1963 Witcomb update

 Well, it's slow going, as I don't have a huge amount of spare time, but I'm chipping away at cleaning up and overhauling that Witcomb track bike I shared a few weeks ago.  It's pretty remarkable how well it's cleaning up.  It seems there was just a fine layer of filth over a bike in otherwise great shape.

I stripped all the parts off the frame, and gave it a good washing, first with diluted Dawn dish soap.  For the more stubborn bits of grunge, I used Simple Green, and in a few spots, a bit of denatured alcohol.  I had to be very sparing with the latter, or it would take up paint.  For the chromed parts of the rear triangle and front fork, I used Quick Glo, which works really well for cleaning up chrome and making it shine.  You can see the results below.

Before:

After:

I've also cleaned up most of the components, and have unlaced the wheels, since I won't be using the original sewup rims.  The front rim had a nasty dent in it, so it had to be replaced for sure, and since I was going to have to re-lace at least once wheel, I figured I'd swap out to clincher rims.  Clincher tires are just easier to deal with, and less expensive too.

Before:

 

 

After:

One odd thing I discovered is the bar tape was originally blue, and appears to have been two different shades of blue.  I never would have guessed this from what it looked like on the bike, but as I stripped it off the original colors were revealed.

There were a few paint chips, and rather than try to find a good match, I decided to just cover the bare steel with clear nail polish.  I'll be waxing the frame with Meguiar's carnauba wax, and then the next step is to start putting it all back together again.  I need to lace up the wheels of course, using the original hubs, new spokes, and a set of Mavic MA-2 rims a friend is sending me.  One oddity is that the bike has 32 spokes in the front, 36 in the rear.  Most bikes of this era had the same number of spokes in both wheels, but the British did things a bit differently sometimes.  It does make sense, as the rear wheel sees more stress than the front.

Stay tuned for more updates as things progress.

Photo album, with new additions:

1963 Witcomb Track Bike

A teaser...

 ... of a post to come.

Vitus 979, on the roof of my VW.

Vitus 979, on the roof of my VW.

Just picked this up today, and I'm looking forward to fixing it up and getting it rolling.  Something different for me - a bonded (aka glued) Vitus 979 from the 80s!  

I've been curious about these since they were first introduced in the late 70s, and ridden by a number of pros, probably most notably Sean Kelly of Ireland.  This one showed up locally on Facebook, at a price that seemed reasonable, in a size that will fit me.  The tires (yet another bike with sewups!) are completely shot, so I couldn't take it for a test ride, but I've heard enough about these that I figured it was worth the risk.

Stay tuned for more news on the bike as I get a chance to start working on it, and then riding it!

Light & Legendary: Vitus 979

 

My 1981 Austro-Daimler Vent Noir II

Here's another one of those "bikes of my youthful dreams" machines.  As regular readers (are there any these days?) know, back when I was a teenager growing up in the DC area, one my favorite pastimes was visiting bike shops.  We had some really great ones, from basic "mom and pop" stores to ones that catered to real aficionados, with high end racing and touring bikes.  It  really was the classic "kid in a candy shop" kind of situation, but the "candy" cost way more than I could ever afford back then.

1976 A-D catalog

On one of my visits to College Park Bicycles, I spotted a really sharp looking bike from a company I really didn't know much about - an Austro-Daimler Vent Noir.  This was the first version of the bike, which came in a striking all black finish, with gold lettering and trim, and gold rims.  It also featured the first version of Shimano's Dura Ace component group, anodized in black to match the bike.  Vent Noir means "black wind" in French, thus the color theme.  Back then, there just weren't very many dealers for the brand, so it was a fun surprise to see one, and one so eye-catching.

A few years later, at the same shop, I spied a newer version of the same bike, the Vent Noir II.  While I'm sure others will disagree, I found the new version even more beautiful than the original.  The frame was treated in a "smoked chrome" finish that was really remarkable, and like nothing I had ever seen.  The component group had also changed, to Campagnolo, the brand that was the "top dog" in road cycling back then.  On the Vent Noir II, they used the Nuovo Gran Sport group, rather than the higher end Nuovo Record or top of the line Super Record.  Functionally the differences aren't really all that great, and even the finish and appearance, while not as spiffy as the Record groups, was pretty darned nice.  The one exception is the rear derailleur, which is really rather homely for a Campy piece.  It works just fine, but I understand why some folks back in the day substituted either a Nuovo Record unit, or something from another brand entirely.  If you go back and look at the post about my Mercian, you'll see the original owner specced the Nuovo Gran Sport group, but got the lovely Huret Jubilee derailleur instead.

