorrow, to check out the fit on more than an around-the-block test ride.

The other bike which got completed, yesterday, was the 29er singlespeed conversion. I decided that, since I have the 29er wheels to slot into the fat bike, when I want, that the old Bikes Direct Motobecane was redundant. I haven't had a 29er singlespeed since I sold the Raleigh XXIX, a couple of years ago, and I've missed it.

Plus, I had this handlebar sitting around, and needed something on which to use it. It is the Surly Open Bar, which is the same bar I have on the fat bike. I love the width, and the bend on the big bike, and it just seemed like it would be appropriate for a singlespeed.

I actually had a set of dedicated one-speed wheels sitting around, so that was an added incentive to do the conversion.

The seat and seatpost were already on the bike, and the Deore crank was on the Funk, until I swapped the XT triple back to it, from this bike. I had been running the Deore as a double, on the Funk, so it was a simple job to just remove the big ring, replace the chainring bolts, and turn it into a single-ring crank.

I utilized this rigid steel fork, which was once on one of my commuter bikes. It is lively enough to absorb quite a bit of chatter and small bumps, and it's fairly light (at least, in comparison to the suspension fork it replaced). I like the Pacenti crown lug, a lot, too. The lug is actually why I bought this fork, in the first place.

The suspension fork is in the shop building, with a fork crown race which matches the headset on the fat bike. If I decide to run a suspension 29er, I only have to swap the fork out, on the fat bike, and slot in the appropriate wheels.

I rode this one to the coffee shop, this morning. I have it geared a little too high, so i will swap out to a larger cog, on the rear. It's fine around town, but I want to actually do some mountain biking with it on trails such as the Greenland Open Space trail, or Parmalee Gulch (on top of Mt. Falcon), and the 38/18 gear is just too high for me to climb even the relatively easy hills on those trails.

That's the problem with singlespeeding, in Colorado, for me. I am not one of those monstrously fit riders who can push a 65-inch gear up an 25-degree incline for 2 miles, so that I can then ride 20 mph on the flats. I have to gear a bike low enough for the climbs, and then just poke along, spinning my legs off, on the flats. But, I still enjoy it.

Completing these two bikes brings my count down to 3 major projects (not counting such minor things as swapping out brake levers on the fat bike). Hopefully, I can get a couple of those done and get some return on them, since a couple of them are builds I plan to sell, once they are complete.

In the meantime, I think I'll get out and ride, today, after I mow my jungle of a back yard!

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