mrmw

In the midst of this year's worst winter weather--just passed--during which it was too damn cold for most of February to even think of riding, a red tailed hawk took up residence at our house.

Ladies and germs--this is one large, impressive raptor.







Today, finally, not only did the winds abate and the sun shine brightly, but the midday temperature hit 50. It was time to ride. After, I realized too that it was time to catalog this winter's build: a 1983 Centurion Pro Tour 15.

I had been lusting after this bike because of its 60cm top tube, unusually long for a 63cm frame, and a match to my own XXL torso. In contrast, my 63cm 1984 Miyata 610 has a 58cm top tube, and my 1982 Schwinn Super Sport S/P has a 59cm top tube. All bear Technomic stems with like 30cm horizontal reach.

This bike came from ebay last fall, my worst ebay purchase ever. Luckily, I was able to salvage the frame, fork, headset, crank (but neither rings nor bottom bracket), wheelset, Symmetric shifters, bars and stem. Everything else was trashed--the Dia Compe 961 cantilevers, the seatpost, chainrings, BB spindle and cups.

Miraculously, the frame cleaned up really well.

I sold the wheelset and pearlescent stem to offset it's purchase, and the finished bike is pictured below.



The drivetrain is an eight speed half step/whole step 13/14/15/16/18/21/24/28 'Shuntour' cassette assembled from an XT eight speed cassette and custom spaced 13/14/15 nine speed cogs and spacers from a 105 cassette with 1mm spacers added to effect the Suntour 5.3mm first three cog spacing. The cassette is mated to Suntour Command shifters and a Suntour XC Comp (one step below XC PRO) rear derailleur.



This is the Suntour Symmetric shifter housing modified to mate to Shimano downtube cable stops.


About the worst scratch, but note that the not even the cable guides are rusted. Unbelievable.




The front is the original Sugino AT crank, 48/38/28 teeth rings, SRAM PC-850 chain and a Suntour Mountech front derailleur. I like the Mountech--it shifts easily compared to like vintage Cyclone Mark II's stiff spring.


Shimano BR-M550 cantilevers with new Kool-Stops.


That's it. The wages of bike flipping. And as I can't find any more bikes to buy, fix up and sell, this probably completes my fleet.

mrmw

And the remainder of the 1983 Centurion Pro Tour 15's pix:


Cantilevers set up so as per Southerlands, when brakes are engaged the imaginary line from cantilever arm mounting bolt to brake pad post intersects the straddle cable at 90 degrees.






I cream in my jeans everyday when I look down at this view of the chromed (investment cast?) fork crown. I can't help it, I'm a hopeless afficionado.


My old circa 1978 Brooks B66 top astride it's new frame.


Wheels, with Pasela TG tires 700c x 35mm.










There, Robbie, just as I promised.

For the next few days, it's going into the 60's and 70's. This morning I took pix of the big box of parts to ebay 'in the spring', then went for a ride. My work day extends into late night with a conference call across the oceans. But tomorrow--look for me on the Pro Tour 15, maybe even in shorts!

thestoutdog

Nice bird, and AWESOME BIKE! If you ever get tired of it, let me know. That is exactly the type of ride I'm looking forward to building/ riding. Well done.

mrhedges

cool ride. i scored a trek 330 from the late 80s once for free. It had similar shifters, I had never seen anything like it before, what are those called? do you prefer them to barends?

cyclotoine

That is some tight clearance on the pads, so tight you couldn't even use the thin spacer! The newer wider rims probably have something to do with it. I am having an issue with my LHT as the 24mm OD DTswiss DK 7.1 touring rims are pretty wide and the tektro cantilever won't allow me to mount a nice koolstop cartridge system. I'm seriously annoyed. However a fellow at work has the new avid shorties and I am going to do a test fit to see if they have more clearance, if they alloy me to use the pads I want I'll be gettin' shorty.

Oh an nice bike! LHTs have really long TTs too. I have the 61... looks like you have a really cool spot there too.

fender1

Very Nice!!! Are you able to toe in the pads with the hardware set up that way?

RobbieTunes 

Steve, that bike's the boogaloo. Quality engineering, ingenuity, and tenaciousness paid off.

I've got a pair of those hawks that work out back behind the house. They are powerful, relentless, and focused. Even the horses watch them, I think, every day about 3 pm.

