'70's Bars

It was a busy weekend for handlebars on old bicycles. Things are starting to come together, and I should have both of my older bikes (the Schwinn and the Motobecane) ready for the road very soon, along with Juliana's Fuji. Actually, the Fuji and Motobecane are ridable today, but the Schwinn isn't. All three are very close to complete.

Juliana's Fuji:
This thing is just as cute as all get-out, and it'll look even better with the bars taped, twined and shellacked. I'll hold off on a pic until that's done.

A couple of weeks ago, I'd installed the Velo Orange Belleville bars, and discovered their grips were way too long for this application. So today I took the Shimano bar-end shifters off the bike, pulled out the larger of my two pipe cutters and removed one screwdriver shank's worth of length from each side's grip area. Unconventional measuring tool aside, I made an effort to be very precise so there wouldn't be any uneven strangeness to the bike. The pipe cutter is just a home plumbing tool made for copper pipe, but the aluminum handlebars didn't present a challenge, and after a little filing, the shifters were back in place within a half hour of starting the job.

Next, I spent a few minutes fiddling with cable routing to get a sense of how I'm going to have to set things up before taping. It looks like I'll need to run the shifter cables under the cloth tape, to make sure Juli doesn't tangle her fingers while reaching for a brake. I've got some aluminum duct tape that I'll stick the cables down with, so I don't end up with black stripes of electrical tape showing through the red cloth Tressostar tape.

After I got some tentative cable routing sorted out, I called Juli outside and sent her teetering around the driveway on her new ride. She seemed much happier with this arrangement than she was with her drop bars (but still nervous about the top tube height). I'll probably leave the bike this way indefinitely, and get her something sportier when she grows out of this little one.

My Schwinn Sports Tourer:
Today was a day of details for this bike. I'd removed the Nitto bars in favor of a set of Belleri randonneuring bars a few weeks back, but hadn't wrapped them or adjusted the lengths of the brake cables to account for their reduced width. So I took care of that today, first fitting the cables, then adding a little cork wrap along the bar flats, then wrapping the bars in green leather Brooks tape. Which sort of matches the green Brooks saddle, except that the saddle doesn't look very green anymore.

I also spent a few minutes reinstalling the decaleur mount and trying to angle it so it'd work with the bag and the Mafac rack. Truth is I cut it way too short when I had it mounted the first time (sans racklet), but I'll give this setup a whirl and hope for the best. I need to figure out how to lash the bag down to the racklet, too.

I wheeled it out once the bars were wrapped and took this picture. You'll notice the drooping chain -- no freewheel yet. Hopefully that'll arrive this week, and with a little adjustment to the derailleur travel, the bike will be ready to roll again.

It's now almost exactly a year after I first finished it. The first photo I took of the bike after the initial build was in front of that big bush in the background, in full bloom. The bush is just about to bloom again -- you can see the little buds opening. So it's a bush year, if not a calendar year. The bike was sportier then, with 700c wheels, flatter bars and no racks. But I think it's pretty handsome as it is now, too.

I couldn't ride it without a freewheel, but doing a little testing, the Mafac brakes are a little squeaky against these rims -- hopefully that won't last long. And I need to saddle soap the leather and twine the ends.

Steven's Motobecane Grand Touring:
Having test-installed the fork a few weeks ago, there was still a bit of finish work left for this one. I installed the bars and brake levers, put the brake cables back on and adjusted the brakes. Then I set the pads properly for the 700c rims, snugged down the mounting bolts for the brakes, centered them on the rims, and hopped on for a ride.

It felt good, at least in that little trip around the corner and back. The steering feels a little different than it did with the old fork, but it doesn't feel messed up -- just a little different. The gearing with the wider 6-speed freewheel is much better than it was, and the Campagnolo shifters are buttery. I'm going to have to give it a good long ride soon, and write something up about that experience. My hope is that the fork will get the job done, and I won't have to look for another. The feel of the saddle is OK, so all that oiling I did over the winter might have salvaged it. It's got a dull oiled-leather finish to it now, rather than a polished shine, but that's OK.

There are still a few things to do. The brake levers need to slide up a smidge higher on the bars, I need to take a few inches out of the brake cables to make them look not quite so dorky (and to even their loops out), the bars need to be taped and twined, and I need to figure out how and when to put the hoods on, relative to the other steps.

