My Klunkerz.

Hey Pistonpopper you were asking about rapid fire shifters how about these:

www.wigglestatic.com/product-media/5360100621/shimano-alfine-8-speed-shifter.jpg?w=430&h=430&a=7  Pic
www.wiggle.co.uk/shimano-alfine-rapidfire-8-speed-rh-shifter-and-lever/   Description and price


or these:

images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31T3mnTWF4L._SX355_.jpg   Pic
www.amazon.co.uk/d/Sports-Outdoors/Shimano-Alivio-Rapidfire-Pods-pair/B00EVV3JBG   Description and price

oh yer, and the colour on the saddle is just for the fun of it.

change the lever, change the brake to a side pull and the lever to something solid and It'll be a cracking bike for the summer.

Thanks for the info novocaine , i appreciate it. I would say that the seat post is not the wrong size for the frame and the top of the frame has not been squashed to fit it. It's pretty odd. I keep meaning to photograph it to show you guys but i'm so busy trying to dissolve the seatpost from the Daimond Back that i forget. However, on the Monty. W. the seatpost is a very small diameter, and it flares in size under the seat. The tube that the seatpost goes into is also very small diameter all the way down to the bottom bracket. You really wouldn't get a bigger seatpost in it if you tried. I would say that you're probably right, the original bits are the frame, fork, headset and stem, everything else is from the parts bin of the chap who built it, but as you say it looks alright though. I must admit that i do quite like it, and i think that whoever built it, and for whatever the reason they put some care, attention, and thought into building it. I wonder why they then just left it hiding in a shed? Hmm, strange. But it rides alright, infact it's not too bad at all. But much like the Giant it's not for me, so i think at some point i'll be putting it up for grabs.

Thanks for the heads up on the shifters Thanatos , i appreciate that too. However i was at the festival of rusty curse word otherwise known as Beaulieu autojumble at the weekend, and manged to pick up these...





See those three dimples in the brake lever? This is the reason i needed a seperate shifter. I've had those dimpled levers in my collection for ages, and i always liked them, so when i decided to build my Mustang i knew they'd be featuring on it! I guess it's a little sad, but really my OCD knows no bounds! lol. Anyway, i picked up several other bits and bobs too, including a couple of bikes, which i'll also photograph tomorrow while i'm photographing the seatpost on the Monty. W. Anyhoo, the Mustang now only needs a set of wires, and an 8 speed rear cog, and i'll be riding it... Hoorah!! I'll have to go down to the tip tomorrow and see whats been dumped in the way of an eight speed rear wheel!

Anyhoo, speaking of Beaulieu autojumble. I thought that i would just share with you some bicycle pictures i took whilst i was there for your possible enjoyment...



This i like, and i think it would be really cool scaled up to fit an adult... Like me!





Motorised Raleigh Bomber, how cool is that? My feeling is that PC Plod would probably take issue with it though if you were riding it on the road.





Easy rider! Admittedly thats as cool as Penguins wee wee to look at, but i'll wager it pretty damn horrible to ride for any length of time! I shall take a couple of pictures of the two bikes i bought tomorrow. don't get too excited, they're nothing too special, just my normal curse word that i like to buy, and they're most likeley to become part of my parts stash re-stocking lol. Anyhoo, obviously i took some poor quality photos of cars while i was there too, so if you want to check them out, they can be found here!

Thanks for looking!

Time for a tea time update or three... I see what you're saying novocaine , i'd not noticed it before. Anyway today i did finally mange to get some more detailed photos of the seat post area, stand by...



As you can see at the top of the seatpost it flares out to accept a standard type saddle clamp.



The outer daimeter of the seatpost is about 13/16 of an inch, or approximately 21mm to you metric types.



The down tube or seat tube is about an inch in diameter (about 26mm) in my extremely poorly focused picture, which is a difference of 3/16 of an inch. I took the seat out, which was a bit of a struggle as i reckon its been in there a while, although, to be fair it wasn't as much of a struggle as the one in the Diamond Back was! Anyway, as i already had my Vernier caliper out i thought i'd try to get a better measurement of the seat post, and the innner diameter of the down tube...



