The beast lives! And it works better than I expected. [:0]
Uncle Duke has been transformed into something that most closely resembles a cyclocross bike, but not quite. It is a 27 year old, lugged steel framed, drop bar road bike with 700C X 40mm cyclocross tires, side pull road brakes and friction bar end shifters. It is designed as a do it all road bike suitable for dirt roads and even offroad trails.
A little history:
In 1987, Bridgestone took a side trip from the normal and equipped their top of the line MTB, the MB-1, with drop bars.
A couple of years ago, I took an old rigid Giant Rincon MTB and made a bike inspired by the MB-1. It was more road oriented than the MB-1, but it turned out very nice. It was a big bike and I called it Sasquatch.
The only thing I didn't like about Sasquatch was the heavy, low end frame. So I bought a good Trek 970 lugged steel rigid MTB frame to build up as my all purpose bike. I decided to try some Nitto Moustache handlebars on it and I called the bike Snidely Whiplash.
About this time I got interested in mountain biking again, but I had sold my old MTB. I dismantled Snidely and set it up in its natural state as a rigid MTB and called it Lugnut.
I had so much fun with Lugnut that I let Bud talk me into trying MTB racing. [}
] That required a more modern MTB with front suspension, so I bought a Rockhopper I call Norin Radd.
Lugnut was demoted to an around town bike.
Somewhere along the way, I got an old Fuji road bike to use as a bad weather bike. I put the Moustache bar on it just to be different. That bike turned out to be a really good ride. I called it Uncle Duke.
I decided to make my main road bike more specialized for fast rides, so I am building lighter wheels for it. This left a pair of very good custom wheels with a 7 speed freewheel and 36 spoke Phil Wood hubs. A very tough set of wheels. Too good to leave unused.
I decided to use them on Uncle Duke in place of the 27" wheels that came on it. That meant I would have a little more room for larger tires. Then I remembered how I had really wished that Sasquatch had been based on a road bike instead of a MTB. [8D] So Duke got new rubber along with the new wheels. I decided to go back to the drop bars that I had used on Sasquatch. So I put it all together and today I put its offroad abilities to the test. It passed with flying colors.
