M_V's multitude of bikes and adventures in the land of framebuilding

How do these bars ride? I’m thinking of copying you for the Cooker. I think I’ve even got a length of small diameter tube to add a brace bar in the shed.

They’re pretty good. Could be a touch more upswept but so far I’m enjoying them.

Cheers it’s got to be worth a punt at £26 for a bar and stem.

I gave my Flying Scot a makeover while I've been off over christmas and new year.

Had been running it fixed/ss with the intended 27" wheels but the width of available 27" tyres nowadays meant that I couldn't get guards fitted. I may also have put the brake bridge a smidge low when I replaced the rear triangle years ago.

I've built it a set of 700 wheels which, when paired with a 28mm tyre, leave plenty room for a guard.

I've added a shifter braze-on to the toptube and some cable routing at the toptube/seatstay junction and I swapped the through guides along the top of the top tube for cable stops at either end off to the side of the tube a bit.

Modded a stem I'd made a while back to make it removable faceplate so I could run a set of 3 piece 'drop' bars I also made previously.

I fancied a dynamo but I already had the Bayliss Wiley hub with it's wingnuts for the front wheel so thought I'd go for a bottle dynamo. Did a brazed on mount on the fork. It's been a bit tricky getting the dynamo to work reliably, it tends to slip on the tyre, but I'm having fun trying different things and have another dynamo with a less worn input wheel en route.

The bike is/was originally a 1961, I chose the new paint colours with more of a '70s vibe in mind.

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It may be parallax error but usually the dynamo bearing axis intersects the wheel’s axle. In your photo, the dynamo seems to be aligned slightly in front of the axle. If this misalignment is true, the roller is running slightly askew and tending to slip on the tyre and prematurely wear the tyre and dynamo bearings.

I really like that. A perfect mix of class and M_V weirdness.

You might be right. I thought I’d done a pretty good job of setting it perpendicular but if I’d been pressing it into the tire I may have moved it.

I tried putting a bit of inner tube around the wheel which improved things but while out riding last t it plunged off which maybe does suggest I don’t have it set quite perfect.

Love the Rockhopper and your thinking outside the box with the bars. Do they have any backsweep?

You’ve paired a bottle dynamo to a modern led lamp? Interested in knowing if that works, as I’ve a Lucifer set and was thinking of seeing it I could adapt the front lamp from a filament bulb.

Yeah they have a bit, can’t remember what the spec of the original donor bay was, doesn’t feel like tons of sweep.

It works great. I’ve now picked up another, better condition Lucifer dynamo which has the much more toothed rubber cover on the input wheel and it didn’t slip at all on the commute home the other night.

I believe the bottle dynamo has a bit of mechanical advantage in that the small input wheel running on the larger diameter of the wheel/tyre means it spins much faster than a hub dynamo does.

Ah, neat, thank you
I’ll give the set-up (a 1950’s version) a clean up now and try it with a spare B+M lamp I have to see what’s what :)

Good to know - I reckon my Rockhopper is overdue for dynamo lighting, and a bottle dynamo would suit to a T