Thank you all for your kind words! Mark sent me a few pics yesterday and although I have not seen the bike in person yet, it looks from the pics well balanced and every bit how I envisioned it.
The bike has been in the making for about 18 months now; the first six in my mind, trying to justify the "one more bike?" thing and the remaining twelve in the making. An untold number of emails with Grant and Mark has taken place during the design phase to crystallize the direction the design was to follow. Grant, to his credit, often mentioned the similarities with the AHH but to me a Grant custom design, brazed by Nobillette and painted by Joe Bell is the "perfect storm" I wanted to get caught in. Mark Abele has been and continues to be extremely helpful, instrumental and patient with my never ending avalanche of questions working out all the details. Dealing with Joe Bell has been exemplary. His attention to detail goes beyond paint lines. The fellow simply cares too much for what he does. The first time the phone rung at 10:00pm EST I was surprised; the third time I had gotten used to it. This journey has been a wonderful experience and was as important to me as arriving at the destination. Frame stats: Size 62.8 Seat angle 72, head angle 72 Rake 50mm HT length 206.1mm TT eff 61.6cm TT upslope 2.5 deg CS length 47cm BB drop 80mm 700c, 135mm OLD, clearance for 42mm tires plus fenders Paint: Richard Sachs 2013 Saffron with HOK DP-18 Cinnamon Pearl Build: DA 9-speed bar ends TA Specialities Carmina 110/74 46/36/26 Phil BB XT front and rear deraileurs, long cage rear 11-32 XT Origin 8 Classique sport road brake levers Paul's braze-on Racers CK headset Nitto NP stem Nitto S83 seat post Brooks B17 select (1st time trying this, if not agreeable then the Berthoud Aspin goes back on) Albastache (1st time on these as well, if not agreeable then back to drops) Schmidt Son28 dyno hub with Edelux II I build my own wheels and the set chosen for the bike uses H+Son TB14 polished 36h rims laced on WI MI5 hub with 14/15/14 ga Sapim Race spokes arranged 3x for the rear. Front is also 36h due to the narrower flange offset of the Son28. I normally use brass nipples but for this set I went with the Sapim orange Polyax to carry over the frame color. Tires are the Compass 700cx35, tubed. These are the tires expected to be on most of the time with a possible move-up to 38's for dirt trails. The bike is set for up to 42's with fenders. Fenders will be the VO 50mm Snakeskin. I had to arm wrestle with Grant on this; he does not know about the metal fenders yet unless Mark spilled the beans so don't tell him!. I'll put these on myself when I get the bike because I have the wheels waiting here. The bike will start its tenure as my daily commuter (thus the Albastache) and then we will go from there. Excuse the very long post and thank you again for your kind words. Pano On Friday, February 3, 2017 at 6:17:26 PM UTC-5, Bill Lindsay wrote: > > Of all the Riv customs I've ever seen, the one shown on the BLUG today is > the one I would be most likely to copy. > > WANT! > > Bill Lindsay > El Cerrito, CA > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
