Meet Sylvester

Sylvester

I'm hoping Sylvester will suffice as my primary road bike, since Tweety's retirement. He's a mid-eighties “Raleigh of America” (which has to be a joke because his frame was crudely brazed by robots in Taiwan). This was the Raleigh Competiion model, which came with Shimano 600 components. I found it on eBay for $150 several years ago, and built it up initially as a fixed-gear bike. The frame is halfway decent, made from Reynolds 531 double-butted tubes, though the quality of the lugs and the brazing is poor.

I harvested Tweety's “organs” and installed those that would fit onto Sylvester.

Sylvester is about one centimeter too small for me in each direction. This means that after setting up the initial saddle (fore and aft) position, relative to the crank spindle (measured with plumb bob and ruler), the shorter top tube and the 10 cm Salsa stem I was using on Tweety resulted in not enough reach. So I installed my spare 11 cm stem. This configuration makes for a twitchier feeling ride, but not in a bad way. I think it actually feels a bit more like a criterium bike than Tweety did. I'll be interested to see how it performs on fast, technical descents.

The Columbus SL fork from my first Ron Cooper frame

For nostalgia and weight-savings, I installed my first Ron Cooper's Columbus SL fork. Since Sylvester is grey and off-white, the grey fork kind of works. It's about 8 ounces lighter than the Raleigh fork too. The 45mm offset is identical on all three of my forks, so handling shouldn't be adversely affected.

This frame uses a clamp-on front dereilleur, which meant I couldn't use Tweety's Dura Ace braze-on one. Luckily the Competition's original Shimano 600 seems to work solidly.

The seat post is currently about 1.8 cm beyond the max. ht. marker

Flipping the stem will raise the bars about 2.5 cm

I got out for a one hour test ride this afternoon, and so far so good. I can tell the frame is too small for me, but I'll try a few tweaks, such as flipping the alloy stem to get a bit more elevation on the bars, and maybe I can find a used seat post that's a hair longer.

In any case, Sylvester is my only option, so he's got to work out.

Thursday Oct. 30th update...
I put Sylvester to the test today at lunchtime. I had set a goal on a challenging climb, which would expire by the end of today. The base of this climb is 14 miles out, and you've got to do about 1400 feet of total climbing just to get there, so it's hard to save a lot of energy for it. I rode at z1/z2 since I was also still evaluating the safety and fit of my new replacement steed.

Back in March of this year I did this 2 mile climb that ascends 669 feet in 12 min. 32 sec. For the past year I've been trying to beat 12:30. I do this climb about 25 times a year.

Today a combination of factors allowed me to do the climb in 12:14. Taking it easy on the approach; using Rob Easley's spare compact crankset; focusing on relaxed, in-the-saddle form; and a really well-timed leadout from a rider named Mark who I had caught just before the final switchback. Mark was out for an easy day with his buddy, but couldn't resist jumping onto my wheel when I passed. I said "Oh cool! I could use some incentive to hammer on this last stretch. I'm trying to beat a goal." Mark said "I can help you with that" and blasted off. I couldn't actually catch his wheel, but having a rabbit to chase did boost my speed for that final 150 meters.

The bike was still doing well so I went on up to the East Peak of Mt. Tam, then returned via the same route.

This weekend I'll be able to do the 5th consecutive climb in the Low Key Hill Climb Series. This one is an 8.5 mile, 2043 ft. time trial.

Goodbye Tweety!

Tweety until hours ago

This past Saturday was my last ride on Tweety, my beautiful nineteen-year-old steel road bike. I'm devastated today after discovering two lateral fatigue cracks in the frame... one across the top tube and one across the underside of the down tube. Both cracks are surprisingly straight, and are located just beyond the points of the lugs. I'm still in shock.

The straight line across the tip of the lug point is the first crack

A closer look at the crack

This is the crack on the underside of the down tube

A closer view

I thought the line across the top tube was just a buildup of touch-up paint after a shoddy bit of cleanup I did after a crash this past spring. But as I was disassembling the bike for an overhaul after last weekend's rainy, muddy ride in the Berkeley Hills I noticed the second crack on the underside of the down tube. I still wasn't sure they were cracks, until I looked closely in direct sunlight through Jen's 10X loupe (magnifier). Then I could clearly see jagged, rusty cracks deep between the fractured paint. The cracks go all the way through the tube wall. It's fairly apparent that these cracks have been developing for the past year at least.

This loss is hard to wrap my head around, but when I think of how fortunate I am to notice the damage before a catastrophic failure on the road, it almost blows my mind. That kind of failure would be bad enough for me alone, but what about the riders in the pack behind me?! This is sad but I'm choosing to feel lucky it worked out this way. I paid sixteen-hundred bucks or so to have Tweety built and I got to have a blast riding for nineteen years... that's about $84 a year.

I had this frame built in 1995 by Ron Cooper. Ron brazed Tweety together using Reynolds 853 OS (oversized) tubing into his gorgeous custom lugs. For each of the first sixteen years I likely rode Tweety only about 2500 miles. By 2012 my mileage increased to 4000, then 5500 in 2013 and as of late October in 2014 I'm just beyond 6000 miles. In total I've ridden Tweety over 50-thousand miles.

As things have turned out, this past year was a fantastic swan song for Tweety. Coming off of a 27-year break from racing, Tweety and I started over in cat 5, upgrading through cat 4, doing twenty two races, with one win, two 3rd-place, two 4th, two 5^th and an 8^th place finish. Along the way I accumulated 21 upgrade points, so if I was completely nuts, I could move on up to cat 3 before next season... but I'm not that nuts yet.

It was challenging enough, drawing stares, often, the only racer in the pack on a heavy steel bike with primitive 9-speed components. At least it was Tweety, who generated at least a few respectful compliments from fellow rolleurs. Now I'll harvest all of Tweety's components, and install them onto my eighties, Taiwan-built Raleigh that is now promoted from spare to primary road bike.

Well so long dear Tweety! You were an ass-kicker!