Craig's List photo of Vent Noir II

I kept my eye open for a nice, used Vent Noir (either version) for many years, but they just aren't that common, and finding one in a 62cm or thereabouts wasn't easy.  Fast forward to 2016, when I found a Craigs List ad for one in Fredericksburg, VA, about an hour and a half (depending on traffic) south of me.  The photos looked good, so I took the drive down to see it.  For a bike as old as it was, it was in really remarkable shape, and a quick test ride confirmed that I would enjoy riding it for years.  On top of all that, the price was fair, so we closed the deal pretty quickly.


Once I got it home and got a closer look at it, I was even more impressed with the overall condition.  Most of the decals were in good shape, with only a few spots where they had been scraped off, none bad enough to really bother me.  It's an old bike, so a little patina doesn't bother me.  Mechanically, it was in very good shape too, and about the only thing mechanically I decided to replace was the brake and shifter cables and housing.  As "correct" as it would be to have kept the original parts there, I'm a fan of functionality, and a set of new, modern cables and teflon lined housing definitely made things work better all around.

The other things I decided to change were the various "contact points" - saddle, bar wrap, and pedals.  The bike came with a cheap plastic saddle with crappy foam, so that got replaced right away with a Brooks B17 Special with copper rivets in the honey brown color.  To match that, I also used matching Brooks leather bar wrap in honey as well.  That color really complements the smoked chrome frame color!  Aside from missing a dust cap, the Campy pedals were fine, but the "quill" design does not work with my big feet, so off they came, replaced by a set of double sided SPD compatible pedals.  I like riding in SPD sandals, so that was an easy choice.  I have more "correct" looking pedals and toe clips I can use if the spirit moves me, though.

Finally, the last thing I changed was the tires.  It came to me with a set of low end Continental Ultra Sports, in 700x23 size, which are pretty narrow and harsh riding for my tastes.  It will come as no surprise to those who know me that I swapped those out for a set of Japanese Panaracer Paselas, in 700x28.  I really like those tires, because they look great with the tan, skin wall sidewalls, and they ride great too.  Much smoother than the Contis, but still plenty "fast" for me.  I could probably fit a wider 32mm tire, but for this bike the the 28s just seem right.

The finishing touch was a Carradice Barley saddlebag in olive green with brown straps, which again just looks great with the finish on the frame.  I think all in all it's a really classy looking bike, not really "flashy" at first glance, but beautiful when you stop to look.  And how does it ride?  Great!  Smooth, light, and fast rolling, and it handles really well too.  It's more at the "race" end of the spectrum than some of my bikes, but not to much so that it's twitchy of uncomfortable.  Having finally gotten my hands (and butt) on one after all those years, my early desire to own one seems well founded.

Here she is, after the changes I made, except for the pedals.

Here's my Flickr photo album for the bike:

1981 Austro-Daimler Vent Noir II

And here are a few online resources about the bike and brand that I found really helpful and informative:

Austro-Daimler: The Bicycle That The Owner Of A Bösendorfer Imperial Piano Would Ride

Bikes to Like: Ritchie’s 1979 Austro-Daimler Vent Noir II

Classic Austro-Daimler Bicycles

In the shop: Austro-Daimler Vent Noir

1979 Austro Daimler Vent Noir II

1976 Austro Daimler Vent Noir

By the way, if anyone has a source, online or physical, for a 1981 Austro-Daimler catalog showing the Vent Noir II, I'd love to see it.

I should mention that Austro-Daimler was actually one label of a company called Steyr-Daimler-Puch which produced bikes under the names Steyr, Austro-Daimler, and Puch.  In the US, it seemed there were more Puchs than the others, but that might have just been in my area.  The Steyr labeled bikes I've seen have all been utilitarian three speed "city bikes" much like the old English Raleigh Sports and similar bikes.  They also built bikes for Sears in the 60s under their J.C. Higgins, Ted Williams, and Free Spirit labels, including one model with 531 tubing and Campagnolo components.  Yes, from Sears!  There are other folk who know a lot more about that chapter than I do, so you might do some searching if you're really interested.

