George's Bikes: A 650b Mercian and year end musings.

The Mercian in it's 650b shoes!

2018 is now done, where has the time gone? I've had a pretty busy year, again proving that you have to be in good shape to endure retirement! Despite some big gaps in my riding, I have been able to log over 4600 miles this year, a respectable total for me. This included 2 century rides, but no overnight tours this year. I'll have to try to get a couple in next year.

Nothing much changed in my equipment until November when I decided to sell my Felt V-100. It was a good bike but, but my garage space is limited and I didn't want to sit on it too long so I returned it to stock and sold it on Craigslist. Considering how little I paid for it initially, I really didn't lose much money, about $100 for 1 3/4 years use. (not counting the extras I had added, which stayed with me). It was worth it to sample a modern bike with an aluminum frame and carbon fork.

Anyhow, I did miss having a 650b bike with relatively wide tires. I decided to try my "Zac19" wheelset, (which I had previously used on my Surly Pacer and LHT), on my updated 1980 Mercian Olympic. Fitting the 650b wheels was not a problem, I already had the Mercian's rear dropouts spread to 135mm; but the brakes would be the challenge.

The 2 pictures above show brake clearances with the Tetro 559's. The rear brake shoes are just about maxed, but there's still some space in the front.

I had a set of Tektro 559 long reach brakes from my Pacer conversion on hand. However, these were made for the recessed allen fitting of modern frames. I was able to fit the front brake on the rear brake bridge, borrowing some hardware from my spares. (An interesting sidenote: modern front brake bolts are exactly the same length as the old fashioned rear brake bolts!)

The problem then was to fit the front brake. I considered looking for a longer replacement brakebolt but while on eBay I found a complete front 559 with the long bolt for $23. I just ordered that and installed it.

The Panaracer Col de Vie's promised to give me fits in installing. They can be hard to mount on the Zac19's and often will not set the bead correctly. After several attempts, which included spraying Pledge into the bead seat and over inflating the tires, I was ready to give up. But I did some online research and found that the problem sometimes can be with the rim tape interfering with the tire's seating. I pulled the tire and tube off one of the rims and had a look. Sure enough, the overly wide cloth rim tape had shifted position and was lying out of the well in some places! Also, it was soaking wet from all that Pledge I had sprayed on! I pulled that old tape out and replaced it with the narrow plastic strips that were on my 650b disc wheels left over from the Felt. The new tape snugged right into the well.

I now remounted the Col de Vie's. Now, while it didn't instantly seat, it was a lot closer. With about 15 lbs. of pressure in them, I was able to massage the bead into place. I then pumped the tires up to 65 lbs. and heard the reassuring snap of the beads hopping into place. Yay!

Chainstay clearance with the Col de Vie's. 38C tires should not be a problem.

While the new rim tape has seemed to help a lot with the tire seating problem, I hope to build up a set of wheels using a better rim. Clearance with the 37c Col de Vie's is adequate and I think most 38's will fit fine, but I'd have to do some metal bending to get anything bigger in there.

The old Blackburn rack.

Another addition to the Mercian is a front rack. I have had an old Jim Blackburn front rack languishing in my parts bin for literally decades. I realized that this rack would serve well for a Rando style handlebar bag. The rack seemed a little misaligned, it could have been bent sometime in the past 30 years! I got it aligned, (more or less), and it seems good, although not perfectly centered. I attached my enormous Ostrich bag to it and all seems good right now. Notice that I use 3 "P-clips to secure the bag to the rack.

I've taken the Mercian out for a few short rides and I've enjoyed it! I'm looking forward to riding some gravel roads soon. I'm also looking forward to building some nicer quality wheels. I've got the Deore T610 hubs on order, they look like Tiagra quality hubs that come in 135mm rear spacing. For rims, I decided on a pair of Velo Orange Diagonales. These will be 36 spoke rear/32 front wheels, like several of my other sets.

Handlebar Fail!

A minor disaster befell my K.O.M. Mercian on the last day of the year. I had just completed a climb up Sierra College Blvd when my left arm suddenly dropped. My handlebar had snapped at the stem! Well, it was an pretty old 3TTT, probably 30-35 years old, so I can't say I didn't get a good life out of it. Fortunately, the break occurred on the level crest of the hill and I didn't go down. I had to turn around and descend though. That was a little exciting. I started to feel a little shimmy developing about halfway down. A block from my house the last thread of material holding the bars together finally gave and completely separated. It was an interesting ride.

End of the line for a 3ttt Merckx bar!

Looking through my stock of handlebars, I decided to try out my old Nashbar Mustache bars. I've always had a hard time finding a place for these, I decided this would be a good time to give them a trial on a decent bike. I figure I'll leave them on for about 400 miles to see if I really like them.

Installation was a snap, since I didn't bother to install bar end shifters at this time. Everything transferred across with no drama. I used a pretty ugly stem since it was all I had that had the rise and length I wanted. (Generally mustache bars should be a bit higher and closer-in than drop bars). If I decide to keep these on, I'll want a better looking stem!