This Space for Rent

Ob-rando junk

Rando junk of the week

I’ve found many interesting things lying alongside the road during some of my loops in and around Portland (a couple of dead iPods, a shoulder bag, a few screwdrives and wrenches) but nothing quite as amusing as yesterday’s find; an ancient frame + fork, complete with Suntour column shifters, a Simplex rear derailer, and a pair of Dia-Compe centerpull brakes (I think they’re the 750s that were recently reissued) and (unsprung) levers. Oh, yeah, and the bottom bracket (the driveside is frozen in place, so I need to buy a large adjustable wrench to try and crack it free) contained a cottered axle.

Okay, calling this “rando junk” is stretching the truth, since I wasn’t out breveting away, but was instead just rambling around town as part of going to one of my LBSes for a pair of brakes for the Murray Baja Experience. When I first spotted it, it was in a heap with an old Miyata frame, but I was riding the MLCM so I didn’t have room to carry two frames, and when I went back to try and retrieve the frames later that evening, the Miyata was gone and there was nothing left except for this mass of gaspipe.

I spent this morning stripping the frame (mainly done, except for the frozen bottom bracket cup and the cups from the headset, both of which will need new tools for extracting). It’s not very high quality, and it’s heaaavy – 6 pounds for the frame + headset cups + bottom bracket cup, 2 pounds for the ridiculously low-trail fork. And it’s pretty rusty – I did an emergency framesavering with boeshield (I do have some framesaver, but I’ll save that for if I decide to keep the frame (if I keep it, I’m going to have to have it sandblasted and powdercoated, and there’s no point in using up framesaver if it’s just going to burn away during the powdercoating.)

I’m not sure of the exact geometry, but it’s a 23.5" top tube and 22" seat tube, or about halfway between the Trek and the MLCM. It might be worth cutting the rear triangle off and building up an actual longtail triangle, so I could get a low-trail Xtracycle that would be slightly better suited for brevets.