Those gold rims....might they be Mavic "Record Du Monde De L'Heure"? Those were the racing wheels that were in use on my Super but regrettably were lost through the decades of non-usage and storage.

This thing is turning out to be an ultimate "weight-weenie" weapon!

Might it have been part of a traveling exhibit?

It's about as cool of a bike one is likely to find! The best thread I have seen on C&V in a long time.

I wonder if the guides could be JB welded with any success?

I was thinking of JB Weld myself. Great stuff.

Top

Perhaps for shift cable guides. I'd be reluctant to use it for brake cable guides because if it failed, I'd have no brakes.

The guides only keeps the cable housing from flopping around and has no effect on braking itself. I would try it.

Another possibility, thanks. I'll have to take some measurements and see how these compare against various records in velobase. Wonder how accurate of an erd measurement I can get while leaving the wheels built.

I'll do some searching over the coming weeks, but figure someone here might have a suggestion or two:

I'd like to build a replacement wheelset for this bike that maintains the same basic look and component selection/details while being a bit more stout. These wheels may come out on occasion, but for everyday riding I'd like to have a 32h set with a more stout rim. I'll stick with low flange front / high flange rear record hubs (was this a crit/other trend to get a 'stiffer' rear wheel? High flange providing an increased bracing angle over a low flange version of the same hub, increasing lateral stiffness - at least in theory).

Does anyone have a recommendation for a gold anodized tubular rim that is more stout than featherweight? Something like a Nemesis in gold w/ 32h drilling. Guessing Mavic may be the place to start, along with Ambrosio. I'm not picky on country of origin for this, but would like to at least be in the ballpark for the bike's age. Maybe mid '70s to early/mid '80s, closer to '75 the better.

I'm ~200lb and will be riding on smooth to rough pavement, hope to have 27mm of tire as a cushion. 25mm at least. I unweight the bike/saddle for bumps and overall am not too punishing on wheels. Spokes will be modern double butted, likely 3x all the way around. Thanks.

Thanks, I'm pretty psyched about all of the build details. Someone really put their best effort into this.

The traveling exhibit idea is an interesting one, this does seem to be fairly low mileage based on drivetrain wear, but who knows if the drivetrain has the same mileage as the rest. I'd think if this were for display it would have been decal'ed, but maybe those were just removed later.

The gearing is interesting to me: 51/47, 13-23. Would this have been consistent with crit gearing for sometime between, say, '75 and '90. Probably toward the earlier side. Not sure what restrictions would have been put on gearing for different categories around that timeframe.

Yes, I used JB Weld a bit in a past life (Formula SAE), good stuff. Surprised I hadn't thought of it. I have some scrap Al sheet kicking around, it's probably worth the time to experiment with a few products before touching the frame. JB Weld is at the top of the list. The bottom face of the cable guides that contacts the frame has a gap along the fore/aft centerline which should aid in adhesive getting good purchase on the guide. Getting a firm grip on the TT will be the challenge.

Looks like full length housing though, would that change the braking in this situation?

I'm not too concerned about it - full length housing as you note. The rear brake works fine as-is (though I won't ride it with the cable flopping around). Front brake is (or will be) working flawlessly.

The paint cleaned up really well, not bad for forty years. My pics don't do it justice. The flake shows as a mix of gold/yellow, blue, and a hint of purple.













The frame with BB, headset upper/lower races, and bottle cage + seatpost binder bolts comes in at 2147 g; the fork with crown race at 779 g.

The wheelset that came with the bike is lighter than I'll be riding for a while... 657g front w/ skewer, 1205g rear w/ skewer and freeweel (13-23 6sp steel Sachs Maillard), 1.8mm 3x F&R.

The frame is spaced at 120mm. The rear wheel that came on the bike measures 126.7mm OLD, I'll be going back to 120mm spacing. The rear triangle is quite stiff and I don't want to build stresses into the bike. A set of 32h GP4 rims are on their way to me, I'm waiting for the right deal on hubs - I'll stick with high flange rear, low flange front. The plan is to use a 13-23 Regina CX-S Ultra 6 freewheel that I've got kicking around.

I hope to have this up and running mid-fall - can't wait.

As for the 'displaced' cable guides, I ~tested a few adhesives over last week with an interest in ultimate bond strength, ductility, and ease of application. The top three results were epoxy, JB Weld, and Gorilla Glue, all with roughly the same strength under the given conditions, but Gorilla Glue yielded/stretched as the others snapped. That's the winner, and it was simple and clean to use.

After that, it's a matter of cleaning the components and reassembling, then getting the wheels and tires set. I might switch to Super Champion Arc en Ciel if the right deal comes along in time. Also, I have a set of 52/42 SR/NR rings that would look pretty good on this with a bit of drillium. I'm thinking of black paintfill for the fluted SR seatpost, rear HF hub, and chainrings... Modern-ish record pads and holders will act as place holders for now as they don't cost $100... Have some Bullseye pulleys on the way as well.

