Lugged Novara Randonee as SS or Cx/touring bike
 

One of my friends has a bike I was considering to buy. I'm not sure of the year but its an older Novara Randonee, lugged steel touring bike. I of course, would swap out, polish out a few parts but one thing that makes me hesitant to puchase the bike is the Top-mount Downtube shifters. Striped down this would make a pretty neat single speed CX I would imagine but what if i wanted to leave it geared, would this part be hard to replace/upgrade? YAY or NAY?

cool lookin bike, im assuming 27inch wheels though, probobly making either conversion difficult.

Where are the cables coming from down at the bb? Along the sides of it? If so you can get a clamp on cable guide to go near the top of the downtube and that's all you need to switch to brifters or bar-end shifters.

The bike has steel cable guides on top of the bottom bracket. I guess in a way it would look nice as single speed minus the cable guides and 27" wheels. I would swap them out for some 700c's but I heard getting the cantis to line up may be a problem with depending on what brakes I use.oh yeah he wants a $150.00

How much $$$ do you want to spend? You can have the canti bosses moved (or if moving them makes them unusable, new ones brazed onto the frame) for about $80, add shipping if you live in a town with no framebuilders. You'd then have a lugged CX-ish frame and could add the 700c wheelset of your choice. I woudn't remove the BB braze-ons even if I were going SS- you never know when you might want to return it to being a geared bike.