OK, I got the downtube shifters (diacompe/rivendell silver) on and they're working. I also set up porteur bars with some guidonnet brake levers. Everything feels and looks great. I even put a cute brass bell on there.
HOWEVER, I found another fun problem when putting this bike together. It doesn't even fit size 23 tires! That's absurd. The wheel is a little out of true, but even if the wheel is true it leaves me with like 1mm of clearance between the back tire and the seat tube. This is dumb.
I think now I'll just buy a 650b wheelset and some long-reach calipers and be done with it. This was an original plan of mine for this bike anyway, but didn't want to do it right away in order to spread the money I'm spending on this bike out over a bit of time.
Can anyone recommend a good 650b wheelset that I can buy pre-built for cheap? I'm in Italy so anything coming from the USA will be way too expensive to ship. Also my local bike shop does not have these types of specialty parts, they mostly fix bikes for the elderly people in my town and that's about it. He'd try to rig up something that kinda works and I'd probably spend too much on it and then just wish I'd ordered online what I really wanted in the first place. So any online source for cheaply built wheels in Europe?
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!