A couple of observations from an aesthetic perspective. The 700c rims fill the frame just fine, and I can run a fatter tire next time. But the dark anodized finish of these rims give the bike a very different appearance than it had with the polished rims it came with. The wheels look extra dark with the brown Continental sidewalls, too, and I'm not sure I like the look as much. It's sportier, for sure. And of course, the other big change is the blue fork, which just looks terrible in combination with the tan frame. I'm going to leave it as is for now, and at some point I'll make a decision about the finish of the fork and the bike overall. The frame has some rust stains and the like, and a new paint job might be nice. Or I could just get the fork stripped and chromed.

I've always wanted a bike painted the color of a Bugatti Type 35, so I may go that route. A refinish (and the attendant rebuild) would be a good project for next winter.

All for now,

J

Cars

I have a car. It's a 2006 Mazda3 sedan, and you've seen it in another post.

This morning on the way to work, I crossed the 93,000 mile threshold, so while it's not old in people years, the car is getting up there in the metric that counts most for cars. High enough that I'm starting to think about what'll be next.

Last weekend, I took my daughters to visit a friend in New Jersey, and on Saturday we all went to the New York International Auto Show. We had a good time, and I saw lots of nice cars. Just a few impressions, first:

• I like the new Ford Taurus. It's all new, and it looks great in a big sedan kind of way. It's not my kind of car, really, but I like it.
• Almost nobody seems to make real wagons anymore. Instead, they make SUV/crossover AWD things that get lousy gas mileage and don't handle as well as a wagon would. Or hold any more than a wagon would. Bummer.
• I once had a Passat wagon, and VW still makes wagons (as do Saab, Volvo, and BMW). But I've owned my last car that costs me north of $1000 every time I go to the dealer just because a light is on. No, thanks. Plus Ford is looking to sell Volvo to one of the Chinese automakers, and I've seen those crash test vids on YouTube thank you very much. And I'd be stunned if the Saab nameplate survived GM's current ills.
• It sure is easy to buy big horsepower these days. But I really don't think you need more than 150 hp or so in a normal car, unless the car is too big and heavy in the first place. Yeah, a 400 hp Camaro would be fun, but it's really hard to use 400 hp, except in a way that's bound to piss other people off or get you arrested. I can use all 156 of my Mazda's horsepower and most of the tachometer's range pretty much any time I want and not get road raged or arrested, and still have a grin on my face.

Anyway, there were lots of cars there that were very nice, but pretty much all of them didn't really interest me in the sense that I thought they would work for me and meet all of my criteria. I have two little kids and want a dog, and need space to carry bikes, and like to fling my car around, and really have a hard time with a car that extracts less than 30 miles from a gallon of fuel. And the choices for someone who needs all that are pretty slim, really.

The Mazda5 might work, but my wife has an Odyssey and the sliding doors rattle, so I'm a little wary of those. I hear that Honda might bring the Stream to the US in a few years, which is kind of like a smaller version of the first generation Odyssey (which had car-like rear doors, not sliders), but Honda tends not to be too showy about what it's doing next, so it's hard to say. Tall cars tend to be tippier, too, so I'm not sure how fun either would be.

I'm still a couple of years off, probably. But again, for a guy who likes to drive and has kids and wants a dog and carries bikes and wants 30 mpg and none of the unnecessary complexity that comes with AWD, the choices are slim.

My Mazda, btw, returned 31 mpg on the way to NJ, and 32 on the way back, hauling two kids plus me and our luggage, and not at all putting along in the slow lane. No dog, and no bikes, granted, but still pretty good.

All for now,

J

5, 6 or 7? 120 or 126?

I'm in the process of sorting out wheels and freewheels for my Schwinn Sports Tourer and my Motobecane Grand Touring. And some of my understanding of rear hubs and freewheels is being challenged in the process.

I've reassigned the 27" wheelset that came with the Motobecane to the Schwinn. This is a good thing, as they fill the frame up a little better, and take a little pressure off the rear Mafac brake to reach all the way down to a 700c rim. And the plump tires I chose (1 1/4" Pasela's) should make the Schwinn's already very pleasant ride quality that much more cushy. Good stuff.

Also good stuff is that I've found that the Motobecane's frame accepts 700c rims without difficulty. More to the point, the brake bridge is located so as to allow the Suntour Superbe brakes on the back of the bike to squeeze the pads onto the rim, not the tire (just barely, but I'll take it). The new fork, though sized for a 27" rim, works fine in that regard as well, though I don't yet know if it messes up the bike's steering or handling.