My Other '73 Schwinn

Well, since I've actually managed to create a couple of new posts this year, let's see if I can keep it rolling.  The best way I think of to do that right now is to try to catch up on some of the bikes I have in my collection that I haven't written about.  Buckle up, because that's a surprisingly long list.  I don't know if I'll get to them all, but here's a start.  Some of you might have seen my posts about my 1973 chrome Schwinn Paramount.  The bike I'm writing about now was the next model down in the Schwinn product line, the Sports Tourer.

 Like many of my bikes, this is one I looked at longingly as a teenager.  We didn't really have a lot of Schwinn dealers near where I grew up, but they showed up in magazines and I got my hands on a catalog at some point, and got to know the various models.  Of course, like just about any cyclist in the 70s, I drooled over the top of the line, hand-built Paramount.  But another model in those catalogs that caught my eye was the Sports Tourer.  Made in the USA, and more affordable than a Paramount, it seemed like a great bike.  I didn't actually lay eyes on one until college, when a guy I shared an apartment with one summer had one, and that just made me want one even more, because in some ways it was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

1973 Schwinn Catalog Sports Tourer Page

 Now, when most people think about 70s Schwinns, the bike they are most likely to think of is the Varsity. One of the first things that comes to mind about that bike is the sheer heft of the thing.  While a lot of entry level 10 speed bikes weighed around 30 pounds, the Varsity tipped the scales at somewhere around 40!  Why is that?  And why was it so popular and sold in such huge numbers?  From what I've read over the years, Schwinn set out to build a 10 speed bike that could take the abuse dished out by a typical American adolescent, and I have to say, they succeeded.  While not light, they were definitely sturdy and durable, and you'll still see a fair number of them rolling along today.

The average person taking a quick glance at a Sports Tourer most likely wouldn't see a big difference between it and a Varsity.  While the Paramount used "lugged" frame construction, where the tubes are joined with the use of external sleeves, the Sports Tourer was built using "fillet brazing."  At first glance, the joints look a lot like the "electroforged" (welded) ones on the Varsity and other lower end Schwinns, but it's a totally different process, involving lower temperatures and higher grade steel tubing, to yield a lighter yet strong frame.  I won't get into the details, because it's better covered here:

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/schwinn-braze.html

And here:

 https://www.sheldonbrown.com/varsity.html

 For many years, the idea of having one of the fillet brazed Schwinns was on my "one of these days, if one happens along" list.  It didn't quite make the "gotta have it" category like a Paramount, or some of the other high end bikes like Mercian or Proteus or Masi, but it was always there in the back of my mind.  Well, a few years back, I don't recall exactly how I stumbled across it, but I found a Craigs List ad for what looked to be a very nice 1973 Sports Tourer.  The only challenge was that it was about 300 miles from me, but it turns out only about 30 minutes from my older brother, who understands my bicycle collecting, since he has a rather large number of guitars in his house.  A few emails and phone calls later, and the bike was in my brother's hands.  It took a few months to work it out, but on a trip to the DC area, my brother brought the bike to our mom's house, where I picked it up shortly after.  Based on the photos in the ad, I figured it was in good shape, but it looked even better in person.

1973 Schwinn Sports Tourer, as it was when I first got it.

 Once I got it back to the shop, I started looking it over and thinking about things I liked and things I wanted to change.  For the most part, the bike seemed to have all of the original equipment, with a few exceptions.  I decided I wanted to get it closer to original while at the same time making it more enjoyable to ride.  The parts that were definitely not original were the freewheel cluster, which was a very narrow range "corncob" style, more suited to a racing bike, and the tires, which were a narrow, high pressure black wall from Continental.  The white Dia Compe brake lever hoods were also most likely not original, as the levers themselves were made by Weinmann, which I believe was standard for Schwinn back then, and the catalog shows bare levers.  (Correction, the hoods were Weinmann, not Dia Compe.) Also, the bike had Huret shift levers mounted on the down tube, while the catalog shows it with the rather imposing Schwinn Twin-Stik stem mounted levers.  Finally, the original pedals would probably have been made by Lyotard of France, not the slightly more modern SR pedals from Japan.

