Because then you won't buy the jigs.

This is not for me but I am happy that it is being made. I love to see people come up with odd designs and unusual things. Standardization is great for lots of things but creative stuff is good for the human spirit.

This, and the Nivex too.

Especially on the FD, let's say you set it up including the braze-on, and then decide to change chainring size?

This dude is living his best life.

No way because it is outdated and too unpractical

That's an easy question to answers. N+1! Just make a new frame.

I mean I think that is the answer. Heine's stuff is very much geared toward building a custom frame. Very little of the Rene Herse componentry seems to be compatible with most production frames. And doesn't that kinda make sense for the Rene Herse label?

I disagree here. It's only the derailleurs that effectively need a custom frame. All the other parts can be used for any suitable bike.

Minor quibbles with that:

1. The derailers don't need a custom frame, they can be retrofitted to most anything.
2. The brakes need brazed-on pivots, unless you can find the etriers from a set of RAIDs. Maybe a few people are doing that, but every bike I've seen with RH brakes so far (that I can remember) was using brazed pivots. Has there ever been a production frame that came with RAID pivots? Safe to say, few if any exist.
3. The front rack requires braze-ons at a specific place partway down the fork, and not where lowrider BOs go, so almost no bikes have them.
4. The tail light needs a braze-on on the back of the seat tube, and provision for internal wire routing to it.

There may be other examples but that's all I could think of

I think a frame that has extra stuff brazed on it could be considered "custom".

Good points, although I'd note that I added the RAID style brakes to my Peugeot (AO-8 with 650B wheels) without the braze-ons. They can be ordered with the étriers.(EDITED TO ADD: the version that can be bolted on (that is, with the étrier) is listed at the Herse site but is currently unavailable.)

You substituted long reach versions, or do they have that much adjustability?

Pardon the dumb question.

The normal Mafac Racers did not quite reach the 650B rims, so I needed the RAID style brakes for the longer reach. They work very well.

Mafac RAIDs were made specifically as a longer reach brake, if that is what you needed to know.

"Customized" for sure. "Custom" makes me think it was built from scratch.

Sure. I guess I'm caught on the idea that the frame will no longer work with normal components, unlike just adding some eyelets.

@bulgie

1. The derailers don't need a custom frame, they can be retrofitted to most anything.
2. The brakes need brazed-on pivots, unless you can find the etriers from a set of RAIDs. Maybe a few people are doing that, but every bike I've seen with RH brakes so far (that I can remember) was using brazed pivots. Has there ever been a production frame that came with RAID pivots? Safe to say, few if any exist. My Centurion ProTour has centerpull posts on them, and when I built a set of 700c wheels to replace the 27" wheels, RAIDs worked just fine. It originally came equipped with Dia Compe centerpulls. Jan sold them with cleaned up RAID etriers, which he got from StarMichael Bowman in Portland. Star had a pile of them from the Norther Cycles frames they were building with direct mount posts. When I saw that RH ran out, I realized I had a pile of them from the bike mods I was doing, contacted Jan, and traded out 20 sets of them after I cleaned them out for 20 sets of centerpull posts. I just checked the Rene Herse website, looks like they used all of those etriers up as well - they're no longer in stock.
   
3. The front rack requires braze-ons at a specific place partway down the fork, and not where lowrider BOs go, so almost no bikes have them. Which has been good for custom rack makers.
4. The tail light needs a braze-on on the back of the seat tube, and provision for internal wire routing to it. Now that is something I've never seen on a production frame!

Good to know! I never tried it. Were the Raids at all compromised from being on bosses ~10 mm narrower than they were made for? Other than maybe fender clearance, or getting a really fat tire out, I guess the braking would be identical -- the brake doesn't know or care how wide the posts are.

