This bike's story starts with my friend Paul. Paul needed a bike to ride in the Tour de Cure, a charity bike ride in the Napa area. A friend of his had a bike and said he could use it to train for a while, so he took it to a local shop and asked them to tune it up.
They told him that there was no way they'd let him ride that bike. It had been crashed into the back of a bus some time ago, and the head tube was cracked and deformed, leaving about 1 mm of clearance between the tire and the downtube.
Paul eventually found a different bike, a sweet Schwinn Paramount from the early 90's that's 10 times better than the Bianchi. And I got the old frame and parts, a mix of early 90's Campagnolo Mirage and Veloce 8-speed stuff.
Eventually I found a frame on the ol' Craigslist, my love and surely my eventually downfall. It was another old Bianchi frame, and I'll be damned if it's not exactly the same model, but conveniently in my size. (To be fair, it was originally to be a bike for my sister, but she found something that suited her before I had a chance to build this one up.)
Here's the bike, in temporal order:
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| The new old frame. |
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| Post powder coat! |
 |
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| Still loving that 50mm lens. |
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| My apartment turned garage. |
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| The fork situation is complicated... |
I don't have all the tools necessary for this job, so I stripped Paul's Bianchi down to the frame and took it to my new favorite place in Berkeley, Street Level Cycles, the bike portion of Waterside Workshop. This place is great: they have half a dozen workstands and tons of tools that they'll let you use for free. They also have a couple volunteer mechanics to help you, used parts, and used bikes for reasonable prices. I pulled the headset from old old frame, and pressed it in to the new old frame. Brad came with me and trued up his wheel, which successfully stopped it from making the very annoying brake-rub-squeak with each wheel rotation.
I had to take the frame back to Mike's Bikes to get the bottom bracket/crank (forever joined together - another story) put back in, and the races swapped on the two forks that I now own. Watch this space for the fully assembled bike - hopefully I can put it together this afternoon.
Comments (11)
The powdercoating looks fantastic!
Posted by teddy | January 25, 2009 1:56 PM
Posted on January 25, 2009 13:56
Yeah, they did a great job with the powdercoat. I took it to Leon's in Oakland - $70 for frame, no fork. It turned out well, with the exception of a small ding they put in the seat tube - it's on the crank side so it should be covered up by the chainrings anyway. I was talking to one of the guys at Street Level Cycles, and he said he'd taken his bike to the same place. I showed him the ding, and he said, hah, they put a ding in mine too! Fine for old steel bikes from CL, but these guys claim to do the powdercoating for custom framebuilders. I'd be pretty pissed if someone dented my new $1500 custom job.
Whatevs. It looks sweet.
Posted by Katie | January 25, 2009 2:09 PM
Posted on January 25, 2009 14:09
You should let Leon's know... maybe it's the process or something in the way they're handling the frames that's causing the dings. It wouldn't happen if they just hung it up with hangers in their carport.
Posted by teddy | January 25, 2009 2:22 PM
Posted on January 25, 2009 14:22
You're making two bikes? why are there two frames in that one pic?
Posted by Liz | January 25, 2009 3:00 PM
Posted on January 25, 2009 15:00
Only one bike. I started with one bike, which had been crashed, so the frame was broken. I bought a new (old) frame, and am in the process of moving all the still-good parts over from the broken frame to the good one, which I had painted.
Posted by Katie | January 25, 2009 4:00 PM
Posted on January 25, 2009 16:00
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Posted on July 26, 2010 13:22
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Posted on August 20, 2010 05:27
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Posted on August 24, 2010 04:02
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Posted on September 14, 2010 06:39
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Posted on September 15, 2010 13:04