At any rate, from a rim perspective, the swap is working out just fine. However, we all know that things revolve not around the rim, but around the hub. And the hubs are challenging me a bit.

The Specialized cartridge/sealed bearing hubs on the 27" rims have an outer locknut dimension(OLD) of 122mm, according to my calipers. Or did, until I added 5mm of spacers to them, 3mm on the right side and 2mm on the left. The goal was to get the hub to accept not just a 5-speed freewheel, but also a 6- or 7-speed freewheel. This, assuming that the widths of 6-and 7-speed freewheels was the same. Not, apparently, the case.

I thought I'd read that a 7-speed freewheel and a 6-speed freewheel had the same width, and that the sprockets are just crammed closer together on the 7. Same way an Ultra 6 and a 5-speed freewheel have the same width. But while adding those 3 mm to the freewheel side of the axle made the axle able to support a 6-speed Shimano 600 freewheel (an oldie but goodie), a 7-speed recent Shimano freewheel doesn't clear the locknut. It's not really even that close. In the mean time, the 700c wheelset readily accepts either a 6-speed or 7-speed, with clearance for either, and it's a 126mm wheel with a Shimano 600 hub.

So now I'm confused. I've ordered an IRD 6-speed freewheel with a nice wide gear range for the Schwinn, and we'll see if that fits. I settled on the one with more consistent gear spacing, because I figured there might be times when I missed a 28 tooth cog between a 32 and a 24, more than I'd miss a smaller gap higher up in the range. Anyway Rivendell had what I needed, so I got it, along with some hemp twine to twine the bars, and some corks to prevent the bars (hopefully) from taking a core sample of my abdomen in a crash or possibly hosting some sort of mud wasp clan someday.

I couldn't find anything that said how wide the IRD freewheels are, so I'll publish that spec when I find out -- at least the 6-speed width.

And apparently I need to sit down with some calipers to see what's keeping me from running a 7. If worst comes to worst, I can get the rear wheel re-dished at some point. I'm honestly half expecting the wheels not to hold up well, anyway, given their age and the rusty eyelets. If that happens, it'll be easy enough to justify the respacing and a new freewheel. I'll have to see how it plays out...

The weather hasn't been very cooperative recently, so I haven't gotten out yet. Am hoping for a nice Sunday morning, but the nights are still getting pretty cold. In particular, I'd like to at least get into the woods on the Paramount, where wind chill is less of a problem than out on the road on the Kestrel.

All for now,

J

Bikes, bikes and more bikes

I worked on no less than 4 bikes this weekend. Almost have the grease out of my fingerprints.

Juliana's Fuji:
Juli, Ava and I went to the cul-de-sac around the corner from the house a week ago. Mission 1: To get Ava used to running without training wheels. Mission 2: Get Juli onto the Fuji.

Neither worked out so well.

In fairness, Ava was nursing her left foot a bit. She had a big splinter surgically removed less than a week before. And though she was walking on it just fine, I think her confidence was a little undermined by her hurt foot. The foot is pretty much healed, so we'll try again in a few weeks. Her puppydog Hotrock had a shakedown ride in the hands of her big sister (I made a few adjustments as a result), and is ready and waiting.

Then there's Juli, who (despite hours of growth coaching this winter) is still just a little too short for her Fuji. The standover height is about right for an experienced rider, but it scares her a bit. And the reach to the brake hoods is way too far. Or was, anyway.

Last week, I ordered a Velo-Orange Belleville city bar, and this weekend, I removed the tiny little drop bars from the Fuji and migrated the bar end shifters and brake levers over to these new bars. Everything fit OK, and the aero brake levers fit just fine at the front of the bars, just inboard of the bends, sort of like a moustache bar, but without all the extra bends. She won't have a ton of hand positions, but for a season or two, it'll be fine. Next, I'm going to shorten the bars a bit to give her better clearance for her knees, and then I'll wrap the bars in cloth tape, then twine and shellac them. Not just to be pretentious, mind you. That I'll reserve for the Motobecane. No, I'm doing the shellac/cloth tape/twine thing on Juli's bike because she has little girl hands, and little girl hands don't need big fat grips that don't let them get a good purchase on the bars.

Am hoping to get all that done on Friday morning before heading to the Auto Show in NYC for the weekend with the girls. By Sunday, it should be ready for the second coat of shellac.

