Honusms 

I’ve been playing with this ‘70s Alex Singer touring bike for over a year off and on. According to the seller (Swedish eBay) it at one time went through Mike Kone’s shop (Boulder Cycles). It came with a six speed 14-32 freewheel and 48-32 crankset that just wasn’t quite right for the casual riding I do here in North Texas. So I cold set the frame and built a wheel around a 10 speed Ultegra hub and installed an 11-30 cassette. The rear derailleur is a long cage Ultegra and has no issues with the 30 tooth cog. I replaced the crankset with a VO’s fluted 46-30 and installed the marvelous Sylvan Next touring pedals. The front derailleur is from IRD, specially made for subcompact cranksets and does the job flawlessly. I left the Simplex bar end friction shifters because they work so well. I see no reason to replace them with indexed whatevers. I also left the original Mafac brake hoods for now because they look cool and are only crumbly at the outer edges. The original front rack pinched the fenders enough that 32mm tires were very tight, so I replaced it with a VO one. The old bottle generator looks wonderful, but the drag is considerable and noisy. I left it for the looks but built a front wheel with an SP PV-8 hub. I used Busch + Mueller front and rear lights. The rear rack came wired for a light (the old one was crumbling) and it was easy to install another on the rear fender. The Brooks Pro saddle that came with the bike hit me in the wrong places, so I installed my favorite Gilles Berthoud Agnel model which I have on 2 other bikes. This bike rides like the limousine it’s designed to be. My old lady muscles can take it where we need to go!