My 1990 Diamond Back Interval is now on Ver. "I lost track".0 thanks to discovering it had a FUBAR Unicrown fork from the day it was new. I could only run 700c X 25's in the front due to no clearance under the crown and that was only going after it with a die grinder. I also had to hold the wheel centered and then lock it down otherwise it would tilt way off to one side, definitely not a good situation and one that kept me from riding it very much. It's a Champion No. 2 frame and is really a nice rider so that bummed me out. I decided this winter to replace the fork and found the perfect replacement with a proper crown in Australia of all places. It is Chrome Moly other than that I know nothing about it, it took it about 3 days to get to the US and then a month to clear customs. When I got the old one off I was able to see the fork legs were offset vertically about 3/16"! I thought it just had an issue with the fork end on one side. I now have about 3/8" between the 25mm tire and the bottom of the crown vs. the 1/16' I had before AFTER considerable grinding. I put a Minoura Sport rack on it and put the red Avenir bottle cages back on. Sometime last year I swapped the CODA triple crankset for the FSA I had on my GT Karakoram drop bar conversion.

Some of you may remember it's rather garrish Ver. 1.0, if not I'll post it for comedic relief...... In retrospect it really was quite hideous.
Ver. 1.0



Here's Ver. 2."Something"



Version. "I'm Not Sure".0



.......and the "proper" crown, it goes with the lugged from MUCH better than the original Unicrown.

BEFORE:

AFTER

Finished this 1990 Sirrus today:
beforeafter by 2cam16, on Flickr

The King is dead!


Long Live the King!

My 1984 Trek 620
Before

After

How did you get that metallic look of the red?

Hard to see some of the details but maybe Panasonic?
Who did the couplers?

Local frame builder. True North Cycles

Before

A rather sad parts missing Charlie Brown of a bike.

After

Replaced saddle, added new pedals, Velo-Orange Seine handlebar, Bar ends, yellow grips, and budget Sunrace friction shifter for rear derailleur.

Cavallo Marino Brain. 3 x 8 campa chorus.


now in 2 x 10 campa record. I dropped the bar since.

As purchased:



Test build:



After painting:

Man, I guess I never posted this one before in this thread.


Before:








After:

Wow. Just wow.

Before:


Burley tandem circa 1990? Nice-ish bike but they didn't drill drain holes in the BB shell. Water got in, maybe while the bike was being transported on a car rack. Had no place to go, so it pooled at the bottom and gradually ate itself a drain hole.

The bike was slightly too nice to throw away, and I need a hobby, so I fixed it. I re-mitered all 3 tubes and replaced the BB shell with a larger one. The too-small BB shell (not enough eccentricity), that used grub-screws <ick!> to set the eccentric, was the one thing I kinda hated about this era of Burley. Going to a larger shell, and offsetting the miter upward, meant most of the rusted seattube was mitered away.

I also made a sleeve to go over the seattube, tapered so it's thick at the bottom and feathering to nothing at the top, so the repair isn't visible after painting. And I made the brass fillets kinda large to make extra-sure all the rusty part is well strengthened.

After:



The complete story including pics of the assembled bike is here (Flickr)

Mark B

Wow, fantastic work, Mark.

Is there a more magnificent travesty? No, I think there is none more magnificent!

OK, What did you do to get the frame back in shape AND the paint so nice?
Best, Ben

It is coming.

I sent the frame to a builder to have the front triangle replaced and then check for alignment, then a local painter has the entire bike resprayed with new decals. This was done over a decade ago.

I've posted this on a couple other threads, but it fits here as well. 1995 Univega Alpina 5.1

Snatched in the nick of time from the bed of Fred G. Sanford's truck, along with a 2001 aluminum frame HardRock that I later flipped.


I think I actually got the chain and freewheel de-rusted, although this ^^^^ is a different freewheel and rear wheel. And the rear derailleur still works. Tires are a mismatch; the front is a cheapo Kenda, but it makes for a marginal visual match.

An old Merz randomly showed up in the next town over. The seller was maybe the second owner. He purchased it in the 80s and rode it quite a bit, but it was still in good shape. When I got it home, I realized that the driver side rear drop out was cracked. I tried to have it repaired locally. When I sent it off to Franklin Frames for paint, Jack wasn’t satisfied with the drop out repair and redid it himself. As for the parts – I went with all of my favorite things. It’s generally period correct but I am honestly not a stickler for such things.





Cracked dropout!

Here’s how it looks today:

Original hoods, and my grubby paws since 1984and after

The tape cleaned up nicely also

What did you use?

Those Shimano UF verticals always crack, for a stong and/or high-mileage rider. It's no reflection on Merz's skill as a framebuilder. (I know, you didn't say it was, but someone might be thinking it...)
Too bad because they're small and light and elegantly shaped, so I wanted to like them.

Here's one I repaired a while back, on a circa 1980 Glenn Erickson custom that he made for a 6'6" cat 2 racer, but on his touring bike. The repair is easy, just fill in the big semi-triangular window, fully or partially. Shimano could have made these never break if they'd just done this smaller window originally in the forging. Oh well.



The crack can also be welded, after Vee-notching from both sides, but on this one the crack ran very close to brass from the original braze, and you can't weld right next to brass. The brass vaporizes and gets into the weld, making it brittle. I brazed it with nickel-silver, which is stronger than brass, about the same strength as the steel of the dropout. Stronger than any feasible way to weld it.

The Franklin Frames repair looks excellent. Congrats on bringing a worthy frame back from the not-quite-dead.

Mark B