American Cyclery in San Francisco is having their 'Sidewalk Sale' inside their legendary shop this weekend, so I decided to swing by and see if I could find anything interesting for the Kestrel.
I was mostly looking for three things:
A high-rise stem that wouldn't took too stupid on this frame.
Some kind of handlebar that was headed in the same 'weirdo mid-century 3-speed gravel bike' direction that I'm going.
A 40, or even better, a 38-toothed, 128 millimeter BCD-having chainring.
Guess which 2/3s came home with me?
(If the chainring is one of your two guesses, well, as my boot camp Company Commander was so fond of saying, "You are
wrong.")
80 mm Kalloy dirt drop stem and some kind of chrome steel 'all-rounder' bend bars. 20 bucks.
With the B17N on the looks-wrong-but-fits Kalloy at about the same height as the Raleigh and the stem at the line, we get this:
The bars dropped some rust flakes when I pulled the (reusable) grips, so they're getting a vinegar soak. Followed up with the baking-soda-volcano treatment. (It works great on grotty drains, so why not?)
With the 80 mm stem, I get about 1cm less reach than the Raleigh, which is exactly what you'd expect, given the same top tube lengths on both bikes. Looks like, even with a longer stem, forward-going bars are going to be the way. I sure don't think I'd want more back-reach.
I'd kept the OG GB bars from the Raliegh, so as I was writing this very post, right after I wrote the above paragraph, the gnomes from the Cave of Bad Ideas sent one up into my brain: "Hey, I wonder what drops would look / measure like?"
They look like this:
I get about the same reach, give or take different bars, and about 3/4-ish cm more saddle drop. Obviously, with that short head tube, full drops are not going to be the Way, at least not with this stem.
I'm nowhere near building her up, so it's fun to play around as I accumulate parts. It's all interesting... the way the details in my head change as I stick various parts on the frame, but still staying within the scope of the initial inspiration.
--Shannon