The red bike came
about as a result of a conversation with Charlie Brown of The Mountain Pedaler
in Eagle, Colorado. Charlie wanted me to build a replacement for the beat, mid-nineties
Schwinn cruiser that he was riding to work. I said: “cool, something that looks
like an old cruiser, but will accept modern parts and be light and fast?”
Charlie: “well, yeah, and I guess it should work on singletrack as well” me: “so this means a suspension fork as well?” Charlie: “sure, why not?”
So, the project went
from cruiser to mountain bike in the initial conversation, but it still had to
look like a cruiser. No problem.
The tubing selection included aircraft chrome-moly for the bent tubes and True Temper OX Platinum on the seat tube, head tube, and chainstays. The tubes are all joined by fillet brazing with nickel –silver. I like brazing because it is beautiful to look at, and also structurally superior, in my opinion, to welding because it is done at a lower temperature than welding and avoids nasties like “heat affected zones”, crystallization of metal, and stresses built into the frame.
Charlie wanted to ride the bike as a singlespeed, but also have the option to run full gears on it, so I decided to use Paragon Machine Works’ fantastic sliding rear dropouts.
The
design of the frame takes some obvious cues from some of the 1950s bicycles,
but I wanted to keep it light, and also somewhat fresh, so some of the details
have changed. Since it is supposed to look like an
old cruiser, I thought that internal cable routing would be a must. I think
that cables can visually distracting with the curved tubes.
The
cable routing for the rear brake and rear derailleur is integrated into the
seatstays, which go all the way from the rear dropouts to the headtube.
The
routing for the front derailleur is integrated into the central top tube.
Since the bike would be used as either a singlespeed or as a geared bike, the unused derailleur cable routing would have to be plugged to keep water out of the frame when used as a singlespeed. I made some neat brass plugs with a tiny set screw to keep them in place.
The paint color was chosen to go along with the retro cruiser theme, and accents the curves nicely.
The bike
has clearance for 2.4” tires, and weighs in under 24 pounds as built with a
120mm travel fork.
