I pounced on a local 59cm Romulus. That bike has long been on my list of "I'd ride THAT" bikes, but it wasn't a terribly high priority. This opportunity presented itself and got to work.
Cutting to the chase: here's the album https://www.flickr.com/photos/45758191@N04/albums/72177720310604809 The bike was a mostly original Riv complete Rom build. It had a mustache bar cockpit, and Silver bar con shifters, but otherwise was pretty much stock. It's got nicks and scratches beau-sage but was in mechanically fine shape. This is going to be a versatile road platform upon which I could implement a number of different build concepts. The one that had been sticking in my mind, though, was a front-derailleur only road two speed. The forthcoming Roaduno is allegedly going to have both a rear der hanger as well as the braze on bits to do a FRONT shifter. Some listers vocally proclaimed that "silly", but it seems pretty sensible to me. I had not executed a build of that kind, and this was my shot. >From "inventory" I pulled together a nice two speed road bike kit: The wheelset was "inherited" from my Crust Florida Man., which lives in Michigan. When I built that bike, I used stuff I had on-hand, including a pair of HED Belgium rims. Those are almost impossible to get anymore, so I built a new set of wheels around cheaper and wider rims to bring that wheelset back to California. I just grabbed them off the hook. I put a pair of used Compass Steilacoom 700x38 knobbier on there (with latex tubes!) and grabbed a 16/18 DOS ENO freewheel. The rear hub is Surly Ultra New. The front is a Phil Track hub. I tossed on a pair of Shimano "CLICKR" SPD pedals. The drivetrain centers on a Campy Centaur 172.5mm square taper cranks Origin8 sealed BB (110.5) blue chain guard 39T tripleizer ring 24T ring from the original Rom build The front derailleur is a heavily modified FSA that I had from earlier experiments. The shift lever is a Shimano Ultegra "triple-color" model from he 1990s with an awesome return spring inside to make it really light action. The tensioner is a modified XT rapid rise. There's no return spring inside, from a desmodromic exploration. I was able to adjust one limit screw so it hits the 16T cog. The other limit screw was too short, so I replaced it with a long socket head M4x0.7mm bolt. I can turn that one with my fingers. Dialed out the RD "falls" to the 18T cog. Dialed in I can push it to the 16. The cockpit includes other parts box items. I got the Salsa stem really cheap only to find it's like 25.8mm in clamp diameter. I was waiting for a working-class build to force it to 26.0mm. I spread it wide and got a 420mm Nitto Noodle in there. I used the stock brake levers and some orange Newbaums. I kept the original Nitto 65 seat post and installed the Brooks Pro saddle reclaimed from "Shawn's Hetchins". Now it's ready to ride (after the shellac dries). Maybe this will inspire some of the Roaduno builds later this year. Enjoy 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/478ab8ad-1a54-4bef-9a83-d14171c8a2fen%40googlegroups.com.
