Picked this up for a song on the local classifieds.
Surly Sunrise Bars, Brooks Saddle, Blackburn Basket, and Origin 8 bag from my parts stash. Cheapo 450mm seatpost that’s maxed out and still barely long enough. Everything else stock.
Neat little bike! Not sure if I’ll hang onto it forever but it’s definitely sold me on small wheeled bikes being both fun and capable of doing real bike stuff.
This front light is sold by a variety of sellers on eBay and other marketplaces as the “Foxeye StVZO”. With the tail light it came out to a whopping $33, shipping and import fees included. I think just the headlight would have been $23. Took about two weeks to arrive from China.
I have Supernova and Busch and Mueller lights on other bikes, and while those are worth every penny, I didn’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars for lights for this bike. I have used cheap plasticy dynamo lights ordered from european bike shops in the past and never had any issues with them, so these seemed like a reasonable gamble.
For the price I’m happy. The scale of the headlight surprised me when I opened the package - it’s about 3x as large as a supernova light. Otherwise hard to find much to complain about. It’s aluminum, the design is inoffensive, it’s plenty bright for riding on streets with no lights, and it even has a stand light and a switch.
The tail light is nothing special. It’s big and chunky and plasticy, and plenty bright. It also has a stand light. You can order dynamo tail lights exactly like this for $10 from any european bike shop, but considering there was no shipping or import fees it was still a good value. These lights are designed to mount to a rear rack, which this bike doesn’t have, so I zip tied it to a strap on mount for a USB rechargeable light to be able to mount it to my seat stay.
Total impulse buy on my part. $25, who could say no? Retired guy, said he bought it from Nashbar 10 years ago for $100 on closeout to bring on RV trips and rode it a total of about 300 miles.
It’s a surprisingly ‘real’ little bike, a modest step above wal-mart quality. Disc brakes, cassette rear hub, shimano altus drivetrain, FSA headset.
The included bars were about 350mm wide and the saddle was a laughable piece of junk, so I swapped those immediately. The Brooks saddle, pedals, and bars/grips came from my parts bin, but everything else (including the water bottle!) came on the bike.
The only upgrade I’ve ordered so far is the cheapest extra long seatpost I could find, as this one is an inch or two short at max insertion. At $22 that was nearly as much as the bike!
I picked up this nice old classic road frame with S&S couplers last summer. I realized after buying it that it has very classic road bike sensibilities and only clears a 700x23c tire. Rather than cutting my losses and selling it like a reasonable person I decided I wanted to try running 650b wheels on it to eke out some more tire clearance.
I wasn’t sure if this idea was going to end up being a fool’s errand, so I put off this build for a long time. I finally stopped hemming and hawing and built the wheels up, and the rest of it came together pretty quickly. I’m very pleased with the result. It’s a lovely old steel frame, and paired with the 38c Pari-moto tires, it’s like riding on a cloud.
Some build highlights:
- Ronic Custom S&S coupled frame with campy lugs and dropouts - best guess early 90s era
- Velocity NoBS 650b rims, laced to a Son12 Dynamo in front (lights aren’t installed yet) and an Shimano RS400 hub in back
- Panaracer Pacenti Pari-Moto 650bx38c tires
- A Selle Italia leather saddle with goofy “tour de france” branding
- 160mm Promax BMX cranks
- The limpest and longest LD stem I could find at my local bike co-op
- A lugged tange fork of unknown provenance from the bin at the bike co-op, because I realized after building the wheels and installing the tires that while the frame cleared the 38c tires comfortably, the fork didn’t. Oops.
- Origin 8 stainless steel citi classic bars
- Shimano Essa RD
- Single suntour downtube friction shifter