Great job on the bike.

purevl

That is how a vintage tourer should be updated. I get so bored with seeing beautiful vintage tourers made hideous with late model XT. The mods are creative and brilliant, a bike after my own heart. Bravo sir!

mrmw

Toe in the pads? Absotively. During the winter hiatus, getting the hardware arranged so that proper pad toe in was achieved soaked up endless hours.

As I suspect you know--if you can't toe in the pads properly, you really don't have much in the way of braking.

..........
In reply to fender1, they are Suntour Command Shifters. Index 7 speed rear, power ratcheted friction front.

Since I ride 60% on the hoods and 40% on the drops, and I love their simplicity and reliability, they are perfect for me.

pastorbobnlnh 

Steve,

I'm all up with Robbie! Great looking and practical bike!

Your hawk is impressive! The big birds in my yard here in NH includes chickadee hawks (small but cunning), barred owls (big and mysterious), speckled grouse (looks like a chicken, but I don't know what they taste like), great blue heron (the 747s in the bird world), and of course wild turkey (a dinosaur on the ground, flies as if it just spent the night in a bar). Just to name a few.

One of these days you need to write a cookbook on your experience with home preparation of Suntour freewheels. Maybe you could do your own TV show on the Bike Network!

You seem to understand these highly adaptable bodies better then anyone I know. You've mastered the whole spacer challenge, and have figured out how to use other manufacturer's spacers to achieve your gourmet final presentation. But a lunk like me always needs pictures, or diagrams, or both, to fully understand the concepts. I wish we could just pop these babies in the microwave and 60 seconds later enjoy them in their new configuration.

mrmw

Like this?

Shuntour 7 speed custom spaced cassette (8 speed is the same, just add one more eight speed cog and spacer on to the stack).

sonatageek

You said Hawk and I was expecting this:


But wearing a leather jacket and some dark shades.

pastorbobnlnh 

Nearly perfect! Thanks for posting this!

I still need at least one clarification:

A "very thin hand scored washer" is that one which has some lines etched, scrapped, or filled into it, in order to help keep it from spinning?

The other thing I'll need to do, is convert your metric measurements into old fashioned English units. The caliper I have came from my father's quality control laboratory. It was probably made in early '50s. At some point it was used to help insure that Gemini and Apollo astronauts made it safely into orbit! I hate to give it up to something new and digital.

mrmw

1. This was an early stage drawing. Since then, it's evolved. The hand scored washer was a make-do when using a first position smallest cog that was not a 'true' first position cog--i.e. lacking the ridged surface to make up to the cassette lockring.

The evolved configuration grabs the lockring, the 'natural' first position cog with built in spacer, second position cog and spacer, and third position cog--all from a Shimano 9 speed 105 cassette with both 1st and 2nd spacers supplemented with a 1mm spacer. To these are added the remaining cogs and spacers from a Shimano eight speed cassette. Resultant spacing 5.33mm, 5.33mm, 4.8mm out to the end where the largest cog ends the cassette stack.

2. Calipers. An inexpensive digital caliper can be had from Harbor Freight or Northern Tool for $15 or so. I picked up one locally on sale for $7. It reads to two decimal places--which means that it's actually accurate to one decimal place (we learned this back in the dark ages in engineering school in physics 101, so don't make me extrapolate about this). $15, that's the important number here.
https://search.harborfreight.com/cpis...iper&Submit=Go

The one I have is this one:
https://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=99639

Yes, I also have a couple of inexpensive plastic cheapies. They work just fine, I take them to Bike Swaps. And yes--I would love to have a zooty $200 machinist quality dial caliper accurate to four significant figures...along with quite a few other things mostly low down on my list which inexplicably shortens as time goes on.

mrmw

Ah. Yes. Closely akin to what I envisioned--which was the February wind knifing in from Lake Michigan in Streeterville (downtown along the lakefront) in Chicago. That's how cold it felt here last month, how little riding got done and how much time there was to fool with this build in which it seemed that almost every move fought me.

Pompiere

I guess I must be spoiled, as far as the raptors are concerned. There are so many Red-Tails around here, that we don't get too excited to see one. I do have a pair that nests behind my house by the creek. There are other kinds of hawks as well: Cooper's, Northern Harrier, American Kestrel, etc. The ones that really get our attention are the Bald Eagles. Anyone who has seen one up close knows what I mean. They stand about a foot taller than a Red Tail and have a 7 foot wing span. If the Great Blue Heron is the 747 of the bird world, then the Bald Eagle is the B-52. There is a nest two miles down the road from me, and several more are scattered around the county, so seeing a Bald Eagle is a regular occurance.