As suspected, its still about 13/16 of an inch, now for the inner diameter of the down tube...



About a Gnats Knacker larger! I would suspect that whatever this frame is, this seatpost was always with it. I wonder if perhaps the seat clamp may have been added at a later date and is not quite right for it. However it works, and holds the seat tightly, so thats good enough for me.

Right then, moving on, yesterday i told you about a couple of bikes i bought at Beaulieu autojumble on Sunday. I got them pretty near to the end of the day as people were getting ready to pack up, so i only paid a fiver a piece. First up was this gem...



If your a long term sufferer of this thread you probably know why i bought this... Its like a better version of the Magna Fugitive, you may well be asking yourself why is it better? Well, because it doesn't have cantilever brakes like a childs bike, it has center-pull brakes like a grown up might have! I could upgrade them to Vee brakes if i so desired... I don't so desire, so i'll not bother! I'm not really sure what i'm going to do with it to be honest, but i guess i'll just hang onto it so that it's there when the Diamond Back gets stolen! Next up...



A Raleigh Pioneer something or other (the stickers have peeled off!) Now, i'm sure that if you have eyes in the front of your head you'll know why i splashed out a whole fiver on this! You may remember that back in January i sacrificed my lovely Raleigh Rekord in order to donate its wheels to the Giant racing bike frame i had found so that i had a complete Giant racing bike. Well i always planned to pick up a set of 700c wheels to put back on the Rekord when i found a set. I've been looking, and several sets have turned up at the tip on bikes, but they've always been pretty rough. As i'm not in a great rush to re-build it again i've left them in the hope that something better would turn up. Well, it's turned up!



As much as i like the contrast between the green frame and the yellow wheels, i can't help feeling that these would've looked better on the Giant racing bike that i sold about a month ago! I wonder how much more i would've got for it if it had these wheels on it? Still, nevermind, i'm sure that they will look splendid against the metallic blue of the Rekord frame. So what will become of these two bikes? Well, probably they'll become part of my spares stash re-stocking, although i might well have a ride round on them before i start breaking them up... Of course that'll probably mean they become part of my collection! Well on my way to having over 100 bikes in my collection again if i'm not careful!

Contact the buyer, he might agree with you and fork out a deal for the wheels currently on the Giant and some pennies your way.

Ha ha ha haaaaa... I don't think so!!



I decided to take it for a bit of a run at lunch time today, and it rides beautifully!



This is no doubt partly due to it being a Raleigh bike built before the time when Raleigh bikes became somewhat cheap and nasty, but a good part of it being so good is no doubt the wheels. When you're free wheelin' they just feel so smooth, and the rear cog and ratchet make a delicious clickety-clickety-clickety sound as your coasting along. Ive had some nice feeling wheels in the past, but these feel a bit above the rest. The wheels that my Record donated to the Giant racer were quite a nice pair, but they wern't as nice as these. These will be part of the rebuild of my Record at some point in the future! Just got to track down some wheels to put on this thing now!



I must admit i didn't notice it until you mentioned it, but now you've said it, the headtube does look too upright...



But having said that there would appear to be no evidence of distortion to either the frame or the forks. So i'm guessing that this was always like this from the factory. Riding along it feels quite nimble and turns in very well, this i am guessing is probably due to the rather upright front forks, that and the frame looks quite short in length to me. Other things of note are that the seat is too hard, and the seatpost not long enough for me, but other than that it is really very nice to ride. Initially my plans for this were to break it up and use it as spares for my other project bikes, but i feel its a bit too good for that, so once i've tracked down some new wheels for it, i shall most likely put it up for grabs. Besides, it was the wheels i was really after.

So Mrs Pistonpopper called me up during work today as she needed a hand emptying half a garden that she had in the back of her car which she had cut down from where she works. This ofcourse meant a trip to the tip! Two bikes were found. First up...



This Ridgeback. I'm never sure if Ridgebacks are good or bad really. Sometimes when i get one they seem to be very well built, and have decent quality parts on them. Sometimes however they seem to be quite cheaply built, with, lets say not quite as good as they could be parts on them. This one, despite being in very tatty condition falls into the former catagory.



