There are more city bike photos here. I'll mount the front rack and reverse levers soon and post more photos.
Here are a few details:
Built to measure by Ahren Rogers
Also available as a mixte
Rear dérailleur or internal-geared hub
Fillet brazed Reynolds 531 frame
650B wheels up to 40mm wide
French style fork bend with 39mm trail
Generator mount
Two water bottle mounts
Demi-Porteur and Maxi-Porteur stainless steel racks will be available
Frame price: $1150, (complete bike also available)
16 April, 2007
More City Bike Photos and Details
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
20 comments:
Wow, looks awesome Chris.
Is that CLB chainguard going to be available or just on the showroom bike?
Drooling now! That is one awesome looking bicycle.
Very nice.
Pardon my french, but that's a f-ing beautiful bike.
One question though: Why no rear brake cable stop built into the frame?
Andy, Originally I intended to use caliper brakes and all modern components, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
Byron, If we can find a stash of CLB chainguards we will sell them. We will also look into having a run of reproductions made.
Also, I'm working on a full chain case.
Very very nice. I just noticed two things (and only because I spent some of this weekend making up a somewhat similar city bike):
- you might want to angle the chain guard up a bit, so that when it's on the innermost cog there's still clearance, and
- it looks like you might want to fettle a bit with the fender/pump interface, just so it doesn't rattle.
- lastly, the decals are awfully bright - perhaps a nice burnt orange would sort of flesh out the Velo Orange concept, and be a rough match for the color of the leather and handgrips.
Just my $.02. Obviously a stunning machine!
Chris, I don't blame you. It looks perfect with the classic components. And I think the Stronglight crank looks just right.
To build one up similar to your example, what's the approximate cost as a full bike? I know some of that stuff comes from the wonderful world of ebay, I'd still like to wrap my head around it.
That is one of the nicest bikes I've ever seen.
David, An orange logo on a black bike, as was pointed out by another customer with a fine sense of style, reminds one of Halloween. But I might try a cream color.
The pump should be a skinny old French model.
Andy, I'd guess there are under or around $1000 worth of parts on that bike. The only rare bits are the chainguard and brake levers and the old Ideale seat clamp. If you don't care about the exact model of seat post, stem, chainguard, and levers we could probably build a complete similar bike for around $2000.
Chris
I went to Princeton so I know the feeling. Forgot about that. A cream color would indeed be better than that ... something subtle ... I'm not really sure if a city bike should have a logo at all, although it's certainly the Owner's Prerogative when it's your company! ;-)
Wouldn't the Brand Name be better in some shade or shades of ORANGE, for name recognition? Pretty bike.
pretty bike--although the plastic levers (brake and shifter) are surprising choices. Personally, those sorts of things detract from the bike--unless I am mistaken, 30 year old plastic does not give the sort of performance a handcrafted bike is designed for; using it could appear merely fashionable, there only because both are french and old. I am sure both work fine, but then so do planet bike fenders and BMX grips (both plastic as well).
Still--in light of everything, these are sort of hair splitting issues--it IS just a bike, after all....
M Burdge
Great looking bike. For a working commute bike, the option of 700C wheels would allow the use tires such as the kevlar-belted Paselas.
The white logo looks good - nice a crisp. DJ may be right that a little off-white might be nice, to give a little more vintage look. I have to purge my soul. It may be blasphemous, but I really don't like orange. There I feel better.
Neil, you realize you may be burned as a heretic for your comment. I actually don't care for darker frame colors in general; someday I'll get my Trek 412 repainted. The color is dark grey, not quite black.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing those racks!
Chris, as always your forethought and elegant tastes give me great relief in knowing that there are people who care about astehetics/functionality/simplicity. I Can't wait to see the full chaincase and porteur racks (which would look stunning on this bike). I'm hoping the chaincase and rack may resemble some of the Alex Singer designs.
As a previous poster said, i would have loved to see a brazed on cable hanger and also braze ons for centerpulls. And I'm hoping for a porteur sytle rack that'll mount to the fork crown and be able to handle at the very least a case of beer.
Oh yes... one more thing.... How bout a nice head badge.
What do you mean by chaincase? A veloorange design? Dutch chaincase modified to fit, or a "two wing chaincover" as used in europe?
I hope you're not planning on using plastic levers on customer's bikes. My flea market PLX 40 had something like that and it seemed like most of the force applied was wasted bending the plastic lever.
Would it be possible to order some regular length 650B Honjos? Most people don't have custom made bikes or french or japanese camping bikes which means we can't easily use two stays to support the front fender. A 650B Honjo fender leaves us with a large amount of unsupported fender ahead of the fork - if the front rack doesn't have a braze on - that makes transporting the bicycle on a bus rather difficult. Have a look at the Bleriots and Salukis and conversions on flikr.com and you'll see what I'm talking about. One could move the fender back as you have done in the photo but you then have a fender that may too close to the ground for an aesthetically pleasing mudflap location. You may also have some difficulty moving the bike down steps. If the bike goes down a step head first the front fender may scrape the edge of the step or curb. This is the problem I had getting my bike out of my apartment which is two steps above the sidewalk. I experimented with various positions using a sliding bridge clip and wound up moving the fender forward of where it is on your city bike. This gave me more room to use a mudflap and created a sort of "soft fender" extension that can take getting knocked about on a daily basis but made it impossible to transport the bike on the bus.
Just an idea. There are at present no sources for regular length 650B Honjos in this country.
James, The VO Chaincase will be a copy of a Herse or Singer chaincase.
We have long 650b fenders on order. They can be cut down so I don't see any reason to stock a shorter and less functional length.
The plastic levers are temporary, but they work very well.
Post a Comment