Now that I'd assessed the bike and given it some thought, I made the following changes:

• Installed a period correct Shimano freewheel with 14 - 32 teeth, with "skipped teeth" on the largest sprockets.  This gave me both a more practical gearing range and the same or similar to what would have originally been on the bike.
• Swapped the tires for some new 27 x 1-1/4" Panaracer Paselas, which not only look right for the era, but ride great, both swift and comfortable.  Some of you have probably noticed a lot of my bikes have the Paselas on them, so I clearly like them.
• Replaced the brake lever hoods with black ones, because while originally there would have been no hoods at all, I prefer the feel of rubber hoods.  Also, the bike would have originally had "safety levers" on the brakes as well, but I don't care for those either, so I left those off.
• While I like down tube shifter levers, I like bar end shifters even more, and I happened to have a set of Schwinn-Approved bar end shifters (made by SunTour), which the catalog refers to as optional "fingertip controls", so I installed those.
• Finally, while I could have probably found a pair of the correct Lyotard pedals (I might actually have had a pair in a bin somewhere), I really prefer the very similar looking, but better made MKS Sylvan Touring pedals, so I put a set of those and some extra large toe clips on the bike, to accommodate my size 13-14 feet.
  

While I was at it, I gave the bike a thorough overhaul and cleaning, and even polished up some of the parts, like the funky Nervar triple crankset.  (Correction, as a reader pointed out, it's a DOUBLE crankset, not a triple.). The Brooks saddle that came with the bike was in excellent shape, but the bar tape wasn't that great, so I replaced it with a similar blue padded tape.  Finally, the spiffy little blue saddlebag was too cool to not keep, so it stayed on the bike, as did the classic Zefal HP pump.  

One of the nice features about the 1973 and later Sports Tourers is that they came with a Scwhinn-Approved Le Tour rear derailleur, which was essentially a re-badged Shimano Crane, one of the nicest shifting wide range derailleurs of the day.  Paired with the SunTour shift levers (a personal favorite), it changes gears just great.  The 1971-72 models had the Campagnolo Gran Turismo, which despite being made by the famous Italian company, didn't shift that great and was really, really heavy.  

I've thought about putting fenders on the bike, but haven't gotten around to it.  To be truly Schwinn-accurate, I'd probably have to find some chrome steel ones, but I'm not sure I want to add any more weight to what isn't a really light bike to begin with.  Of course, SKS (formerly ESGE) plastic fenders were popular back then, and even current models would look right.  Or maybe something shiny from Velo Orange, that's lighter but still shiny.   For now, I'll keep it as it is, and just watch the weather.

All in all, I'm really happy with how the bike turned out, and it's a lot of fun to ride.  Not the lightest or fastest bike out there for sure, but super comfortable and smooth. 

1973 Schwinn Sports Tourer, after overhaul and changes.

You can see more photos of the bike, both "before" and "after" shots, here:

1973 Schwinn Sports Tourer

A few links to other, similar bikes, and information on the line in general:

http://www.ironweedbp.com/ironweed-blog/chicago-fillet-the-1974-sports-tourer 

https://16incheswestofpeoria.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/40-years-later-the-schwinn-sports-tourer/ 

http://bikeretrogrouch.blogspot.com/2014/09/handbuilt-schwinns.html

Sometimes, bikes find me!

 Honestly, I haven't been seeking out bikes to acquire for some time now.  But in the last two months, I've had two bikes turn up, and both of them too good a deal to pass up!

First was a bike that I found out about through the IBOB (Internet Bridgestone Owners Bunch) mailing list.  A member of the list posted "Motobecane Grand Record looking for a new home (Free)."  It caught my eye because I've always been interested in the Grand Record and Grand Jubile models from Motobecane, so I read the listing.  The next thing that caught  my eye was that the poster said the owner of the bike (not them) really wanted to do things locally, but might be willing to ship if need be, and that they were close to MY shop, so I could probably help with packing it up.  The final piece of the puzzle was seeing the photos and description, indicating the bike was my size!  A few emails back and forth, and a trip in my car, and the bike was mine.

Waiting for rebuild.

It's pretty filthy and in need of a lot of tlc, for sure, but I can handle all of that.  When I got it home, I was trying to figure out why the front wheel was cockeyed, and discovered that the front fork had a pretty serious bend to the left.  But I have the tools and know-how to fix that, and took the opportunity to make it a teaching moment with one of my staff.  Win-win!

Now, given the amount of work it's going to need, plus having to give some thought to just how I want to use it and thus how I want to build it up, I've put that bike on the back burner for a bit.  That decision was finalized when the second bike showed up, as it is going to be easier and faster to figure out and get rolling.