Motobecane
I managed to find a fork! Craig's list yielded a 531 fork from an old Crescent (that's an old Swedish brand) 10-speed. It's Crescent orange underneath, resprayed in what looks like the same blue my 1977 Ford Granada from High School was. The steerer is just long enough for the Motobecane, and I test-fit it this weekend with success, but without spacers. I didn't use the headset I'd ultimately like to use, though, so I may yet run into some issues.

I'm currently using the headset the fork came with, which is unlike anything I've seen before. It's to the British specs. Steel. With a knurled top not, and this crazy round "locknut" that has no faces to accept a wrench. Instead it has three holes spaced evenly around the outsides of the nut, and it looks like it is supposed to use a tool with three pins coming at it radially. Never seen anything like that, but it wouldn't be hard to make a tool using an iron pipe and some screws. In any case, it's a neat headset, but its races aren't very smooth, so I will probably put it in a box when the time comes. I have a Tange Passage in aluminum waiting.

Assuming the fork doesn't make the bike handle crazily, I'll probably just leave it alone for the season, and then blast it and get it painted or chromed over next winter. I may also get some eyelets for a V-O randonneuring front rack (or a comparable Nitto rack) brazed on in the process, but that's not strictly necessary, so we'll see.

Next up, I installed the two water bottle cages from the Schwinn on this bike using stainless cage straps. The old-style Specialized cages have the kinds of tabs needed, so off they came. I'd bought new ones for the Schwinn in anticipation of this shift, so no foul there.

Also on the Moto, I took the 27" wheelset off and reassigned it to the Schwinn. And I have a 700C wheelset and a 6- or 7-speed freewheel coming to this bike soon (I'm hoping the brakes have sufficient reach -- if they don't I'll find a set of 27" rims and get them re-laced). And I have a 36 tooth chainring to replace the 42 to widen the gearing. Between the wider cluster that's coming with the new wheelset and the wider chainring spacing (36/52), I may need to replace the derailleurs with long-cage models. At least the rear, to take up the excess chain slack.

Next up for la bicyclette Francaise are new bars, stem, hoods and tape. I'm going to use red cloth Tressostar tape, hemp twine and cork plugs. There's a distinct element of pretense in that combination, but I mostly just want to try it out to see how it feels and looks. I think it'll look nice (well... once the blue fork isn't blue anymore, that is), and I'm hoping it'll feel fine, too. I've been riding with cork/padded tape so long that it may be quite a shock to the hands.

Schwinn
I took the Schwinn down from the rafters and test-fit the 27" wheelset. Perfect! Even eliminates the need for pricey Mafac RAID rear brakes. But I had to take off the fenders, which are too small for the 27" rims and the plumpish tires on them. I also put on some new water bottle cages, as I've already said.

Next time, I'll be putting different bars and tape on this bike, and moving the Nitto bars over to the Motobecane. I'll also be reinstalling the decaleur mount, since I know it's not what was causing the bars to creak (that'd be their sleeved design, of course). I'm going with green leather Brooks tape on this bike, and will add a strip of foam tape underneath, under my palms for a bit of cusion.

I also have to change out the freewheel. The 5 speed New Winner cluster that came with the Motobecane is way too compact for touring (13, 15, 16, 18, 21), and I need to figure out what to put on there. I added spacers to both sides of the axle and tried a 6-speed, and it fits fine, but I'm not certain a 7 will. That'll be easy to figure out though -- I'll just test it with the one on my wife's Bianchi. If a 7 fits, I'll buy a wide-range IRD online. If only a 6 fits, I've got one of those from another wheelset I have, and I'll buy a narrower-range IRD 7 online, and put the 7 on that wheelset.

Bertoni
I haven't really written in depth about this project, but a friend of mine has a Bertoni racing bike that we've been rebuilding on and off since last Fall. We finished installing the cables this weekend, and it's ready for bar tape. It also got a 7-speed wheelset this weekend -- the 32-spoke wheels from the Schwinn that we swapped to match the 7-speed indexed shifters now on the Bertoni (the 6-speed indexed shifters were broken). Those are beefy wheels, and might do with a little softening up of the spokes. The 6-speed wheelset the bike came with will go on the Motobecane.

A quick spin around the parking lot showed this to be a fun and nimble bike. I'll write more about it another time.

