Nice looking bike! What goes in that seat post bag?

Finally, here is a picture.

I have been enjoying seeing everyone elses bikes.

Mine is a 2003 allez sport. I do not have many modifications.
A specialized PVO road pump, a lock attached to the seat post.
A cateye blinky
a trail rat II lighting system
SPD pedals
I use a messenger bag to commute with, as I have outgrwon my backpack ( I am in graduate school and a new class started recently).

I have more pics I will post another time

Here is a bike I just finished building up. It is an old Cannondale R400. I wanted bullhorns, but I did not have any. Instead I put on some Scott MTB bars (AT2 I think), and found a different solution for the brake levers. I will post more details later.

Hey thanks! It sure rides nice. That pack has the following:

1. Spare tubes.
2. Patch kit.
3. Tire levers.
4. Bike tool.
5. Spare batteries for the blinky lights.
6. Chain tool.

Greenfix, I love the bikes and the dog. His/Her eyes appear to reflect almost as well as the material on the back of your shoes! I have a yellow and a black lab here they find their way into many of our pictures.

How do you like your brake setup on the C-dale? It looks nice and clean, just wondering how it feels with the levers mounted backwards?

Be sure to check it for cracks regularly. Mine, of the same model and vintage (2.4?), developed a crack at the crease which is for chain clearance just above the drive-side dropout.

Luckily Cannondale replaced it for free with a new model (CAAD 3 I think).

Thanks,

Mulligan (the dog), pretty much wants to insert herself between me and whatever I am working on, it is one of things that I enjoy about her.

It took me a while to get those brakes worked out. The Scott bars are mountain bars, and are thinner than the bars I pulled the levers off. They are also not designed to have the brakes mounted out on the bends, which is where I wanted to mount them. It took me a while to figure out where I could put them, and still have enough clearance so that when I pull the levers, I wasn't hitting the bars before the brakes fully engaged. There were 1 or 2 spots where I could place the brake levers, and where they ended up is the most comfortable. It actually rides pretty nice. The bars are comfortably wide, and the lever pull is natural when my hands are on the ends of the bars. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I rarely ride int he drops, so bullhors, make sense to me. On the few test rides I have taken I have also found that a natural position for my hands is on the section of the brake levers attached to the bars, again pretty confortable on short rides. Unfortunately, I have developed some pretty serious knee pain, so my cycling has slowed down, and I have not been able to put many miles on this bike yet. I'll probably post an edit after my first long ride on this bike.

Happy riding

Edit: I forgot to mention, my next project is to try to relocate the shifting on this bike. I have discovered I am not a fan of the downtube shifters. I do not think bar end shifters will fit in these bars, so I was considering thumb shifters mounted under the bars toward the ends. That way I would have the brakes and shifting all at my finger tips. Any ideas or experiences with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the warning. This bike (in its original configuration) was actually a gift from a good friend of mine that is riding recumbents now. I think he rode it quite a bit before he switched to recumbents. I have noticed one thing about the frame. The rear triangle seems to have some "spring" in it. I notice it when I install and remove teh rear wheel. Th dropouts appear to move laterally. I did not think that aluminum frameswere meant to do this so I checked it over for cracks or fatigue marks in the paint, but I could not find any. Do you have any experience with this? What was it like when your frame failed? Did it happen catastrophically like some people describe with aluminum frames, or could you catch the crack as it developed?

Thanks again

Hey, Montana, I've been using the same paniers as these for years, they a very durable and they hold everything perfectly! Great choice! :D

I decided to equip my commuter with the bullhorn bars. Like you I like the wideness and never rode the drops. I went with a "stoker 26" bar from profile design, it allowed me to put my bar end shifters in the ends of the bar and conventional road brake levers on the curve at the very tip of the horn. I've been riding that setup for a couple of months and I really like it. I think you saw it when I originally posted a picture of the whole rig on the first page of this thread. Good luck with the modifications, I really enjoy the tinkering.

Hey mtessmer,
I really like them. I got a set for my wife's commuter bike as well. We both really like them. They made it through the snow and yuck of winter commuting in really good shape. I can't imagine being without them now. We even put a rack on our tandem so we can have the panniers along.

Yep, I got a set for my wife's bike and we use them on our tandem too! Hmmmm... we must think alike.

Me too. We had a long off season this year, and I was able to tinker with a build three bikes. It is a pretty relaxing way to wind down the day.

I really like the set up of your bars, and that is what I originally wanted to do with the Cannondale, but I wanted to get by with what I had in the garage. Road style bullhorns are probably still in my future, it depends on how the current set up works out.