Right before I left home to go visit my mother, what I was working on was adding Raid pivots to an old ('50s) fork with a crown that's narrower than Raid bosses "want" to be. To put the posts 75 mm apart, the miters were going to be partial, as in having an opening on the sides, because they're so much wider than the blades. Maybe I'll miter them more on-center with the blades to get full contact all the way around, if the brakes work just as well. That bike will have 42 mm tires on narrow rims. Will the brake still let a 42 out? I can test it easily, just mount the Raid arms on a Racer étrier, so I guess I'm just asking in case you know off the top of your head.

I don't think one model of touring frame means that the Herse centerpulls are necessarily "plug and play." 99% of the purchasers of those centerpulls aren't putting them on Pro Tours.

And does the Nivex derailleur need a special set of vertical dropouts as well? Because that's a step above just brazing a hanger or boss on the chain stay.

And I want to state again that I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that Jan's market for these are people building custom or semi-custom (Frek) frames.

Come to think of it, I have a set of one o' them eclairs or whatever you call them from a set of RAIDs. I wonder if he's still wanting them.

They work just fine, and I've got 35mm wide tires on my Pro Tour, no issues getting the wheel out and catching the tire with brake pads. You'll note on the picture that I did mostly "choke up" the posts on the slotted arms. I've never run fenders on that bike, but I'd bet that the arms would catch on a fender and limit how far they can swing out. It'd be doable if you didn't mind the dreaded "let the air out of the tire every damn time the wheel comes off" syndrome.

As for the post/fork interface, I've brazed a lot of them onto early 70's Raleigh Competition forks, which aren't super narrow, but no one would call them wide. Instead of keeping the outter part of the post/fork interface open, I stuff some brass up there and build up a fillet. After filing and blending the curves, if you look at them straight on from the front or back they look a bit like the bulbous tail lights of early 60's American cars. I usually cheat a few mm on width from MAFAC spec.

I learned early on that the pre-mitered posts aren't worth buying, they never match up on the fork, so I stock the unmitered ones and hand file them.

For one set, probably not. I did spend a weekend cleaning up and polishing the pastries before sending them up to Seattle.

My guess is they do still want them, but that's not based on any inside info. Contact them? I have a few pairs too so let us know if you find out the answer.

Just a few points on Mafacs….For the centerpulls, other than Raid, there are four different stirrup lengths, short, standard and long…and adjustable. The Raids had their own stirrup, which was of course both wider and deeper. The calipers proper came in three lengths…Competition (short), Racer and 2000 ( the same, long) and Raid (wide and long). Raids are designed to have their pivots spaced 1 cm wider than the other models. The reach advantage of Raids over Racers or 2000s is only 3mm in braze on format. I am purposely ignoring the GT model, which was shorter than all of these, so not really pertinent.

Having to deflate to get the wheel out would be a deal-breaker for me, so I will have to do some testing to see, with my 42 mm tires + fenders. I'll let people know what I find out, for the single-digit number of people who are interested. (And zero is a single-digit number too, I know.) Most likely I will set the posts almost at Raid-spec (75 mm I believe), just a little narrower to improve the miter, not fully as narrow as a Racer or Weinmann et al.

Sorry (not sorry) about the thread hijack, nothing to do with the new RH clanger we're supposed to be talking about.

I'm using a Cyclo Benelux Mark 7 from 1953 ish: https://velobase.com/Pages/ViewCompo...m=113&AbsPos=5
I didn't weigh it, but if it's more I don't care - it's also longer.
In use it's actually very good - I'm shifting 50/32 with no issues and it's very fast.

What happens when a couple grains of sand get stuck in that rudimentary slider mechanism?
Is all this because shifter cables are becoming more expensive, or is this just a case of a new solution for a problem that was solved 70 years ago? Granted, I have a Simplex Competition I'll be sticking on my Witcomb, but that's a clamp-on shifter. If I really like it, I'll get another, or perhaps re-engineer a standard clamp on derailleur in the way mentioned previously by Kontact .
Phil

Because Jan.

I seem to recall a BQ article some time ago where he praised the speed of direct lever FD's. I would have thought that would be offset by the physical act of reaching down to operate, but what do I know?