Caramelos de Naranja Mas Hermosa

It was almost 9 pm when the UPS driver finally pulled up at Jose's house. By 11:30 there was an email on my phone ... "holy cow, what a beautiful frame you have created, up close the workmanship is just stunning as is the paint color, really beautiful and the rack is just a piece of art." Now, that's a bedtime story that I like!

Jose is a tall, lean long time cyclist who, at age 50, is experiencing a resurgent interest in riding long distances in any weather. He owns a lovely high-end Italian racing bike, but that machine simply is not designed for the fenders, front rack/bag and the wider tires favored by randonneurs. And, while he finds this race bike to be reasonably comfortable on century rides, I felt certain that we could make an improvement in that department too.

The result is a 63cm (c-t) low-trail Randonneur, as shown below in its mock-up state before being broken down for shipping. Designed for 700cx32 tires, Honjo 43mm fenders, braze-on Mafac Racer brakes and a dynohub powered front light, we covered Jose's wish list. The frame uses a collection of modern "standard" diameter tubes which were selected to mimic the feel of the classic Reynolds 531C tubeset. The fork blades are NOS Reynolds Imperial Oval tubes, set in a modern Grand Bois crown.

Since this frame features a front-loaded steering geometry, the project included one of my signature racks, built using a one-piece deck and backstop. In this configuration, the rack mounts to the braze-on bosses for the Mafac centerpull brake. Jose elected to do without a decaleur for now, but I always can build a stem-mounted unit if he decides otherwise after testing a stout internal stiffening system in his new bag.

Below is a photo of the Mafac Racer brakes mounted on custom-made bosses. This started out as a dingy used brake, but a few days in the vibratory polisher restored that like-new appearance. I also made a set of hand-wound stainless steel springs, which not only look nicer, but also are softer to provide smoother modulation with modern levers and lined cable housing.

And finally, let's talk about the PAINT. Jose was looking through Keith Anderson's photo gallery of painted frames and picked out a gorgeous burnt orange example. It turns out that he was looking at the result of applying an orange candy over a green-tinted base. Keith did that again, and the result is simply stunning ... even under the shop lights where these photos were taken. Out in the sunlight it is truly the Most Beautiful Orange Candy. But some of you already knew that, no?

Dressed For Work

As promised, here is Randy's new All Road, completely outfitted for long rides down any road, in any weather and any light. These are a few selected photos from a larger gallery.

Along with the frameset, I also built a custom front rack and decaleur, as shown below. The rack attaches to the brake bosses used by the vintage centerpull brake, using special double-ended bolts. Hidden wire guides continue the course started on the fork blade, and the special mount neatly tucks the B&M LED headlight underneath that big Ostrich bag. In the head-on view, you can see the fixed portion of the decaleur which remains attached to the stem when the bag is removed.


And finally, a bit of rear brake and fender detail. But really, I can't take my eyes off of that stylin' tail light, sitting proud on its dedicated mounting boss.

Racks and Decaleurs

A recent flurry of rack-building activity resulted is a nice sampling of various approaches to attaching a small rack to a fork, and stabilizing the bags that go with such racks. There's a stream of six photos showing these recent racks and decaleurs that starts here.

Probably the most interesting, from a fabricator's perspective, is the rack shown below. The customer came to me with an expensive new custom (built by a well known Wisconsin outfit) that was intended to combine the center-mount brake with a rack that attaches via one of those "you-bend-it-to-fit-under-the-brake" center tangs. The execution had been muffed, the spec'd rack sat where the fender should be, and his fork simply didn't accommodate the tire and fender that he'd listed on the order form. One part of my solution was to build a rack that features a yoke that mounts on the brake's center bolt, sandwiched between the brake and the front of the fork crown. This took some doing to fly the rack's deck tubes around the brake's working envelope, away from the crown's protruding shoulders, and into the yoke. But it turned out very nice. And, although this was designed around the Tektro R538 sidepull brake, we also know that it works equally well with the new Paul's Racer-M center-mount.

When it comes to stabilizing the bag on these front racks, I believe that there's a valid structural design argument for not using an overly tall backstop supporting an integrated decaleur fixture. Instead, I prefer a design with the decaleur's root placed high and forward, and with short lever arms that carry bag-generated bending forces. The decaleur shown below mounts to a stem with a 4-bolt faceplate, and incorporates my design preferences. With a modular design like this, individual elements can be replaced to fit other bag/stem/rack combinations.

The photo below shows this decaleur design in use. The spine piece is bolted directly to the bag. The linkage is created by inserting the L-shaped retaining pin, which, in turn, is locked in place by the little R-clip. To release the bag, simply remove the R-clip and slide out the retaining pin.
With this particular frame/stem/bag combination, the bag support hangs from the stem on short struts, rather than by the long cantilever arm found on aftermarket steerer-mounted decaleurs. And these struts are easily positioned using bolts, not by bending the structure. My design may weigh a bit more than something integral to the rack, but, as one customer described it, it's "sturdy as all get out". That's the idea, no?

Rack-o-Rama

I've been building interesting custom racks, and it's time to highlight a few. In a world where sturdy aftermarket racks are readily available, having a custom rack built for your bike might be viewed as something of an indulgence. When you get down into the details, however, you'll find that a custom rack is a much different beast. Being designed to mate exactly with your frame's mounting points, a custom rack eliminates the clutter of bolt-on adjustable struts found on "universal fit" racks. Clean looks, lower weight and fewer fasteners to possibly come loose. Among my customers, however, the compelling reason for a custom rack seems to be the availability of an infinite variety of dimensions and configurations, and the ability to have all of the "bells and whistles" (light mounts, wire guides, fender braces, etc.) that your heart desires. When designed in concert with a new frame/fork, a custom rack can take advantage of braze-on mounting points which otherwise would not have been designed into the frame/fork

The photo above is of a 3-piece modular rack system, with a small fixed top rack and two detachable lowrider pannier frames. This rack system was designed to go with the low-trail fork in the photo, and the pannier frames attach quickly using three M5 bolts each. The top rack is a little wider than common, which allows the crown struts to fly around the new V-O Grand Cru standard reach dual pivot caliper brake, and provides better triangulation to brace the detachable frames' mast. The customer wanted to be able to attach/detach the pannier frames without disturbing the attachment of the top rack, hence the second mid-fork mounting point. Additional views and details may be found in a photo set on my Flickr gallery.

Commercial rear racks typically are dimensioned for the large-footprint trunk bags that all bag vendors seem to make. Gilles Berthoud also makes a beautiful scaled-down trunk bag that's sized just right for your jacket and lunch, but which looks silly when perched atop a full sized rack. The photo above shows a small-format custom rack that was designed specifically for this little Berthoud bag. The rack also has a braze-on for attaching the quick-release bracket for the LED taillight.

And, finally, here's a simple rack designed for a small touring bike. On small frames like this, the shallow angle of the seatstay positions the rack braze-on quite far forward of the rear axle. You still have to position the panniers back far enough to avoid heel strike, and "universal fit" racks end up with very long adjustable struts/straps to span the gap. On this custom rack, the long reach to the seatstay is still present, but the span now is integrated into the rack's basic structure. With a comparable capability, this steel rack weighs about 2/3 of the aluminum rack (plus steel fittings!) that it replaced. And it looks so much nicer, too.

All of my custom racks are fillet brazed using thin-wall, aircraft grade 4130 CrMo steel tube.