In the spirit of the original thread, here a a couple of “hacks”. First up is converting this hybrid to



this drop bar bike. The main reason was to make an aluminum touring bike because the hybrid has touring bike geometry. I found a set of 45mm gravel tires and put them on to see if they fit. They do with room to spare. The bike is going down to Tucson where the 45mm tires will come in handy on Tucson’s very mean alligator back streets.



As a volunteer at my co-op, I often have to do things to make bikes work. Sometimes I’m astonished by what will actually work. Someone brought in this Centurion. The front derailer doesn’t route the cable under the bottom bracket but does so through a cable with the end of the cable stopped at the arm of the derailer. Putting on a modern derailer wouldn’t work because there wasn’t anyway to route the cable. We had to use the 1985 Suntour Spirit high normal. I didn’t think it would work with the indexed STI shifter but what did we have to lose?



Astonishingly, it worked perfectly…indexing and all.



Just goes to show that you should try something before deciding it can’t work.