 My shop works with an organization called Bikes for the World, that collects donated bikes and ships them overseas to be used for transportation, mostly in Africa and Central America.  People that want to donate bikes can drop them off with us, and once a week or so, BFTW comes by with a truck and trailer to pick up anything we've taken in.  Typically, my staff and I will cast an eye over the giant pile of bikes on the truck/trailer rig, and now and then something interesting will be there.  Last week, as I was walking toward him, the driver said "there's one here you should take a look at!"

Well, I went over and looked, and it was quite a surprise.  There in the truck was a tall, yellow bike with drop handlebars like a road bike, but it wasn't a road bike.  No, it was a track bike, a "fixed gear" or "fixed wheel" as the Brits sometimes call it.  Which is probably the appropriate term, since it was built by Witcomb Lightweight Cycles of London.  Witcomb never really had a huge presence in the US market, but US frame builders Richard Sachs, Peter Weigle, Ben Serrota, and Chris Chance trained there in the early 70s, later going on to be major figures in the US bicycle industry.  There was also a Witcomb USA for a few years, which included Sachs, Weigle, and Chance as builders, but that's a different story.

After a short discussion, in which we agreed the bike made no sense for any of the partners in Africa or Central America, and the fact that BFTW had just held their annual sale of bikes that didn't suit the overseas partners, I was offered the bike for a good deal.  Anyone who knows me would not be surprised that I accepted it!  I honestly couldn't resist, as it's a pretty uncommon brand AND uncommon style of bike, plus, I was pretty sure it was pretty old, 70s or older.  It was covered in a pretty good layer of dust and other filth, but it didn't seem to have any serious rust or issues, so I was really looking forward to tear into it and get it rolling again.  Apparently, it had been left at the local transfer station (aka, the dump), which seems a sad end for such a fine bike.  My best guess is the original owner passed away, and whomever ended up dealing with their stuff had no idea it was worth saving.  I'm sure glad it came my way!

Right off the truck, sitting in front of the shop.

Over the last few days, I've had some time to get started, and learned a few things along the way.  First, based on the serial number, it was built sometime in 1963, which makes it one of the older bikes I own.  The seat tube measures 24", which is pretty much about as short as I'm comfortable riding in general, and the frame was built with Reynolds 531 butted main tubes.  The seat stay cluster is kind of cool, using a "full wrap" design.  I think most of the parts are original, aside from the Phil Wood sealed bearing bottom bracket and the Weinmann brake and levers.  In fact, being a fixed wheel, it might have had no brake at all originally, since traditionally they don't come with brakes, and brakes are not allowed in a velodrome.  The wheels have Campagnolo Pista (track) hubs, which have date codes indicating they were also made in 1963.  The rims are MAVIC Championat Du Monde, and the tires are Clement tubulars (aka sewups).  The crank is a Campy Pista with 165mm arms and 47 tooth chainring, for 1/8" chains, connected to a Campy track cog in back.  The handlebars and stem are from Cinelli, though I'm not sure which model at this point.

Full wrap seatstays

Campy Pista 165mm cranks

Campy Pista hub and cog, frame track ends with adjusters.

Cinelli bars and stem, Weinmann levers

I breathed a sigh of relief when I discovered the seat post and stem both moved easily once the bolts were loosened.  Sometimes you don't get that lucky, and it can be a huge challenge, and sometimes even completely impossible to budge those, rendering the frame pretty much useless.  On the other hand, the tires were shot (not a big surprise), and the front rim has a huge dent in it.  The rear rim MIGHT be ok, but honestly, I'm not that interested in using tubular tires on this bike, as the gluing and mounting process is kind of a pain, and not something I really love doing.  A few of my other bikes do have sewups, but I try to keep it to a small number.  So now I am working with a friend of mine who has a truly astonishing stash of bike parts, to see if he can come up with some good clincher rims that will look right on this bike.  One oddity is that the front wheel has 32 spokes while the rear has 36.  That actually makes a lot of sense, since the rear wheel sees more stress than the front, but you don't often see bikes that take that into account.  Based on my experience, back in the day, it was mostly the English who thought of such things, as the classic 3-speed "light roadsters" often had 32 in the front and 40 in the rear.

