Will it fit?

[Marian]

I saw a badly abused lugged steel road bike today that, at first
glance, looks like it meets all my requirements for a new frame.

The frame looks like it is sufficiently small and the threaded headset
currently has the handlebars up good and high, which, since this is
intended to be a touring/daily use road bike is important.

The probably 27" wheels have enough clearance for full metal fenders
and yet still have lots of clearance between wheel and seat-tube.
I've got 700c wheels. Those are smaller than 27", right?

Completely unknown brand name (not even recognizable as one of the
known Chinese brands). The bike appears to have been spare-parted a
few times because although there are places for derailleurs (missing)
I find it hard to believe that a random Chinese road bike would have
ever started out with a triple.

Horizontal dropouts.

I'm going to try to take my mechanic by to see it tomorrow around
lunchtime and ask his opinion but figure before I do that to start
here. By the time it becomes lunchtime tomorrow and the two of us are
off work from race stuff I'll probably have already gotten at least
one answer on here to let me know whether it is worth wasting his time
for us to go by together.

I'm worrying about the bottom bracket and about the wheel spacing. Is
there any way short of measuring tapes to guess if it'll fit?

-M

[Ryan Cousineau]

In article <1192965889.087136.63720@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.co m>,
Marian <marian.rosenberg@gmail.com> wrote:

> I saw a badly abused lugged steel road bike today that, at first
> glance, looks like it meets all my requirements for a new frame.
>
> The frame looks like it is sufficiently small and the threaded headset
> currently has the handlebars up good and high, which, since this is
> intended to be a touring/daily use road bike is important.
>
> The probably 27" wheels have enough clearance for full metal fenders
> and yet still have lots of clearance between wheel and seat-tube.
> I've got 700c wheels. Those are smaller than 27", right?

Yes. ISO 622 (700C) vs ISO 630 (27"), where those numbers are the
effective rim diameters in mm.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tire_sizing.html#iso

> Completely unknown brand name (not even recognizable as one of the
> known Chinese brands). The bike appears to have been spare-parted a
> few times because although there are places for derailleurs (missing)
> I find it hard to believe that a random Chinese road bike would have
> ever started out with a triple.
>
> Horizontal dropouts.
>
> I'm going to try to take my mechanic by to see it tomorrow around
> lunchtime and ask his opinion but figure before I do that to start
> here. By the time it becomes lunchtime tomorrow and the two of us are
> off work from race stuff I'll probably have already gotten at least
> one answer on here to let me know whether it is worth wasting his time
> for us to go by together.
>
> I'm worrying about the bottom bracket and about the wheel spacing. Is
> there any way short of measuring tapes to guess if it'll fit?

I'm not up on the ins and outs of China's domestic-market road bikes,
but the quick and dirty guess is that if it takes 27" wheels, it has an ISO bottom bracket, which is good news.

The wheel spacing is moot. There's a 99.9% chance the front uses the standard wheel spacing, and whatever the rear (and, for that matter, the front) actually is, steel frames can easily be cold-set to whatever is necessary.

--
Ryan Cousineau rcousine@sfu.ca http://www.wiredcola.com/
"My scenarios may give the impression I could be an excellent crook.
Not true - I am a talented lawyer." - Sandy in rec.bicycles.racing

[Marian]

Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> In article <1192965889.087136.63720@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.co m>,
> Marian <marian.rosenberg@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I saw a badly abused lugged steel road bike today that, at first
> > glance, looks like it meets all my requirements for a new frame.
> >
> > The frame looks like it is sufficiently small and the threaded headset
> > currently has the handlebars up good and high, which, since this is
> > intended to be a touring/daily use road bike is important.
> >
> > The probably 27" wheels have enough clearance for full metal fenders
> > and yet still have lots of clearance between wheel and seat-tube.
> > I've got 700c wheels. Those are smaller than 27", right?
>
> Yes. ISO 622 (700C) vs ISO 630 (27"), where those numbers are the
> effective rim diameters in mm.
>
> http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tire_sizing.html#iso
>
> > Completely unknown brand name (not even recognizable as one of the
> > known Chinese brands). The bike appears to have been spare-parted a
> > few times because although there are places for derailleurs (missing)
> > I find it hard to believe that a random Chinese road bike would have
> > ever started out with a triple.
> >
> > Horizontal dropouts.
> >
> > I'm going to try to take my mechanic by to see it tomorrow around
> > lunchtime and ask his opinion but figure before I do that to start
> > here. By the time it becomes lunchtime tomorrow and the two of us are
> > off work from race stuff I'll probably have already gotten at least
> > one answer on here to let me know whether it is worth wasting his time
> > for us to go by together.
> >
> > I'm worrying about the bottom bracket and about the wheel spacing. Is
> > there any way short of measuring tapes to guess if it'll fit?
>
> I'm not up on the ins and outs of China's domestic-market road bikes,
> but the quick and dirty guess is that if it takes 27" wheels, it has an ISO bottom bracket, which is good news.

It's a copy. Of SOMETHING. No idea what it is a copy of but it
certainly is a copy. Wouldn't have bothered making it if it weren't a
copy. Really no point.

The bike frame I'm replacing is very clearly a racing frame. Except
for having been made out of about 5 pounds of aluminum.

My favorites are the oversized aluminum frame lookalike tubes on bikes
that are actually made out of steel.

One brand has a almost not crap aluminum mountain bike frame with very
definitely crap components which looks really really nice due to the
carbon fiber paint job. I had a riding buddy who owned one of them
for a while and he absolutely loved screwing with people's brains
because they'd pick it up expecting it to be a lightweight dream
machine and end up finding themselves attempting to lift a 35 pound
bike with two fingers.

I've also seen fancy aerodynamic track time trial bike copies (twice)
that were actually steel and achieved the fancy shape by way of
(heavy) plastic covers (like that stuff little kids' playground
equipment is made out of). I was especially impressed by the wood
grain on the one 'track' bike.

One of my friends has an abso-bloody-lutely perfectly fits every
single criteria I want touring frame ... complete with eyelets on the
front fork. However, it has two major problems.

1) It belongs to him
2) It's Hi-Ten steel and is _really_ heavy. (I suspect concrete may
have been poured inside the tubes just in case it needed to be a
little heavier.)

> The wheel spacing is moot. There's a 99.9% chance the front uses the standard wheel spacing, and
> whatever the rear (and, for that matter, the front) actually is, steel frames can easily be cold-set to
> whatever is necessary.

Yay!