mkeller234

It's really starting to come together. I think you made the right choice with the crystem, but it might have killed me to pass on a Nitto craft stem.

robatsu

Yeah, I wanted that Craft Stem pretty badly. But it was too blingy for this bike. Would look nice on something like my old Mondia w/all the chrome lugs, etc. It still is on the radar screen for something....

The crank is going to be fabulous on this...

mkeller234

The bars you chose look pretty nice. Nice and flat on the tops, the lever bodies should sort of blend right in. I'm not sure but the drops look a little deeper than the noodle bars, but not Cinelli 66 deep. Did you find the fit between the bars and stem to be very tight? I wish I would have known about the dime and slot method before I installed my bars.

robatsu

No, I didn't even have to do the dime trick. They slid right on quite easily, so easily I had to go back and check that this reallly was a 25.4.

Some of that flat on the tops is simply the angle of the bars. I like my drops to be angled up...

rekmeyata

I looked at that stem on a web site and I don't think it would have been too much bling at all. Now if the stem was one of those lugged style ones then yes, but that one was fine. Nitto also makes the Technomic if you want a stem that can go up higher and it's a not a bad looking stem either. Nigara cycle Works has great prices on Nitto stuff by the way but they don't offer the Craft stem.

robatsu

Started fitting up fenders today. Got some work to do on various issues, but I think these are going to be nice:

Roger M

I've been following your build here. This is really going to be an impressive bicycle when you finish.

What fenders are those? In the picture, they almost look gold in color.

Nice work

khatfull

Civia fenders?

robatsu

Thanks! These are Civia Fenders. They call this Sage Green. It is sort of an olive w/a little more blue. This pic was setting sun. Here is another, still doesn't capture the inperson (think olive w/a hint of blue) but is more representative:



Really long fenders. These are just loosely mounted, I haven't worked the fender line much or got the mount to the front rack:

Roger M

Those are great looking fenders. I almost bought a set of clay colored Civias awhile back. I don't think they sell them in the red clay color any longer.

The Golden Boy 

They almost match the 'off white/mint green' of the Trek logo on the downtube.

mkeller234

They look really nice on your bike. I suppose they look a little less "cute" than the hammered or plain aluminum. Your like the Forest Gump of shiny fenders... You got us running across the country with you, polishing up our shiny fenders. Then, out of the blue: "I think i'm done running now"

Now if I could find some of these in blue (cheap) I would be happy:

robatsu

Here are a "slate blue" set. They look pretty cool, I've seen some of these in person. They probably would have been my second choice.... Can't beat the price either. 'Course, when they catch on, they will be more expensive

Here is a pic - I've seen these in person and this is a good representation of the color:



And, you could just take some shiny ones and have the powdercoated....

Wait till you see the mudflap situation, everyone is going to be burning their leather mudflaps....

mkeller234

Leather mudflaps are something I never really understood. It doesn't strike me as the material that I want to get filthy. I made mine with black rubber stair treads, I got a little "fancier" with the shape on my Mercian.

robatsu

Well, they look pretty cool so long as you never ride your bike, or at least never get it wet, esp. when new if you can get them to follow the contour of the tire a bit. And even later on, when they get all saggy and grody, they actually work very well for keeping your drivetrain clean. You get a low hanging one of those and you don't get squat on your drivetrain from road grunge even in rainstorms on unpaved roads. I used to commute daily w/one of these and three/4 miles of the distance each way was cinder rail-trail. So even though it sometimes seems, to me anyhow, like a bit of a foo-foo boutique thing, it is quite functional. Although, it does tend to act like a big funnel swooping stuff into your fender, gotta be careful about that.

Problem is, though, when used per the function, they quit looking beautiful and look like a bit of roadkill you wouldn't even touch with a stick bolted to your fender end.

Scheherezade 

I have an 84' 520 that I've been swapping out parts on for the better part of a year now. I know it's the poor man's trek touring machine (501 tubing), but I really like it. If anyone is curious about cantilever adjustment, I managed to comfortably swap in some 700c wheels I had built for the bike while still using the stock cantilevers. I'll have to take a picture of it sometime to share.

robatsu

Been doing a little more fender fit up, not done yet obviously:



1985 Trek 620 is challenging at the chainstay bridge fender mounting point:

ColonelJLloyd 

I had just planned on tapping the chainstay bridge and underside of the seat stay bridge before I send mine to the powder coater. Will that not work?

robatsu

If you try to bridge that gap with simply a bolt, it will fatigue fail, and not all that long, maybe 1 or 2 a season. I know that from personal experience. i futzed around with this situation for good.

You can run a bolt through a tube to give it some rigidity, that worked okay. Threading the hole is not a bad idea, it is hard to get behind that little bitty bridge with a nut.

Just remember that is a long gap for a m5 bolt to be a structural support & bolts are fasteners, not cantilevered support structures. I got this sort of failure even with fenders that were pretty wedged into the chain stays, seemingly immobile.

You can look at my blog for my latest, I think I fix this for once and for all.

My 620 doesn't have a hole on the bottom side of the seat stay bridge, I wish it did. I'm going w/the typical l bracket there, I don't like those bendy clamp things.

Tapping the chainstay bridge won't hurt anything, but you still have to bridge that long gap.

ColonelJLloyd 

I've had pretty good distances between fender and chain stay bridge on a few fender installs and just used aluminum spacers (sleeves). I haven't looked closely at the chain stay bridge. On first glance it looked like it might be bigger than a 5M tap.

There's no hole on the underside of the little block on the seat stay bridge but it should be easy enough to drill one and then tap it.

Edit: Just checked out the mounting solution on your blog. Nice work!

robatsu

M6 tap may work. I've done the spacer thing as well and it kinda works ok on this bike. One thing is that this distance on this particular frame is a lot longer than almost any other frame, between the long chainstays and the bottom bracket integrated chainstay bridge. Most bikes you either end up with the fender right up agains the bridge or maybe 1/2 gap. On this bike it is a couple of inches.

Again, I used to have fatigue issues with such a long, exposed bolt, but I also ride a lot of unpaved gravel. For a while, I just rode around w/an extra one taped under my saddle which I had to use once or twice. Eventually, I took a length of dowel rod and embedded a threaded stud in each end, one for the fender, one for the bridge. That worked pretty well, and never broke, but it looked dopey and had limited adjustability.

M6 bolt would still fatigue eventually as well, although it would certainly last longer than an M5.

I'm thinking I finally got this figured out. Thanks for your compliment, this will work, really doesn't look so crude in person...

fender1

I too, think its a really well thought out, creative solution.

Coop500

I like your solution. This is not a criticism, but an observation. I think the brackets back at the fender would look cleaner if you rounded the corners and not left them squared off. Maybe you already did, or were planning to. It just looks un-finished to me like that. Very creative though, nice work.

New Yorker

I just fully restored an '85 Trek 600 complete with a nice JB paint job. I, too, had the Trek headbadge pox. JB had no solution. But I finally decided to just keep the tatty badge. My thinking? It's the one visible piece on the bike that looks old. Kind of a "tip of the hat" to its age and original owner, whoever that was. Don't know if that makes any sense, but it works for me.

mkeller234

I admire your patience to install those fenders right the first time. I rushed and did a pretty crappy job with my first metal fender installation. As a result, I spent a month or to trying to fix them on the fly, which was harder with the bike all together.