I've taken all of the parts off the frame at this point, and started cleaning it up, including polishing the chrome "socks" on the fork and rear triangle.  The chrome really cleaned up well, and the paint is looking pretty good too.  I need to be careful not to damage the decals any more than they already are, and not harm the paint either.  There's a little bit of rust on the bottom bracket shell where the paint got chipped, but nothing major.  I need to take a closer look inside the tubes, but I think at worst there's a little light surface rust, which is not uncommon at all with older bikes, and isn't a real concern.  Hopefully, over the next few weeks I will be able to rebuild the wheels with new rims and reassemble the bike and start riding it.  I'm pretty sure I'll have the only Witcomb track bike on my local multi-use path!

Painted parts of the frame are cleaning up pretty well.

Rear chrome "socks" looking good.

Left (in photo) fork leg has been polished, right has not.

I'll be posting updates as I move ahead with the work, along with photos, which you'll see here:

1963 Witcomb Track Bike

My "new" 1977 Mondia Super "gravel" bike.

 A few years back, my pal Shawn surprised me by shipping me this lovely Swiss Mondia road bike frame for my birthday.  It hung on a hook in the shop for a couple of years, while I pondered how best to build it up.  Finally, after riding my fully equipped Goshawk touring bike on the C&O Canal and Great Allegheny Passage for years, I realized the Mondia might make for a fun, lighter option for those unpaved trails.

Originally intended to be a sporty/racy road bike, the frame is built from the well known Reynolds 531 double-butted manganese-molybdenum tubing, with the very pretty Nervex Professional lugs at the joints. Intended for 700C road wheels and tires, it would probably fit around a 25 or 28mm wide tire, which wouldn't be ideal for the kind of riding I wanted to do on this bike.

On the other hand, over the last 15 years or so (how time flies!), the bike world has seen the resurgence of a tire/wheel size that many had considered obsolete - 650B.  Wait, what the heck is all this "700C" and "650B" stuff anyway?  Well, both of those are tire/rim size labels that come from the French cycling industry.  In the original scheme of things, the number (700 or 650) indicated the nominal outside diameter of the tire in millimeters.  The letter was used to indicate whether the tire was narrow or wide, with A being the narrowest, D being the widest.  As with so many things in the bike industry, how things started out is not where we are today, and a typical 650B tire is much, much wider than a typical 650C tire is today, and 700C tires range from 23mm to 50mm or wider, while 700A, B, and D have vanished as labels. Confused?  Welcome to bicycle tire size "standards" which are anything but standard.  Some good info can be found here:  https://www.sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html#french

Okay, what does this mean for my Mondia?  Well, 650B tires and wheels are smaller in diameter than 700C by 38mm.  Mounting a set of those on a frame designed for 700C wheels gives you room for wider/taller tires, which give more cushion on rough surfaces.  In the case of this Mondia, I was able to easily fit 40mm wide tires on a bike that normally would have only allowed for 28mm or so.  I even had room for a set of fenders to boot!  I had a set of 650B wheels I'd built some some time ago, with older parts, Sansin hubs and Alesa rims with Panasonic Col de la Vie tires.  I'd thought about using them on a couple of other projects, but it wasn't until the Mondia that it came together.

The rest of the parts are things I've used on a number of other builds, because they just work for me.  Sugino Mighty Tour crank with 40 and 52 tooth chainrings, MKS Touring pedals, SunTour 14-30 freewheel, SunTour VX derailleurs and Power Ratchet bar end shifters, Nitto bar and stem, and of course a Brooks B17 saddle.  The brakes are long reach Weinmann centerpulls, which work great.  Accessories at this point include SKS Longboard fenders, a Velo Orange Randonneur front rack and handlebar bag, and Carradice Lowsaddle Longflap saddlebag.

 More photos can be seen here:  1977? Mondia Super

Ever Onward! 1972 Fuji The Newest

 Sadly, I just have not found the gumption to post with any consistency on here, as anyone out there who's following knows all too well.  I think part of it is that I used bike projects as a major source of my material, and I just haven't had that many new bike projects or acquisitions lately.

But that just changed!  I'm in several bike related Facebook groups, and a few weeks ago, a fellow posted photos of a "barn find" bike that he said he planned to sell once he cleaned it up.  I immediately chimed in, saying I wanted to know about it when he was ready to sell. Well, it turns out I was the first to voice interest, so he offered it to me at what I consider a very fair price.

 So what the heck kind of bicycle is this that I jumped at the mere mention that it might be for sale?

1972 Fuji The Newest

"Richard's Bicycle Book",
a classic of the 70s.

