Fifty Plus (50+) - Bridgestone City Cruiser begins to take shape

So I had to do something, if I wasn't going to buy a new bike. Time to give some attention to my older trusty Bridgestone City Bike, a 1987 CB-1 w/cro-moly frame & fork. The first changes have been made. I took off the original North Road handlebar and installed a cruiser bar. And I replaced the nondescript saddle with a no-name made in Japan 15-20 years ago, leather saddle with springs. A LBS found 3 of them in their warehouse and was selling them for $25 each. They said they had been back there for 15 years or so.

Oh, almost forgot, I put a wood handlebar bell on it. I think it balances nicely with the saddle, which otherwise would have been the only thing brown on the bike.

More changes to come. I think I'll trim an inch or so from each side of the cruiser bars, they are a bit too long. I have some black fenders that I think would be good on it.

Other specs are 26x1.5 city tires, platform pedals, 48/38/28 crank, 14-28t 5-spd cassette, Suntour friction thumb shifters.

It's foggy here today and that messes up the pictures a bit. I just stuck poor Bridgey into the snow and snapped a couple of shots.

While posting this, I was looking at my pictures and noticed that the saddle was too far forward. Just went out and moved it back about an inch. Ah, much better.

I was just thinking that the cockpit looked very tiny... aren't your arms still out almost to the sides, though?

That's very pretty, Tom. The color looks great in the snow.

EDIT: OK, the more I look at it, the more gigantic the seat and bars look. Is that a really small bike?

It is a small'ish bike, an 18.5" frame. Top tube is approx 510 mm.

The saddle is a long one, about 11" long. With it moved up, it really does shrink the cockpit in those pics.

Glad you moved the saddle back as on that small a frame- you must be quite hunched up. Put the knobblies on, and a wet suit, and get out in that snow. Looks the ideal bike for control and reminds me of the Cruisers that some of the Kids had when I was younger.

Great looking bike but you have to get it out in the snow for a ride.

I was appreciating that Bridgestone used good parts in the construction. None of the screws on the handlebar had been turned since 1987. I feared that it would be impossible to remove the brake levers, shifters, and loosen the handlebars. But didn't have the slightest problem.

Ahem... he didn't say he was going to actually RIDE it... in fact, he felt apologetic for sticking it in a snowbank.

How about it Tom...

Okay, mod1 has been performed.

If you look closely at my first pic, you will see that it has the 1987 seat post on it, with the large clamp. I bought a micro-adjust post for it a few months ago (26.0 mm) but had never put it on. I had to saw it down a couple of inches. So I just did that. It allowed me to move the saddle back even further. Here's the new pic that shows a little more breathing room.

A short test ride confirmed that it is much more comfy now.

The leather saddle feels more comfy than I expected ... but that's after a 2 minute ride. It feels almost as hard as steel to my hands, but there is more give once my 200+ pounds rest upon it. Unfortunately the saddle is on the narrow side, more like a B17N than a B17.

Ahem... he didn't say he was going to actually RIDE it... in fact, he felt apologetic for sticking it in a snowbank.

How about it Tom...

I hate to admit it, but I used the snowbank as a kickstand. All of my other bikes have kickstands, but in the 20+ years I've had the CB-1, it has never had one. I should add that to my list of future mods.

I do plan to ride it on occasion, but not in the snow. I had it out 5 or 6 times this past year.

I'm curious about why you chose those handlebars. My wife's Trek Calypso cruiser has wide upswept handlebars like that. I find them to be absurdly uncomfortable, to the point of ruining an otherwise nice bike. I have been trying to convince her to change them to something with a more downward bend at the ends. The shape of those bars makes for a very unnatural feeling and looking position for the hands and wrists.

I want to know about the bell. What's its tone sound like? I've looked at those in the catalogue but decided on a brass one for my Bridgestone.

Since you already have a wood bell, a set of those wood fenders would really be cool. They're not cheap however.

The wood bell has a very dead "thud" sound. As a bell, it is useless. But it looks nice. I got it for $1 on a closeout table.

