Looking more and more like I should just continue the way I have, thanks for the heads up about geekhouse btw very cool outfit by the looks of it. Also, yes guys I am trying to avoid custom I'd rather sink the money into the parts than the frame itself.

That ZR2000 was $600 w/10-sp 105 mix and has been on CL for a while now.

Hellenic?, thats Greek to me ..

I flipped a Shogun with this design. My fat thighs rubbed the stays.

Working on just this kind of build for a client... got to mocking things up with Bikecad tonight to see how things would look with 650C wheels.

http://www.ravingbikefiend.com/bikep...nhellenic2.jpg

Very cool! Is it for street or track though?

Mostly road... this one was built for touring and has seen an epic number of miles.

It is the big guy's personal bike... it also had a quad crank.

http://www.ravingbikefiend.com/bikep...rvonsbike1.JPG

That looks like an excellent rig, I just had to ask since your drawing had the track ends and what appeared to be track drops.

We will be building the track bike with Hellenic stays... will probably implement an oval top tube and down -tube to further increase the lateral stiffness as the rider, although smaller, can lay down some insane amounts of frame bending power.

The benefit with the Hellenic stay is that is closes the rear triangle and a smaller triangle is theoretically a stiffer triangle... when GT adopted this as a standard for their bikes they knew what they were doing and when you combined that with the oversized tubing on their mountain bikes you got a really decent frame. GT really overbuilt every frame they ever produced.

Their "Triple Triangle" also set their frames apart from the rest even though this design is almost as old as the safety bicycle.

If you find a nice GT I would not pass on it... they are really well made frames... and overbuilt in most cases.

Looking more and more like I'll just have to go that route, like Robbie showed that wonderful specimen earlier at 600 is most definitely a steal.

I do have some self imposed limitations though, 130 rear spacing, road geometry, and probably a bare frameset as I have most of the components I have in mind for this build already.. I think perhaps I should save a bit and get something really special this time.

LOL I thought you guys would be all over me on that one but it seems to have slipped by. That Hetchins Mixte is a beautiful bike though.

How much do you want to sink into components? Are you thinking a Record 10 or 11 spd? I know some of the GT frames were pretty nice, but the shapes was a little off for me, but I think most of the Shoguns were 105 or 600 and lower price level bikes. The frames would be along the lines of something like Tange Infinity or a few steps above.

Here is a Infinity framed Exage something I had a few years ago that turned out to be too small

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=362891

I already have the wheels, most of the components are ultegra (9 speed era), sora brifters.. Tange Infinity in my book is a-ok my mtb GT is made of it and is one of the lightest rigid mtb's I've ever encountered (it too is outfitted in exage)