xiaoman1 and
smallfrontwheel thanks for the nice words. Its coming together slowly. Ben, you only had 1 brake cable on each side, so it went through easilly, I have brake and shift and unfortunately the cable houses I got are really stiff, which does not help when I need to feed them in the ergo, as they both have to make a sharp turn coming out the bar. But as I have managed (with loads of swear words though) on the right side, I know its not impossible on the left either. As said they are in place (actually went though for first try, but then noticed the Ergo lying on the ground - forgot about it, also I left on the clamp from the orig brake lever, yeah I'M that lame, when in a hurry). It will once need to be painted because it has big chips with rust, and no color matching is possible thanks to the flamboyant painting (silver base coat with tinted clear coats). Looks awesome, but not repairable. Plus there are bits like the O-rings for the tacho magnet, where the original dark blue is visible. A new "normal" paintjob won't look as nice as this (I even get comments from non bikers how cool it looks like), but will look the same everywhere. Below is a pic of the orig color (its real lo pro sibling, I've posted earlier) and the planned color. Ben, you know my method to check colors, so if a respray ever happens, I'll play around to see my options. Overall it is still a budget bike, literally built for peanuts so even if it would stay like now, its good.
The Aria wheel is my big love, odd, that when I first saw one, before I wanted one for this, I checked how much do they cost, thinking either these or Gipiemme Tecno 416s would look nice on my Alan. Found several pairs for under eur100 in 650c. I got this rear for shamefully low money, and now either there's not any for sale (neither in 700c nor 650c) or they cost a kidney. There's a pair on ebay for like USD350, well that will never happen.
The bike rides cool besides the stiff cable housings, which need some time to get used to. I guess "fly-by-wire" and "autopilot" got a new context for me. Also as a regular road biker, I must say my back is definitely happy that I have no means here to source a 650c fork and get someone to build the fork mounted handlebar I'd really like to make it a real Frankenbike. Actually even with the current setup I feel sometimes that "I'm too old for this sh**" but on the other hand its plenty of fun.
Originally it was so blue:
And this is the color so far, which I find somewhat close