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^ I wondered that and was hoping it's not - that cock-pit would let down a foffa

That bike's begging for the Louis Vuitton saddle

I've been tempted by that a couple of times - there was a rusty 50cm sigma that went a few months back for £75 with a full mavic groupset including 631 starfish chainset. I also saw a similarly tiny 653 falcon with tricolour groupset and open pro wheels in "barn-find" condition go for £65 - in both cases you'd make a tidy profit with a paraffin bath and tube of AutoSol - I'd been thinking of them more as donor bikes - keeping the kit for a better set of tubes and flogging on the frame to amortise the cost, but you could also take it on as a profit-making venture...

There's a slight moral issue here though - people go to a lot of trouble to put together period-correct bikes and if you're finding nice, consistent bikes carefully curated over years and buying them purely with a view to carving them up for personal gain rather than letting them go to appreciative homes at bargain cost then you want to have thought it through properly and be happy about what you're up to... (I'm just sharing my thoughts here, not make a moral judgement) - an extreme example of what I'm saying would be if you had that Bianchi up there - the headset would fetch £100, and the chainset probably a fair amount more - you'd even get £20 for the cable outers, but that bike has lasted till now in that state it would be seriously wrong to carve it up

Sending it out to my Twin Brother who lives in New Zealand as an early 40th Birthday present (like, a year early) as he trashed his condor before he left...

Was he party to the specification of parts, or have you chosen them with twin-sibling telepathy?

I assume you're referring to the ones I just flogged?
Yes indeed, I gave them a good thorough degrease and checked everything was working - I gave them a quick polish too. In the case of the chainset I gave a very thorough polishing and degrease and it came up very nicely (I offered it to the buffing wheel no less) - FYI the rear mech was a 7spd Deore XT 2 so it was a reasonable quality unit

(If you're referring to the simplex unit fitted to the bike - that came in most excellent (if not NOS) condition courtesy of the forums own MrWolf69 with whom I swapped the shifters & mechs for a pair of Patao cages and bottles)

**Before all that, though, I would like to be able to change gears from the handlebars. **
**8 speed Dura Ace STI's are stupidly rare, expensive and ugly (imho), and I'm fairly sure I don't want Tiagra on here, so what are my other 8 speed, shimano compatible options? **
**Budget's about £80 max for something reliable. Suggestions / advice please! **

RSX, 105, Ultegra
More esoteric solutions might include ultegra bar-end shifters, Modolo Morphos or Suntour Command

(I'm kind of joking about the command and Ultegra, but can vouch for the morphos - they're pretty comfortable, and as you'd expect from Modolo, they are first and foremost a brake lever - They have a little insert that you can replace to switch the cable throw from Shimano to Campag).
And by the way - I think those CXP30s look too good to be replaced with something as generic as open pro's - worth the weight penalty if you ask me - get lighter tyres/tubes instead!

Not hugely slave in my opinion, but interesting - I've never seen a Schroder that wasn't in patriotic paintwork

Schrøder Track/Street por cnobel, no Flickr

They usually go for the DanishDynamite colourscheme...

^ If it were me, I'd go subtle - white or silver

Nice quandry to have though!

^ Funny you should mention that - I've just ordered cables in white
I don't have 1.5m lengths of cable knocking about in the shed so there's no option to go budget!

I'd been rather tempted to drop £20 on red/white striped 1960's Bianchi cables - Coloured cables were pretty popular back in the day - it's only since the advent of cable stops and aero brakes that we've been boring!!
Dave Marsh has NOS at the mo, but I think white would be more rat-friendly - I'll leave the stripes for someone building something a bit more epic

There are some rather nice Celeste cables on a fabulous bike recently posted in the rat-thread - that's what got me thinking - it also happens to be precisely the sort of bike I had in mind when I embarked on this project...

Clearly my Dawes will not be in this league, but with a bit of luck I'll glue my tubs so that the valves are not wonky!

In other news, I raised £22.50 on the sale of the derailleurs that came with the original ebay purchase, so the current balance stands at a paltry £8.50

Nice Bike - the paint job is the same as tommmmmmm's
(photo here http://www.lfgss.com/post3000614-64007.html)
Maybe he can shed light on whether this is a special livery or not

There's clearly something of a mutual appreciation going here as I'm pretty impressed with your Falcon-Merckx-rat and that new Motobecane!!!

surely that will depend on how far you want to go up the bar....

I rather like that - the turbo suits the build nicely - shame the hubs weren't sent to the powdercoater with the frame

Cheers Fahrgestell - I'm also starting to like the way it looks, and beginning to feel confident that I'll have it built, dialled and shaken-down by October!!

Total spend thus far on the bike above is £59, but I sold the original Shimano chainset for £28 and the derailleurs finish on ebay this evening, so we're at £31 minus whatever I get for the mechs! The only big spends left are things like a bottle (seemingly tricky to find) + cables, chain and bar tape.

@stedlocks - no worries on the timescale, hope Chris is OK.

Fantastic bike, great story - best CP thread IMO - keep up the good work sir!

