It all started with a sad Shogun Katana road bike in 1980’s fluro orange. In it’s previous life it had been given granny gears & been ridden hard on many a Great Vic bike ride.

Now it was time for retirement by the sea. The Surly Spew on frame prep lists linseed oil as a rust preventative for frame tubes. As I had this on hand it was syringed into every orifice, taking about a week to dry into a claggy mess anywhere I hadn’t been meticulous to clean up.

Stainless bolts replaced as many rusty ones as possible, including the one holding the bottom bracket cable guide.

New chainring bolts and a kero bath made the BioPace crankset look new again.

Of course stainless cables were used everywhere and a KMC (supposedly) rustproof chain replaced the existing items.

Exage brakes, although rusty got new Jagwire pads and seem to perform decently. Powering these were Exage aero levers, but sadly I discovered that the perished hoods were out of production. I settled on some Lee-Chi replacements, but the hood shape isn’t the same underneath the rubber as the hood itself. I wish I’d gone with the Tiagra’s which Rivendell describe as 85% as good as Dura-Ace with only a plastic washer as blatantly cheap.

Wheels were trued somewhat & as with many pre-loved bikes I work on they are a mis-matched rimset on a matching hubset.

Hubs are HG-50/Exage, 126mm spaced at the rear. I’ve picked-up a spare rear hub for this bike given this will die at some point.

A new, slightly wider 13-26 7-speed cassette was fitted and the Exage 400LX and Deore DX mechs were spruced up as much as possible but given the salt spray the bike will be exposed to there’s no point replacing something that’s just going to get rusty again.

Black, faux leather bar tape made by Serfas finished off the bars. It’s stitched and perforated for that real retro look and at 1/3 the price of real leather fits the bill perfectly.

Chris of Velo Orange thinks black hoods look best with non black tape (I’m sure I read it somewhere), well you live and learn.

Dated yellow sidewall Clement Monza tyres, a hard rubbish find, shall we say NOS? They say they’re puncture resistant. I hope so.

What else? Hubs and headset were rebuilt with clear grease, the rep wanted us to test it, I’ll let you know.

Rusty binder bolt replaced, hard rubbish Velox rim tape. BBB silver bottle cages. Some serviceable KKT Pedals were fished out of the metal bin and new MKS clips and plain nylon straps fitted.

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