in the stand - just finished a fun project

We had a fun project come in recently. Scott, a local and old Schwinn team fast guy had us (re)build an old Raleigh Technium a few years ago. It was the first mountain bike he raced on back in the day and wanted to get one running again for nostalgia's sake. We used the original bb, XT crank, and XT front der and updated it with a few new things as well as his old SID and some other bits. It was a cool bike, but had a limited lifespan.

Scott dropped it off last week. His black and bassboat gold Homegrown had been rocking as a singlespeed for the last several years but it was time for the Raleigh to become wall art and time for the Homegrown to grow some gears. All was good until we found this:

There were not one, but two cracks int he headtube of the frame. One on top and one on bottom, opposing sides. Scott was now without a frame and not wanting to go back to the Technium.

Fortunately I had an even older (than the Homegrown) nice, triple butted steel Schwinn Moab frame in hanging my garage. I think it had maybe been ridden once or twice ever then torn down. It may have been a catalog bike used in a photo shoot at Schwinn. I've always wanted to see it built up so we moved all the parts onto the Moab.

The result was pretty fantastic. Light at 25lbs with pedals, too. The only funky thing we had to do involved the rear brake cable. Since this was a pre-V brake bike, the rear brake housing only had one cable stop up by the head tube. From there, the bare cable ran down the top tube and thru a steel brake noodle welded to the seat tube. The brake noodle wrapped around the back of the seat tube to line up the cable for cantilevers. We ended up using the rer der cable stops for the rear brake so we could run a V brake. We then ran the rear der thru the front der cable stops, leaving us to get creative with the front der housing. We ran full housing from the left shifter all the way to the last cable stop for the der, the one right on top of the der. The housing was then zip tied to the frame and the other cables. Turned out great.

I can't wait for this baby to see dirt! Thanks Scott. :)