The jammed up threads took a bit of elbow grease to release and I ended up having to tidy the threads a bit with a Stanley knife, but once cleaned and greased the cheap LBS BB went in ok with a pipe wrench (and no damage to the 16mm dogs either)

went into the frame allowing me to hang the chainset...

I've not fitted a cottered chainset since childhood so before I did it I thought I'd better consult the oracle - There's a debate raging on Classic Rendezvous at the mo over which way round you fit the cotter pins - but it seems that "Pedal forward, Nuts up" is the order of the day.
This consultation was a waste of time as the Solida cranks only accepted the pin in the "Pedal forward Nuts Down" position anyway! - but with my puny legs I think this is academic....
Took a couple of pics of where we're up to now - made some tangible progress...

It's also a quality frame and the stem, back wheel and saddle are nothing a rattlecan and stanley knife couldn't put right

As above you'll need a socket to do the levers. To do the crank arms get your oldest 15mm socket and grind the outside diameter down on a bench grinder to make it fit in there. Been there done it etc!

Alternative quick solution is a 15mm box spanner

Excellent project - great frame, tight timescale and some obscura/exotica too... I've not seen Adidas System 3 for a long while!!
I've got some modolo non-aero's if you're interested - sadly they have no hoods, but I could post tomorrow which may get there in time.
Good luck finding mafac cantis - period alternatives include weinmann and Dia Compe 981

If you struggle to find Bike Ribbon - I think they still do black at CRC http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=27993
Good luck with the project

Dropped into the LBS at lunch and picked up a set of BB cups + bearings + Lock ring at 24TPI - Splendid - saves me having to wait for the postie.
I'll have a go tonight with my 300mm Bahco adjustable spanner but if it goes awry I'll give you a shout TW2 re: borrowing your Park Tool - thanks for the offer.

Yesterday morning I gave the BB threads a good clean and screwed the BB from the BSA donor bike about 1/3 of the way into the frame. before hanging the solida cranks on to see what they look like.

The BSAs BB cups had a 16mm "dog" so to complete the fitting I tried using a big vice to grip the cups...

They only went about 1/2 a turn so I gave up and went inside for a cup of tea. and considered purchasing the park tool for the very job.

Halfway through my porrige this morning a thought occurred to me.... wouldn't it be curiously ironic if the threads on the BSA were not BSA?
When Raleigh took on the BSA name, it would make sense that their cheap 10speeds such as my donor "Tour of Britain" would also take on their whacky threads!!! (34.9 x 1.06mm, 26 tpi instead of the BSA/ISO 34.9 x 1.06mm, 24 tpi) - I put a vernier to the BB shell and voila 71mm. Glad I didn't push it too hard then - hopefully I've not done any permanent damage to the BB shell with my fiendish vice-pushing. I'll head to the LBS at lunch and see if they've any sensibly threaded BB cups to offer!! I suspect that the extra 3mm's worth of protrusion on the NDS will not cause any problems so I can probably get away with just the cups if they don't have any complete cottered BBs!

but the ones on the back are also pretty generous too - seems to be quite a trait of indys

Have we had this one before - it seems vaguely familiar

I likes a good indy-fabs though

I must admit that when I see a LOW i just think...

and that is not a good thing

I sent a link of this thread to my brother (also riding L'Eroica but on a 70's Santi with full super-record) - his comment was "If it helps you come to terms with Dawes ownership"

Work Package 1 (Bike Build)
Found some old red spraypaint in the shed and painted the rusty seatstays
Dished rear wheel to centre in realigned stays
Built front wheel - wheel & tyre come in below 1kg!
Cleaned & fitted original Suntour Perfect 5spd block - the only degreasing agent I could find in the shed was A1 Jet Fuel (worked a treat)
Fitted a cottered Solida 3-pin chainset from a a Freecycle donor bike - a BSA Tour of Britain courtesy of the forums own Sandbags. A chrome chainset is a bit of a weight penalty, but the 70s SR Apex I'd planned to use really looks too "paperboy 10 speed" the Solida is in excellent condition and is a 70's version of a much older design and looks more in keeping

The wheels have been a real highlight of this build, high quality, lightweight, low cost and most importantly, both the rims and original wheels would have ended up at the tip! The hub rebuild was interesting -every washer, cone, and lock nut is stamped CAMP 77 (which understand to be the year of patent) and the cones are marked M10 x 26tpi (a curious anomally which I believe goes back to the Marshall plan where US-supplied lathes could only do imperial pitches - 26tpi was the closest fit to M10x1mm).

Work Package 2 (Fitness)
140km ride on Saturday riding the olympic road route.
I wimped out of multiple Box hill loops as the storm clouds were gathering, but still hit by a monster thunderstorm in Richmond park (ended up eating chocolate cake at Petersham Nursery! before heading home on flooded roads). Not a bad start and the knees/back seemed to hold out! (If I did the route again I'd probably fit a brake as the descent to Shere was a bit sketchy in the wet - I had the back wheel locked and was still doing about 20mph - Great route though and the road surfaces were a joy to ride on!)