George Handy

This is one our local Red Tails-this one a juvenile.

George Handy

I also have a Centurion Elite 15 set up with Tektro 720 wide profile cantis. It was a challenge getting everything in there. If the brake bosses were spaced wider it would work much better.

SteakKnifeSally

I have a set of Suntour Commands in the garage along with a bunch of cassette cogs of all shimano systems, and your drivetrain hack is brilliant. Some questions if you would be so generous. Does this system require a rear derailleur from the Suntour indexed system, or are the cable pull ratios the same with the older derailleurs. (There's an ARX in the box as well.) Do you have a source for specs on the various shimano cogs, so I can work out which ones in the jumble need to go in such a custom cassette?

Additionally, last summer, a bald eagle working on a roadkill swooped up and tapped his claws against the roof of my PT cruiser as I approached. His wingspan filled the windshield. Now I know how rabbits feel.

mrmw

First--Mr. Handy--Great Picture!

After much trial and tribulation, I accede to Sheldon Brown's counsel on the subject: To achieve flawless mixed system indexing, match shifters to derailleurs, then custom space the cassette or front rings.

So yes--this hack requires a Suntour Accushift Plus (NOT alpha 3000!!!!) rear derailleur. Whether Suntour AP shifters might work with your ARX--only you might judge. Just bear in mind that from 1988 forward Suntour modified the upper pulley arrangement which greatly improved indexing. FWIW.

This link has comprehensive spacing/cog thickness info. Note, however, that it errs with regards to Suntour Accushift Plus 7 speed center to center spacing. Hey--no one is perfect! The correct Suntour Accushift 7 and 8 speed spacing is 5.3,5.3,4.8mm out to the end of the cassette. If you search here at BF, I have posted about verifying this using NOS Suntour Accushift Spacer sets.
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/k7.html

RobbieTunes 

And guys, mrmw explained his plan for the Elite to me in a parking lot at the end of December. I got so dizzy I nearly got lost on the way to my next appointment (to meet Amani576, another Suntour guy). I figured then it wasn't going to be "trial and error," and the finished bike shows it wasn't.

Compared to that build, my stuff is boring. And I mean that in the most positive way....

Were the original brakes DiaCompe? And let me guess, a lot of this was trade stuff?

BlankCrows

I found a nice Elite GT for $40 a while back. Same color as the OP's Pro Tour. It has a Dia-Compe brake set.

Here is the 1984 Centurion catalog on the Sheldon Brown site.

mrmw

The 1983 Centurion Pro Tour 15 original cantilever brakes were Dia Compe 961's. They were too trashed to sell and were tossed into the Bike Co-Op box. Also into the Bike Co-Op box went the Suntour front and rear derailers, both sadly totally trashed. Too, the seatpost had so many twist scars that it too went to the Co-Op, as did the complete bottom bracket--spindle and both cups, and all three front rings.

Late last spring CL gifted me with an incomplete 1982 Trek 720 catch of the day. Exc shape, many period correct non-original parts and no wheelset. It was the mother lode.

As its parts were exc quality but non-original it didn't make sense to shell out for a wheelset. It's paint job was truly unbelievable. It tangibly glowed. Many parts went via CL. The frame and the remainder of parts went to ebay. I kept the beautiful Gran Compe side pull brakeset and levers (notice the 'bullet' adusters and neat Gran Compe straddle cable hangers in pix above, the adjusters work beautifully but the NOS hoods prevent their rotation, sigh) as backup for the '82 Schwinn Super Sport which also has GC brakes. It's Campy dual bolt seat post I traded to an OCD Campy addict for an assortment of SR LaPrade seatposts, and one of them is on this Centurion. Its lovely Nitto pearlescent stem was swapped out to BikeDued down in TX.

All in, the '82 Trek 720 paid for better than 2/3 of the Centurion build. I owe the tires to BF, however-- last winter a post here alerted me to a sale. They were like $14 each delivered for Pasela TG folding from Nashbar.

Sirrus Rider

[QUOTE=mrmw;8469126]In the midst of this year's worst winter weather--just passed--during which it was too damn cold for most of February to even think of riding, a red tailed hawk took up residence at our house.



That is a lovely bike!

mandrake

I have a 1984 Centurion Elite GT (58 cm). Same as this one:
https://www.ecovelo.info/2008/08/07/g...rion-elite-gt/

Mine has new aero brake levers, rear der, better wheels, Brooks B-17.
Use it for commuting and touring. It has what I believe are the original brakes- DiaCompe cantilevers.