So -- a busy weekend with the wrenches. And still a bunch to do, since two of my bikes are as a result not fully assembled. But at least two are ready to roll into Spring -- the Kestrel is my fave anyway, and the Paramount needs to get back into the woods soon. But Ava is all set, both for solo seat time and for trailerr bike time. And Juli still has a mountain bike she can ride while the Fuji waits for the final tweaks. We'll be ready to get out there soon enough...

All for now,

J

Monson Swap Meet

My mission to find a fork for the Motobecane continues. When that's done, I'm going to roll up the details of that odyssey into a single post, but I wanted to share one recent experience along the path.

eBay usually has listed 6 or 7 of something I need at any given time, but it hasn't done me much good in finding a 27" fork. There have been a few listed in the past month, but they haven't been quite right. Either the steerer has been too short, or they've been painted instead of chromed, or they've been crappy or they've had canti studs. So last Sunday, I hit the road early and headed west to the swap meet in Monson, MA. My mission: Find a fork.

I hit the road by 6:00 or so, getting out early so I'd be able to get there before everything had been snapped up, and back so I could help my friend get a family heirloom bike ready for spring. This heirloom is a mid-70's Motobecane Mirage. Not a high end bike, falling somewhere between my own Motobecane and my Raleigh in quality of frame tubing and components. But as I said, it's an heirloom. The bike was his aunt's -- a gift purchased new from her father (my friend's grandfather) as she went off to college. Sadly, she was murdered too soon thereafter by a serial killer. Keeping the bike rolling is my friend's way of reclaiming good from that family tragedy. It deserves a more thorough overhaul than it received that afternoon, but we'll circle back to that, I'm sure.

I didn't know any of that history before laying a wrench to the bike, so none of that was on my mind as I headed west to the swap meet. I'd never been to this kind of event, so I was mostly curious as to what it'd be like, and what I'd find there. I'd never been to Monson, either, so didn't know what to expect from the setting. It turns out Monson is a pretty neat town. The main drag is full of beautiful antique buildings, including a couple of "Addams Family" style Victorian mansions. Had I known what to expect from the event or the location, I'd have brought a camera, but I didn't think to. So there won't be any photos to accompany this post.

The swap meet was in Memorial Hall, a massive granite building with an almost medieval feel to it on a cloudy, late-winter morning. Scattered around the lawn outside the building were a bunch of vendors and their wares. Over here was a guy bundled up in woolens standing next to a row of rusted, dilapidated things that used to be balloon-tired heavyweight bicycles. Over there was a similarly bundled-up family sitting behind a table with an array of ancient accessories and components, and a bunch of bike-boom road bikes for sale leaning nearby. Elsewhere was a tarp covered in parts, sold for a flat rate per piece.

It was cold and overcast, and I'm not generally very gregarious, so I didn't stop to chat. It'd have been interesting to hear what drives these folks to hunt for this stuff, then turn up at a swap meet at 6:00 in the morning with it. A love of bikes? A compulsion to collect? To hunt for relics? A desire to monetize the cast-offs of suburban life? The latter isn't much different than my desire to sell off the contents of my parts box, so I get that. But this was really a whole different level of commitment, and it's a side of hobbying I haven't really seen before. I'm sure there are some interesting stories, there.

From the lawn, I stepped through a massive oak door into the foyer of the hall, and found a bunch of interesting old bikes lined up and for sale. OK, this was more like what I expected. I came for a nice fork, and seeing these bikes, I felt much more likely to find one than looking at the stuff out on the lawn. Inside were tables covered with much higher-end stuff -- groupsets and fenders and freewheels and brakesets and the like. As an example, Peter Weigle was there, with a table full of Frame Saver cans and a handful of beautiful old bikes, including a Paramount and a Rene Herse.

At another table, I found Scott, from Scott's Cyclery in Willimantic, CT. Scott's a talker, and seems like a genuinely nice guy. He had a few copies of a really neat book I'd never seen before, perhaps because I'd never thought to look for it: 100 Years of Bicycle Component and Accessory Design, by Noguchi-san. The jacket of the copy I bought has a bunch of greasy smudges on it from being handled by folks who've been messing with bikes, but that almost makes it even cooler. Just by way of example of its contents, some of the drawings used by Velo-Orange on its E-Store look as though they were taken from this book (or maybe the book also collected the same drawings). The book is absolutely full of sketches like these, and it's fascinating to sit down and thumb through it.