As a bonus, I uncovered a nice little WW gem or two during disassembly. The bottle cage bolts are each drilled, pedal spindles are Ti, BB spindle (steel) is hollow, the original SR headset washer is replaced with lower stack Al piece, and as mentioned earlier various hardware has been replaced with lighter substitutions. More details to follow.

It's always fun to have a project on the table.

Gorgeous 40yr old paint. The metalflake is similar to what Trek was doing in their Imron selections. Dang, that's nice.

Thanks, the paint might be enamel - it certainly is robust. Kleins had "Durethane enamel" finish in at least the mid/late '80s, it looks like the idea of durable finishes goes back to the beginning.

Bump. [MENTION=168558]Drillium Dude[/MENTION]

Plans are brewing...more soon.

Thanks for the bump - after our protracted discussion last night, I was rather disappointed I'd missed this content when it first came about. Seeing all the pics is the icing on the cake! I'm looking forward to the pic of that FD band modification - it's in one of the pics already, but hard to make out the detail of what you believe to be an extra/modified piece.

I hope we find out more here. Those dropouts, if nothing else, certainly are different from the early production Kleins. Nice weight-weenie build across the board so of course I welcome the opportunity to get rid of a few grams of chainring alloy for you

DD

I've used Ray Dobbins' paint-fill technique with enamel in the past with acceptable results (below - the DT shifters incorporate enamel and go to a different bike), but would like to find a process that recreates those crisp lines using acrylic rather than enamel as acrylic can be undone much more easily.



Getting a crisp, smooth edge between the paint and surface of the part is of course the trick. With enamel it's easy enough to apply the paint, let dry for a bit, then cut the lines with a tightly folded shop towel/rag lightly soaked in mineral spirits before the enamel is fully cured, paying close attention to the edge. Not so with acrylic - the paint likes to peel back off the surface of the part, pulling adjacent paint back in the process. ...Imagine pulling a single cheesy chip off a plate of nachos...if that's an acceptable analogy.

Below are the results from the test of an acrylic process. I found that getting a med/small brush saturated with paint and letting drops spread across the part's surface works much better than trying to spread the paint across by pushing the brush - gravity smooths the surface better. The acrylic on the parts below sat for 48+ hours as a first step (I had only planned on 24). After that the paint was plenty dry I was able to start pulling off all of the excess. I found the best way to cut the edge between the paint and surrounding surface was to hit the edge with either a finger nail or wooden toothpick and work out from there. Applying a very light layer of mineral spirits across the surface seems to help.

I think I have a set of Matthausers if you're still looking. What a cool bike. I had an early 90's Klein and loved it even though it was too small for me.

Great work SN. I keep a couple of 'dull' razor blades (box cutter or utility knife type) around on my bench. They are useful for pulling away not-quite-cured paint when doing this sort of thing. The blade is too dull to cut into the alloy but sharp enough to grab the paint and slice it away. If possible, I start in the center and work towards the edges (like on seat tube flutes, filled engraving, etc). Also good for nipping wee dots of rust on chrome, tar splatter on paint, sesame seeds on a bagel.

It's taken me a while to get up to speed on this thread, which is pretty long and pretty repetitive, and the prototype cannondale thread, but it's very interesting.

Bob, have you noticed this quote:

My wife, Harriet Fell is a hard-core roadie; she never rides the mountain bike I gave her. She has:

Harriet Fell track bike

When she was a math professor at Northeastern University in the early '70s, she built this aluminum frame in an M.I.T. I.A.P. project, but never finished building it up. This is one of the first fat-tube aluminum bikes, and, in fact the frame was an important exhibit in the legal proceedings between Cannondale and her classmate Gary Klein.
I assembled it for her in the winter of 2005.

from Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Page

Thanks a lot, appreciated. Do you use enamel? I've found it much easier to work with than acrylic - tough to get a crisp edge as the paint keeps pulling itself past the edge lines. I need to re-do at least a few flutes in the seatpost and may switch over to enamel for this project. Nothing I'll be painting is super rare and some of it at least isn't original to the bike. This was an experiment, so I think I'll give acrylic at least one more go. Some parts turned out well, so it may just be a matter of developing a repeatably acceptable edging technique. We'll see...

Thanks, Rudi - yes, I caught that article a while back. I've yet to dig into the earliest days involving the IAP (or the legal proceedings between Klein and Cannondale for that matter), but they're on the short-list for my history lesson. 'The High-Tech Bicycle' also gives a little info and a couple of pictures.

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To tie up a loose end from earlier in the thread, I contacted Jon Rock a while back. Unfortunately this bike pre-dates his era of expertise for Kleins. There are a few die hards out there it seems, so the search will continue.

You know, I use acrylics for my paint infill jobs - Tamiya acrylics from the hobby store. I've never had the paint-lifting issue you speak of here, and I use the technique you describe above (although I usually use Goof-Off vice mineral spirits).

Just a suggestion.

DD