Tyres have seen better days. I've seen a few bikes like this lately and i wonder how the tyres get to be like this? Is this just natural deteriation from being left outside or what?



Saddle isn't original, as it says Raleigh on it, but like the tyres, it's seen better days. Again, i'm guessing this is due to the effects of sunlight on the gel saddle as i've seen quite a few like it.



These i liked though, and i could see them becoming part of my spares stash for future projects! I quite liked the handlebars too, they might well find their way onto the Diamond Back! Next up...



A Jamis Durango. I've never seen one of these, or even heard of one before, but it looks quite well built, and my inner girl got the better of me... I liked the colour! (The green that is, not the muddy brown!)



I don't know if this is a good bike or not, but i'm going to give it a wash and try it out once i've got a saddle for it. Again it looks to have some good parts on it, which will probably get stripped for use later!



The handlebars are quite nice and wide, and again, i like the shifter mechanism. I think that this will also donate some of it's parts to the Diamond Back at some point before being re-homed!

As for the Diamond Back, well it's still sitting in the dirt where it sat for the last ten days or so while it's seatpost was dissolving. I think i have now collected enough parts to make it how i want it. But i'm wondering about the frame. Originally i wanted to keep it as it was, with its scuffs, scratches, rust, and patina. But now i've damged the paintwork with fire, and then caustic soda i am wondering about re-painting it. Nothing fancy, just white. Of course half of me wants to leave it as it is, scorch marks and all. I mean, who would steal a bike like that! If i made it too pretty, it might attract too much attention. I dunno, what do you chaps think?

I think you should leave the Diamondback alone with it's scars.
Jamis are decent bikes - that looks like a reasonable quality rigid MTB.
That Ridgeback looks pretty decent too. The tyre looks like it was shredded by a badly adjusted brake rubbing on the tyre rather than the rim - I'm not sure why the saddle has died in that way, but I try to avoid gel saddles...
Did you get both of these from the tip for nowt? That's a treasure trove - despite Oxford being bike city, I only ever see crappy bikes at our tip (and you can't get hold of them anyway).
Cheers
Duncan

give that jamis a wash, see how the cassette looks and you might need new cables (I'd swap the bars and seat post for the one's on the ridgeback too) and you've got yourself a real mountain bike. forget about using it's parts on the diamond back, this is a much much better frame. keep your head low for a set of short travel forks and an threadless headset to modernise it a bit and it's the best bike in your rag tag collection so far . they were around at the start of all this silly mountain bike nonsense (it'll never catch on).

bit of history for you.
www.jamisbikes.com/usa/history.html

ridgeback is ok, they do a huge range of bikes from tesco specials to mid range bikes, what you have there is in the mid range area. alivio groupset was (is) 1 up in shimanos "real" gear, it's pretty good stuff for what it is (both the ridgeback and jamis are running it), it's pretty bomb proof too. the jamis also has alivio brakes, which are in my mind some of the best designed V brakes shimano ever did, they outstripped the stuff above it in the range for feel and power.

If you do pull apart one of these for parts, pull the ridgeback apart and use it to build your diamond back (everything on there can be bolted straight on), treat the jamis right and you'll find it is one of the nicest bikes to ride that you have. you'll need a few bike specific tools to pull apart completely, namely a crank puller, a cassette tool and a cartridge BB tool, all of which can be had cheap on ebay.

anyways, tyre wall is due to overpressure and UV normally, leave a bike in the shed with the sun shining though the window, tyre gets hot, air expands against weakened sidewall and pop.. seat it frost damage, the gel freezes and expands. funny how you get similar failure modes from polar opposites.

if you were closer I'd have taken that jamis off your hands straight away for 20 quid (double your money, lol) it reminds me of days gone by when a mate rode one very similar but painted green one side and black the other, he ran a set of Rockshox Judys on the front though.

EDIT: whoops, lieing to you, the ridgeback looks to have acera crank, bottom of the "real" shimano range. still better than the curse word steel stuff you get on BSOs.