Most of the folks inside were pretty helpful, though there were definitely bike snobs there. One guy I asked for a 27" fork sort of dismissed the very notion, and when I asked about 7-speed freewheels he seemed a little offended at the idea of putting one of his beautiful $100 aluminum freewheels on a 27"-wheeled bike. Which wasn't my intention (I was asking for my friend's Bertoni, which we've upgraded from 6- to 7-speed 600 shifters), but his reaction pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn't buy anything from him that day. In truth, I wouldn't put aluminum cogs on any of my bikes, because I'm neither a weight weenie nor interested in replacing $100 clusters on a regular basis. I'm sure he sized me up as such.

I didn't find a fork, though Scott said he had some at his shop, and I haven't followed-up with him yet. A week later, I'm kicking myself that I didn't think to look for a Suntour bar-end shifter to replace the shifter I cobbled together for the trailer bike (a 600 downtube shifter bolted to an Ultegra bar-end mount). I'd like to be able to reassemble and ultimately offload the Ultegra set, and have been sort of passively looking for a replacement -- too passively, it seems. I'm also still kicking myself for not bringing a camera (a little, anyway). The visuals from the day were pretty strong, from the Victorian buildings to the junk piles to the bikes. So I walked away nearly empty handed, but more informed than disappointed. For the next one, I'll know what to expect and will think about a list of stuff to look for ahead of time.

And I'll bring a camera.

All for now,

J

Suntour Superbe Brake Caliper Rebuild

Just a quick post about the Motobecane.

This morning I installed the replacement Dia-Compe brake springs into the Suntour Superbe brake calipers. Actually, I tore down the brake calipers completely, cleaned all of the pivoting points (including the quick release mechanism), and reassembled everything with fresh grease on all pivoting surfaces. Took only a half hour for the pair, in large part because the original owner, Steve, is nothing if not fanatical about precision and maintenance. And the all of the nuts on the brakes were perfectly adjusted and well lubricated, so all the parts were moving freely and everything came apart without a fuss.

I'd ordered two sets of springs, one for the Dia-Compe 400N and one for the 500N. It was the 500N springs that I needed, as the guy from Loose Screws had suggested would be the case. I'm not sure what the difference between the two models is, but I'm thinking it's just reach. A set of Shimano 600 calipers from the '80's taken from a friend's bike look very much like the Suntour brakes, but have shorter caliper arms, and look like they'd accept the 400N springs -- the Dia-Compes, Shimanos and Suntours were obviously cloned from the same (Italian) gene pool.

The old rusty springs either had a slightly narrower spread when new than the replacement parts, or had taken a slightly more compressed stance over the years. Either way, the new springs had a wider spread to them. I rebuilt the first caliper, then compressed both the rebuilt and the untouched calipers in my hand to compare. The sense I get is that the new springs will give the levers a stiffer feel and a more positive rebound, which is good because the old-style levers have no return springs and depend on the caliper springs' help. Otherwise the springs fit perfectly.

Together with the Campagnolo barrel adjusters (not seen in the picture because they're hanging on the ends of the Motobecane's brake cables out in the barn -- and there's that Italian gene pool again), the parts needing replacement are nearly all now in place, and the brakes are fully functional again. I'll put them back on the Motobecane today, and take them for a little spin to see how they feel.

The only thing left is to find the missing wheel guide on the rear caliper, and that's only if I decide to leave them on. They look cute, but they're not strictly necessary. I need to figure out what to do about pads, too. I really ought to replace them -- they're probably 25 years old, after all. I have a couple of pairs of contemporary pads I can install, but they'll look significantly different, and I'd like to keep the bike's classic looks.

All for now,

J

Spring Cleaning

My parts box overrunneth. Actually, it had become three parts boxes, two of which overan. Time for spring cleaning. Time for eBay, in many cases, too. I'm going to keep anything that might work on a road bike to be built for Ava in a couple of years, but most everthing else is going:

Cranksets:
I have three cranksets I'm never going to use. One is the kids' Ashtabula crankset that came on the trailer bike. I suspect this will end up in a lot of miscellaneous stuff on eBay or at a yard sale. I also don't need the original Shimano crankset from my wife's Bianchi (alloy arms, steel triple chainrings 30/40/50, I believe), which would be great on a train station bike in a hilly area. And though I'm sorry to let it go, I have the early '90's 600 Ultegra crank that came on Juli's Fuji (I put on a crankset with shorter arms for her). It has seen some use, with shoe scuffs, and it has a set of modern SR chainrings on it, not the originals, but it's a nice and lightweight crank. I also have a spare 42-tooth 130 bcd chainring. It's a pre-Ultegra 600 part and it's very nicely made.

