Project Bike Number ???

Ok, so I don’t know how many bikes I have worked on in the past year. Maybe I should work at a bike shop, or even open one. No, bad idea, I probably wouldn’t sell anything and just buy what I like. Anyway, the current project.

Take a standard, run of the mill, CrMo track frame and pretty it up and you have the next project. When the frame arrived at my home it was flat black with some vinyl stickers on it. so pulling off the stickers I drop the frame and fork off at Drake Coatings of Monroe, NC. This is the third frame that I have had Drake powder-coat. Tom Drake does a great job and is fast and inexpensive. If you have a frame that you would like to refinish or want to change the color of, this is the place to take it. Do it now before he decides to raise his prices.

Ok, so its a standard Taiwan welded CrMo steel track frame set, nothing special. Not sure of all the stuff that will go into it, but I want to keep the cost down so I won’t be buying too many parts for it except for the necessary few.

After I picked it up from Drake’s today I headed over to the bike shop where I knew they had some tools to ream and face the various mechanical contact points. Reaming and facing are somewhat of a lost art as not many people sell steel frame sets any more. But back in the day you needed to know for sure that both ends of the head tube were parallel to each other and you had to face the ends. The same was true of the bottom bracket. Special tools are needed to perform this task. You also had to make sure that the threads were chased so that any threaded parts would go on smoothly. Also the crown of the fork is shaved to make sure it is square to the head tube.

So back to the house, in the garage to look at what I just bought. Installed the headset. That requires the cups be pressed on to each side of the head tube and a race pressed onto the crown of the fork. I am using a silver Cane Creek S-2 headset. Cane Creek still manufactures some inexpensive 1″ headsets, I did not want to go to the expense of a Chris King, as this is a limited use bike.

I had originally thought I was going to use the old crank off my old Klein, it is a Dura-Ace 7400. Alas the crank arm length was 175 mm. I don’t even ride cranks that long on my road bikes anymore! I opted to buy a new crank. Looking around I finally settled on the Truvativ Omnium. It is a track specific crank, that’s good. It only has one chain ring available 48T, that’s bad. I could buy it in 167.5 mm, that’s good. The chain ring is thicker than every other track ring manufacturer, that’s bad. We will just need to wait and see if I can find a rear cog that will not wear me out.

Of course the Omnium uses the newer outboard bearing setup. It is a good thing that the GXP bearings come in silver.

I did not want to buy a stem or handlebars. I looked first, but it is very hard to find a 1″ non-threaded stem in any color. All I found were black or very ugly and expensive. I already had an ugly black one here that I bought from PricePoint last year, why would I want to buy another. So I did the old oven cleaner trick. I dropped the stem in a freezer bag, then got my can of Heavy Duty Easy-Off, and sprayed the entire stem. I sealed up the bag and let it sit for twenty minutes then washed off the oven cleaner. A few minutes with a non-abrasive scouring pad and some dish soap and all the anodizing was gone. All that was left was a dull finished aluminum stem.

On to the bars. Again, not wanting to buy anything new, I pulled out an old Modolo Xtenos, It was black anodized also. Oven Cleaner to the rescue. This time I did not do the whole bar, just the center portion that was to be exposed. Now after removing the anodizing on both of those parts, I used a small piece to Nevr Dull to polish up the parts. If you have never used Nevr Dull, it is great at shining up aluminum pots and pans and other metals too. Renfrow Hardware in downtown Matthews sells it.

I have so many saddles that I just pulled one out of the box. The seat post was going to be a problem. It is 26.8 mm, and I didn’t/couldn’t find a new one. Fortunately I remembered that I had my old Diamond Back still buried under a pile of junk in my shed. I pulled the seat post from it and it was the correct size. Just a little long (I will trim it later). Some more polishing with Nevr Dull and it almost looks new.

I have an old set of Dura-Ace 7400 brakes and Aero Levers that I will be recycling in this project so all that is left to do is find a suitable wheel set. No decision has been made on these yet. I will repost and update pictures as the build nears completion. It might be a while as this is not a very high priority. That spot belongs to the researching and buying of a new tandem.