I find the hand positions on this bar to be very comfortable. Perhaps a little bit close, as I said above I may take an inch off of them. The sweep angle is excellent, at around 50 degrees. When I sit on the seat and place my hands on the grips, they drop onto them almost perfectly. No twist at the wrist.

I'm not married to them. Got them for $16 and decided to try them out. Goal was to find handlebars that would be very comfortable for 30-60 minutes and put little stress on my bad thumb. These feel like they may meet that goal, but time will tell.

If I want them to go down more at the end, I can pivot the bars in the stem to do so. In the 2nd pic I posted, you can see that they are almost flat at the ends.

I tried a moustache bar at the LBS and my wrists didn't like that sharp near 90 degree sweep at all. Almost instant discomfort.

Addendum on the handlebars. Note that I was switching from the original North Road bars, a bar that people switch to for more comfort. They served me well for many years, but in recent years I found my riding position to be too forward leaning with them (even with the stem shown in the pics). The last couple of rides I took on it were quite uncomfortable, and I had a lot of thumb pain.

Is it any wonder why I hate drop bars?

Of course these new handlebars are but a mild variant of the handlebars on my primary bike.

That last post reminds me of my 2nd project today. While at the same LBS where I got my handlebars, I found a bargain on a recumbent trainer. They had one that was made for 20" wheels and had been used as a demo back when this LBS sold recumbents. They said it had never gotten much use, and it did look like it was almost new. Almost no wear on the rollers.

List was $250, they let it go for $100. No instruction booklet and I'd never hooked up a trainer before. So that was my 2nd project and it seems to have been successful, after a misstart along the way.

So you did* get a bike, in kind of a practical sort of way.

I got a modified bike, a way to ride my bent in the winter, and spent about 3 hours working on & test riding bikes and trainers. A good day.

That may put off my hankering for a new bike until Monday or so.

Don't get me wrong. If the bars are comfortable to you, then whether they are or not to me matters not at all. I'm glad you found something that works for you.
My problem with them is not their height nor width nor how far they sweep back. It is that when mounted in the way I most often see them mounted, the ends of the bars point up so your pinkie fingers are higher than your thumbs. For me, that is a very unnatural and uncomfortable position. I can't even get comfortable with level bars. Every swept back bar I have used I need to have the ends pointing downward slightly, similar to the way your recumbent bars are in the photo above.

Same thing with moustache bars. I often see them mounted level. I have to tilt them down to be comfortable.

Yes, these types of bars are frequently mounted so that the ends sweep up. I too have seen them set up this way on many cruiser bikes. I'll probably try them at a number of angles.

I like it

I have bars of all sorts on my diferant bikes... from under on my long recumbent to up, out, long, short, down on other bikes.
The Cruiser look... on my mtb [that I use on the fire trails around hear is layed back and comfortable

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee220/Leigh_caines/mtb.jpg

Just shows to go ya it's not a one-size-fit-all world. :)

The problem I ran into trying to rotate them to where the angle suited me is that they sweep so far back that a few degrees angled down results in the grips moving several inches down.

Hey that's a wild seat. I have one, too, and so does our mod Tom Stormcrowe. He told me it was modeled after the Brooks Conquest, a very long saddle design.

I like the shade of blue alot. Is it a rattlecan job?

Standard stock color on the '87 Bridgestone. They called it "Aquatone Blue". Almost a Carolina Blue. It's what caught my eye that day in the summer of '87 in Morgantown, WV.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/bridgestone/1987/pages/bridgestone-1987-19.htm

So this knock-off saddle has gotten around, eh? I have no idea if what the salesman told me about it was true.

Tom mine came in a box labeled "Dimension"... made in China no date of manufacture. Tom says that his was made in India but it is identical to ours. I got mine on eBay for $25. Tom has done long distance touring on his and says he found it very comfortable.

Mine was in a clear plastic bag. No labeling at all.

Does yours have a stamped-diamond pattern on the top surface?

I think it was well worth the $25 for the quality of construction. Unfortunately, it may not be a good saddle for my application. I would probably be much better off with the wide-butt B67.