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.