My girlfriend had reached the performance limits of her 27" wheeled Bianchi touring frame, and was getting the need for a faster/more efficient ride. She was really attached to the frame though as it had a lot of sentimental value, and there wasn't enough space in her apartment to keep two bikes.
While just switching to 700c wheels would have been relatively simple, the geometry of the frame would have remained early 80s touring style with seat and headtube angles in the 70/71 degree range, the wheelbase would be really long, and the rear frame spacing would be 130mm.
So this is where I come in. Itching for a little metalwork, I decided to weld, not braze, track ends onto her old frame to get her angles close to common road geometry, shorten her wheelbase, and respace her frame.
Here are some pics of the process.

Let me know what you guys and gals think:

Original ends after bending to 120mm. Notice that the slots are angled upwards above the chainstay.

Point of no return. Oh yea, this is my first attempt at frame work.

After grinding out slots and getting all the old braze out, the new ends were mocked up and ready to be tacked in.

Roughly aligned:

Commence to welding!


Closeup examples of my welds:

Shaping and contouring the dropouts:

End result:

She's now using flatbars with MTB grips.
New everything except seatpost, saddle, stem, and frame. I'd ride it.

It would have come out a little better but the first welder I used was too hot, and the second welder I ended up using ran out of gas in the middle of the project so I had to carry the welder to a different tank across the shop and use an extension cord. Big voltage drop. You fellow welders know what I'm talking about. Plus, due to time constraints, I only had about two and a half hours to do the work so I was a little rushed.

I only have a rough contour right now, but it could stand to take a little more material out to smooth out the curves. A little work with a flap disk and some metal polish and I think I'll be happy with it.
I don't have the numbers in front of me right now, but using a magnetic angle finder and a tape measure, the BB height was roughly the same (still taller than my fuji!), the wheelbase with the new fork was shortened about 1.25 inches, and the seattube angle steepened by about 2 degrees.
I didn't mess with the bridge because of the seatstay/seatube junction; I thought there would be too much angular preload on a brazed joint that already experiences a lot of shear. Plus this bike gets ridden in all conditions, so I didn't want to risk messing up the fender mount.
The GF likes the improved ride of 700c wheels quite a bit, and has found that her cruising speed is about the same as mine. She even passed me on some of the hills in the Upper East Side. For shame!

pretty cool to change the whole geometry with just changing a few things. good job!

I've also been thinking about putting track ends in mine, but I can't seem to justify getting rid of the old Camp 1010 drops. They're just too nice looking. Nice work.

Nice job! Very well done, especially considering that it's your first foray into framework. The only downside is that she got rid of that awesome striped bar tape.

No one think it looks like crap? No critque? No "yo momma so fat" jokes?

It looks like crap.

But on the real, cheers for a DIY job.

He said he wasn't done smoothing and contouring yet.
So, reserve judgement on how it looks.
Otherwise, very rad.

Something about looking at even a picture of the welding spark makes me squint. I'm getting my goggles.

He just axed me for judgement, yo.

I think your finishing job looks like crap but that weld bead is totally tits. did you do a bunch of tacks? I'm guessing the stays are too thin to do any fancy torch moves. I'm a little confused. the first welding pic looks like you're tig welding, the next one looks like you're mig welding, but in the background there looks to be a miller dynasty tig machine. then the weld pic looks mig. so which is it? as far as finishing, I'd recommend getting some 3m pads for your grinder. they work really well. I can send you some if you can't find them.

huh?

Looks awesome. I'm jealous of your shop space!!! I'm trying to find a little right now and everything is so damn expensive.

Yep, made me squint too.

The shop space(es) was(were) an embarassment of riches, but there were little things like empty tanks and voltage drop that kept things from being perfect. I ended up using the Hobart 140 and an angle grinder despite having a TIG and plasma cutter at my disposal.

The welds were fancy, not just tacks so there was considerable penetration. The mistake was to try and build up the weld so I could grind it off to look like a fillet braze. It will be a lot smoother with some work, but again I only had a few hours to get this far so I rushed the entire process.

Overall the process was very worthwhile IMO. The bike is definitely much quicker and feels much more balanced than it would have with just a fork and wheel swap.

How are you going to paint the new ends? Get the whole bike in on your group powdercoating?

yep. Mel wants a dark lavender pupleish color. I'm re-doing the british racing green.

whoa. that is freakin' cool. this takes my track end-vy to a whole new level.

rowr!

Yo mama so nasty, she used Secret and it told

it works! all that matters

After after...

Gorgeous! I can't even imagine the amount of boyfriend points you racked up on this one.

Thats awesome. Really awesome.

What's the ratios on that? Gearing looks pretty tall. I ask because I'm building a conversion, and only have my experience trying different combos on my road bikes so far to help me choose my gearing!

So how exactly do you have a space like that in the middle of freaking NYC? Trustafarian?

he mentioned that they don't have room for more than two bikes in (edit) her apartment - which doesn't sound like a huge space. i suspect he rented the workspace or used academic facilities, as he mentioned he had "only two and a half hours" to do the project.