Cyclocross - making a crossbike from an old bike.

I own a Univega Nuovo Sport. It’s a steel bike from the 1980’s with 27" wheels.

My question is would this make a good crossbike? If so what would the best components to put on it?

What problems will I need to over come When putting this bike together?

I don’t plan on racing just use it in bad weather and rail to trails, well that’s the plan now anyway!



K

the angles are fairly relaxed, so that's good... it has a low-ish bottom bracket, so that's not good. the big questions are:

1. do you have enough clearance for fat knobby tires?

2. can you get fat knobby tires for 27" wheels?

my advice would be to see if you can find some relatively beefy 27" touring tires with a decent tread and see if those will fit. ride offroad with it.

it is not worth getting canti posts brazed on or doing anything terribly elaborate with it. the components you can use will be dependent on what 27" wheels you can get and what you already have. the only major component change i would suggest would be to get barcons.

barcons? I never heard of barcons.
I agree with you about getting something to fit 27" wheels.
they have good size tires for them not the beefy knobby kind.
I"m looking around tiring to see what a good crossbike looks like.. its kind of like looking for a button in a button store
thanks for your help
K

barcons are bar-end shifters. they are and were common on cross bikes because if you have the time to take your hands off of the handlebars to shift, you're just not going hard enough. new tires and barcons are about the only mods i'd make to your bike. anything else will just be a waste of money.

as for what a good cross bike looks like... well, this is the new fx-1 from felt usa. it's a c=very nice looking 'cross bike:

http://www.feltusa.com/2004_bikes/larger_photos/images/f1x_02.jpg

this is my rig -- also a good bike -- two years ago [many mods since then...]:

http://www.cyclo-cross.ca/images/stories/campymajor2.jpg

for more info, i have a little info sheet on my site at cyclo-cross.ca (http://www.cyclo-cross.ca/index.php?option=faq&task=viewfaq&artid=3&Itemid=5).

neither of those bikes have barcons though...take a look at the ends of the bars on the trek 520...those shifters are barcons...

trek 520 (http://www.trekbikes.com/images/bikes/2004/road/large/520.jpg)

used barcons are pretty easy to find in the junk box at the bike store (especially Tri-stores), or at least they were two years ago when I built up my beater cross bike.

For tires, 1 3/8" knobbys are about as wide as yuou'll get in 27". But for your intended purpose, it may be enough.

thanks! I have gear shifters on the down tube on this bike can I have barcon/barends and the shifters on the down tube? 1 3/8 tire would do just fine. this was a touring bike when I first brought it and it had fairly wide tires. a friend told me that its now called a comfort bike!
what is the diffrents between the two? I dont have a clue the both look the same except some comfort bikes have a straight handle bar?
K

What was your luck in putting knobbys on your Univega? I"m looking to buy the same frame for cheap and wanted to know if it could take knobby tires.

Also, sorry to hijack the thread, but what do people think of the Univega Nuovo Sport frame in general? Good steel? I found one for about $50 in good shape. Worth building it up?

I turned an 80's Univega Gran Premio into a fixed gear with Ritchey Speed Max cross tires. I put a Surly Crosscheck fork on it, so no issues with the front tire. In the rear, however, I had a problem with the tire rubbing against the break bridge. My solution (although maybe there are less drastic ones...like just finding a lower profile cross tire) was to file the dropouts from their deepest spot in the opposite direction from the break bridge (making a kind of hockey stick shape). It worked, but again, it's probably not the most practical solution, and I'm not sure how much the geometry differs between the Gran Premio and the Nuovo Sport.

friend of mine just converted an old trek touring bike and had his first race today. went off well as his aspirations were to finish ahead of as many 2000$ cross bikes as possible...he came in mid pack with a big grin on his face.

he used all the original parts, switched to bar end shifters (suntour from ebay), added club roost 27" cyclocross tires (narrow as possible so as to avoid chain stay rub), needed a clamp on adapter to make the shifters work (clamp on cable stop as he did not have the braze on shifter mounts in which case he would have needed the braze on adapter), put on his mtb pedals, put on new shift cables and housing, added some new bar tape.

the only thing he noted after the race was that he could have used new brake pads and he may upgrade to wider bars.

good luck!