 For the answer, we need to go back to my first years falling in love with cycling.  I learned much of what I needed to know about bicycles and bicycling from the classic Richard's Bicycle Book, one of the classic cycling guides of the 70s.  The copy I owned at the time was the first revised edition, which had a photo of the author on the cover, working on a lovely Fuji road bike that said "Fuji Racer" on the down tube and "The Newest" on the top tube.  

 The author included a brief buying guide in one of the chapters, listing a few bikes at various price points that were well worth considering, and one of the entries in "good quality, high-cost bicycles" is the Fuji The Newest.  As a teenager I couldn't afford one, given that it sold for close to $500 at the time, but in 1977, when I bought the first bike I bought with my own money, I selected a Fuji S-10S, one of Richard's entries in the "good quality, low-cost bicycles", and had many wonderful times with that bike.  In fact, I still do, as you can see in "Fuji Finished and Fun!" and other posts here.

Description from 1974 edition of "Richard's Bicycle Book." Slightly different from the 1972 model.

One of the themes of my bike collecting as an adult is finding bikes I dreamed of in my youth, and the Newest was definitely on that list.  Which brings us back to the bike in question, a 1972 Fuji The Newest, that arrived this past week, and which I unboxed as soon as I had a free moment.  The seller did an amazing job of packing, basically double boxing the bike and padding everything with foam, as well as a layer of newspaper which prevented any nicks from cutting away the padding.  I don't think I've ever received a bike so beautifully packed, and the bike made the journey from Montana to Virginia with not even the slightest damage, which is a big deal these days.

Seamless Super YPC saddle.

On top of the great packing job, the seller had also done a complete tear down and overhaul of the bike, cleaning all the moving parts with an ultrasonic cleaner, as well as bringing the frame to a remarkable shine.  He'd said it seemed the bike had barely been ridden, and I have to agree.  There's no wear on the drive train or anything else, even the suede saddle looks unridden.  Just about everything on the bike is original, aside from the handlebar tape, brake lever hoods, and tires.  He had the original tires, but they were badly dry rotted, so he sold me the bike without the tires.  There are a few small spots where the paint was rubbed through, probably from storage, but the plus is that they reveal that the whole frame is chrome plated under the paint, just like my two Centurions and Specialized Sequoia.

Dia-Compe brakes,
Fuji headbadge,
chrome fork crown.

 It's a gorgeous bike, and should be a lot of fun to ride.  As much as I love the fact it's original, I will be making some changes to make it a better rider for my purposes, but will keep all the original parts handy, in case I go to a classic bike event or something.  What will I change?  Well, first of all, the seat post, which is really short, and to fit me, needs to be an inch or so longer.  The Newest was only made in 22 1/2" and 24" frame sizes, and this is the larger 24" (61cm), but that's at the lower end of my size range (61 - 64cm).  I also have rather large feet (size 13-14 depending on brand) and so the medium sized toe clips just won't work, nor the quill style pedals, which have a little "hook" on the outer edge that really doesn't work with wide shoes.  I'll probably ride it with SPD style pedals most of the time, or a different toe clip compatible pedal with larger clips.

SunTour V derailleur,
14-22 tooth SunTour freewheel.

The factory-original gearing is also something that needs to be addressed, as I'm not as fit as I was in my teens, and the 47/52 chainrings matched to a 14-22 tooth freewheel really only work for younger legs on flatter terrain than I have where I live.  Honestly, I wonder if that's part of why the bike has so few miles on it... these are NOT Montana gears!  Then again, the bike was originally sold in Minnesota, so who knows.  

SunTour Power Ratchet shifters,
Primus pump, sewup tires,
Fuji logo on fork.

Finally, I will most likely build up a second set of wheels, using clincher tires instead of the glued on "sewups" the bike currently has.  Sewups are great riding tires, if you buy the really good ones, but they require more work to properly install and repair.  I can't bring myself to rebuild the original wheels with different rims, so I'll build a second set and mount some nice riding clincher tires like the Rene Herse models or the Panaracer Pasela, which I have used for many years.

Every Onward slogan on right
chain stay.

Oh, why did I title this post the way I did?  Here's the answer - for whatever reason, The Newest had this slogan on the chain stays for the first few years of production.  Quirky, and made all the more so by that typeface.  But it's just another reason I love this bike.

If you want to see more photos of the bike, check them out here:  1972 Fuji The Newest

Left side 1972 Fuji The Newest.

Front right quarter 1972 Fuji The Newest.

Right rear quarter, 1972 Fuji The Newest.