Urbanus Magnus

I've done it - the bike is completely finished, and it has been distance-proven; I took it for more than 40 km of wintery riding over the past two days. All the riding and abused has allowed me to 'dial in' all the settings of the bike: the Brooks saddle has been moved foreward, the derailleur cables have stretched/settled and been adjusted, the handlebars have been positioned, the STI levers have been re-positioned, and more than all these other combined, the new brakes have been worn in and re-positioned. Ta daaaah! Hells yeah - 'Standard' That's right; new brakes. Those old Shimano low-profile cantis are gone, and are replaced with one of the widest-of-wide profile brakes; some Tektro 720s. They really have cleaned up the problems, so now there is about 1/2 cm of clearance each side of the rims and more than double the braking power. The quality of workmanship is superb - they come with 6mm allen key fixing bolts, a stainless-steel bushing, both sides ...

The conversion of my tourer from its original MTB-style shifters/brakes and pursuit bars to drops has been underway for a while now. It's pretty-much been converted; the brakes are still a wee finicky and the derailleurs need to be precision-tuned. Out with the old.... This was my Christmas gift; a pair of NOS 8-speed RSX brifters, a Nitto B-115 Rando bar and some cross brakes. I'm not complaining - I was expecting  any  old drop bar, with some bar ends and some generic aero levers, so you can understand my elation! Of note: without a mount-on point for the barrel adjuster for the F. derailleur, I have had to "eye-ball" it, just simply adjusting the pull by loosing and tightening the cable bolt. It works OK, but I *might* need to find another solution.... However, nothing else major has come up on the drive train; the standard MTB parts seem to work fine with the brifters, even meshing well with the old 7-speed cassette in back. I also got a 13/15 cone wr...