What am I looking for?
 

Hello,

My 1988 Trek 1200 has been perfect for what I use it for, and fits me very well. The only down side is tire clearance, and I'm now looking to change that. I'm hoping to find a frame that I can transfer my existing build onto.

I'm looking for something with a 27.2 seat post, 130mm spacing (126 would work though), down tube shifter bosses, preferably with a threadless fork (either size), drilled for caliper brakes, and then some tire clearance. I'd love to use 32's and have the room to not worry about clearance.

I'm happy to do some digging myself, but the old catalogs don't really tell you things like tire clearance and hub spacing. I know that older 27" frames will generally fit bigger tires with some long reach calipers, but I'm also really hoping to go the threadless route although I'm aware that I may just need to pick up a fork separately.

Thanks.

Why threadless? If you're looking for C&V, you're much more likely to find quill.

I can never seem to get quills to stay quiet. I put a threadless fork on my trek and really like it a lot better.

Did you see this? I don't know about tire clearance on these but it's local so should be easy to take a quick peak at. The threadless is going to be the hard the part of the equation to meet.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace...6116058593168/

If you look at the one picture of the front end you can see what looks to be a lot of tire clearance from what's on there.

The Soma Pescadero and Black Mountain Road framesets would be ideal. Both use long reach caliper brakes and fit larger tires. The Black Mountain will fit 33mm tires, the Soma will fit 40mm tires.

https://blackmtncycles.com/shop/frames/road-v3/

https://www.somafab.com/archives/product/pescadero-frame-set

You you intend to stay C&V, you choices are impossibly limited. The Trek touring bikes with caliper brakes might fit your needs. However, the forks are threaded.

Have you considered modifying your existing bike to a 650b wheel size?

It's easy to determine the approx. tire size you could fit if you used 650b rims. These guidelines are a good primer for those thinking about going 650b - and it includes the description of how to determine largest possible tire size.

650B Conversion Guidlines

You would likely need longer-reach brake calipers - unless your existing calipers can accommodate a 19mm move of the pad toward the axle.

Rolling on larger tires is the way to go.

Get yourself an early eighties Bianchi Touring. It takes 700c x 38 barely, but they do fit and they do feel great, even though they are cheap tires...
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...943ef0c91c.jpg

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3a04006893.jpg

Thanks for all of the replies.

I know that threadless is a major ball-up. Was there a period when 1" threadless was actually adopted more widely? Or did things just go from 1" threaded to 1 1/8" threadless?

Currently I'm really liking the idea of a 650b conversion. I've done it before on this bike, but the wheels I built were kind of so-so and I wasn't all that impressed. I think maybe if I spring for some nicer rims (I already have a set of 5800 hubs), and keep them tubeless I can make it work and just ride two wheelsets.

Not sure where you could be getting chronic creaking. I have probably have at least 2 dozen quill equipped C+V road bikes with many different stem, bar, headset setups. Some old, some new, overhauled and not, a few slightly undersize and everything in between. Not a single creak, anywhere, can't imagine ever converting any of them to threadless.

Are you working on these yourself? We really should be able to help get to the bottom of this I would think.

This really limits your options and eliminates a lot of very cool C+V projects. ;)

In all fairness, it could have been the fork I had. Who knows what the inside of it looked like. Had I really wanted to keep the quill, I'd have tried a new threaded fork on this bike. However, I opted to go the threadless route.

As a novice wheel-builder I had good luck with the 32h Pacenti Brevet 650b machined rims last year - 1200 miles and still true. Velocity, H Son, and others also have solid offerings

I think 650b is a really versatile set-up for many vintage frames/forks.

It's not just your imagination. Under high stress, quill stems can flex and creak. It's why French constructeurs made non-quill stems as a custom option which worked very much like modern threadless stems except that they didn't preload the headset. Whether it's really much of a problem, I'd err to the side of saying it's mostly a non-issue for most kinds of riding.