Bottom brackets:
I have a pile of these -- three cup and cone models of different grades from Shimano, that were original to various bikes (the Kestrel, Bianchi and Fuji, I think). All have fresh balls and grease in them and just need to be installed. I also have a set of French Sugino cups and a BB-UN52 cartridge bottom bracket in 128mm, with English threading. I think I ended up with that when I ordered a 118, but was sent the wrong one. I didn't notice at the time, but after I'd used it a while, I found that it made my knees ache. So I measured it, scowled a little, and then off it came. Fortunately, I had also ordered a 108 separately (from the same vendor) and been sent a 118 instead. So I just had to move the 118 over to replace the 128, and then go buy a 108 at a bike shop.

Brakes:
I have two sets of basic mountain bike levers to clear out; one a Suntour and the other a Shimano. And I have one pair of basic Shimano sidepull calipers (originally on the Bianchi) that are missing one cable clamp. I also have an old but very clean set of Schwinn Approved Dia-Compe 610 centerpull brake calipers and a nearly new Dia Compe 750 centerpull brake. These all look pretty good, but I didn't like how they felt. Finally, I have a set of Mafac pads and holders that came with my NOS Mafacs, but which I didn't use (in favor of a set of Kool Stops in salmon). Keeping the pre-Ultegra 600 brakes and Dia Compe compact levers for Ava -- good stuff, those.

Shifters:
I have a set of 6-speed Shimano indexed shifters (originally from my Shogun) and a set of Ultegra 8-speed bar end shifters. Much to my chagrin, they don't index cleanly with 7-speed cassettes, and I didn't like the feel of their friction mode, so off these go.

Derailleurs:
I have a basic Shimano alloy front derailleur that came on the Fuji. This one is as much steel as aluminum, but it looks fine. It's designed for a cable to run all the way to it, so it's good for older bikes without cable routing provisions. I also have an older pre-Ultegra 600 front derailleur that I'm going to unload. It doesn't match the Ultegra derailleur that I'll keep for Ava.

Pedals:
I have a set of Look Carbon Pro pedals (my first clipless pedals, actually) and a similar set of Performance Roubaix pedals (made by Look). These two were bought for the Shogun and Kestrel, respectively, and then I bought a third pair for spinning classes that are now on the Kestrel (they're Performance Roubaix as well, and the newest of the trio). But I've been experimenting with different pedal styles since, and though I love the Looks for a workout bike (like the Kestrel), I wouldn't wear those shoes when towing my kids or just tooling around. So I really don't need these two anymore. I also have a set of alloy-bodied, steel-caged mountain pedals that I think came originally on my Trek mountain bike. I'm going to keep a set of MKS track pedals for Ava.

Bars:
Not keeping any of these. I have a black Cannondale road bar with a 31.8 clamp, that I bought on eBay, not realizing it was a fat-clamp bar. I've no use for it whatsoever. I have a set of 3ttt track bars that came on the Bertoni I'm fixing up with a friend -- these are used and gummy with tape, but they'd clean up very nicely. They're just not my thing. I have a set of kids' riser bars and a multi-adjustable stem original to the trailer bike.

Stems:
I have a cheap gooseneck stem that looks very much like an old Schwinn stem from a Stingray or balloon tired cruiser. It has the right stem dimension for my Sports Tourer (for which it was bought), and it's even alloy, not forged steel. It fit the Schwinn's steerer tube, but I couldn't thread a road bar through its clamp, and I didn't want to run a straight bar. I also have an incomplete (no quill or quill bolt) Pivo stem that might do someone with a pile of old French stems some good.

Seat post:
I have a Felt carbon 27.2 seatpost that I bought for the Kestrel, but decided not to use.

Forks:
I have a spare Kestrel EMS fork for a very small frame (I had it on the Bianchi for a bit, before I made that a 650B bike), and a spare alloy fork that was original to my Kestrel. And I'll shortly have a nice old Motobecane fork, that will work just fine on a frameset with a smaller head tube.

And there's a lot more. A few hundred bucks' worth on eBay, if I'm lucky. If you want to buy any of this stuff, let me know, and we can work something out.

All for now,

J