I didn't notice any of the "spring" you mention above. It could be that the bike was originally designed for a seven speed (126 mm between the dropouts) and now it's using an eight or nine speed (130 mm) hub. For an aluminum frame that would scare me a little, but only a little.

When I noticed the crack, I had felt like something was odd about the bike during a ride in the rain, but I couldn't isolate anything. Later when cleaning and inspecting the bike, I noticed that water was leaking out of the seat stay. I mean, I would wipe off the spot on the frame, then it would get wet again. It was not something I expected at all. Kind of like one of those "miraculous" statues.

If you look at a 2.4 series frame, there is a purposeful looking dent on the inside of the seatstay just above where it meets the chainstay. Watch that spot for cracks; might be hard to see on a black bike.

[QUOTE=SchreiberBike]I didn't notice any of the "spring" you mention above. It could be that the bike was originally designed for a seven speed (126 mm between the dropouts) and now it's using an eight or nine speed (130 mm) hub. For an aluminum frame that would scare me a little, but only a little./QUOTE]


The spring is actually in the other direction. It has a seven speed whell on the back, and the frame seems to spring apart when I take the wheel off, and it gets pulled in when I put the wheel on. I know the wheel is original equipment. The spring is just someting odd that I noticed, and I will definitely keep an eye on the frame. I like the frame, but some parts of it I thought the frame were kind of odd. It almost looks like their solution for clearance issues was a rubber mallet, and some carefully aimed blows. Regardless I am psyched to have it, and have had fun tinkering with it.

Thanks again for the pointers.

Great looking bikes in this thread.
Here is my commuter, a -94 Cannondale M600. http://www.karlstam.com for more details :)

Nice commuter bike Anders.

This is my 1996 Specialized Hardrock GX Sport. Fitted with Planet Bike fenders. Nashbar panniers. Simi-slick tires. My commute is about 12.5 miles round trip.

Nice looking bike. Beautiful area you live in too. :love: I visited Gothenburg/Molndal in 2002 when I interviewed with a pharamceutical company in the area. Came pretty close to moving there, too.

ollo ollo; thanks.

blueline; thanks. Yes it's beautiful here. I guess all areas have theire own beauty.
I work in Mölndal on the opposite side of the freeway to Astra/Hässle (I guess that is the company you visited?).

You guessed correctly. The area seemed to offer a lot for my preferred lifestyle. Right near the water. Ice hockey close by. Both city and country living in close proximity. Of course, I didn't visit in the dead of winter...

Hej Anders, det bodde jag i Sverige for tva ar sedan, Goteborg ar en vacker stad, det lovar jag, men bodde jag i Stockholm, Sodermalm, den stan full av vatten! Forlot min svenska, men det har glomdet jag ganska mycket for langesedan.
Corsaire ;)

Hej Corsaire, din svenska är bra. Stockholm är en vacker stad men Göteborg vackrare ;) :p
Ha det bra
Hälsningar
Anders

Finnally took a picture of mine to load up here. It is a 1999 Schwinn Mesa GSX. I added a Night Rider Road Rat headlight and Topeak Front fender. Just imagine pannier bags just like N7CZinMT on it and there you go.

I'm anxiously awaiting to post a picture of my new commuter I've just about finished... need to run brake lines tonight and wrap the handlebars. Problem is - it was supposed to be a beater of sorts - survive the theivery of the mean streets of Boston... but now I stand back and it just looks damn purty, I don't think I'd want to leave it outside! Soon my precious, soon.

Anders, I've seen your ride before, and I really enjoy the look of a mtb with drops... and I dig the apple sticker of course.

I've been wanting to post the pics of my commuter but I'm not succeeding, I get an error message that my file is too large: over 100,000 bytes - my pics are over those numbers. Using Adobe I've already reduced the JPG size to the smallest possible per the program and still nothing: over 100,000 bytes.
What can I do to reduce the size even smaller (under 100,000 bytes size)? Please help...
Corsaire :(

Tried down-res'ing and rescaling it?

Go on google and search for the windows xp picture resizing power toy. It works pretty well to quickly resize a picture to be posted onto message boards.

Thanks guys, I now think got it.
This is my commuter Bianchi Volpe '03, it has: frog pedals, Ascent rear rack, Nashbar panniers, Protege 9.0 Cyclo Computer (Planet Bike), Armadillos Nimbus 700x28C, PlanetBike Fredy fenders (custom painted to "kind of" match the bike color) and perhaps the most important feature: the safety flash flag.
Corsaire :)

Corsaire: Paint the fenders?