1983 Mercian Olympic

[zerogravitas]

Super pictures of a classy bike. Makes me wish I lived in hillier country!

 

[sjcprojects]

Hi sjcprojects,
I love the photos. This is an inspiring thread. Congratulations for putting together
a retro project but using 28c tyres and a 32T rear cog. Surely, this is one advantage
of modern stuff ie fatter tyres and lower gears. I'm not sure that narrower tyres are really viable given the state
of the roads.

Thanks. As mentioned in thread, the 28c tyres were a first for me, and really only came about because of the fact that the rear wheel can't comfortably taker anything more narrow - but they do make a change from the usual 23c width that I use on most of my bikes. Actually I'm not sure I would say they make a massive difference to comfort/road buzz, but I certainly have no complaints about them. I have one bike that can only take 20c tyres, and I was worried it wouldn't be much fun to ride on our British roads, but in fact I find it fine. Which makes me think that the quality of the frame is more of a factor than tyres when it comes to that sort of thing. Of course that's only based on my relatively limited experience, so I could be totally wrong about that!

A 32T rear is generally pretty easy to achieve with a 7/8 speed cassette seeing as there are plenty of MTB cassettes like that, what is more tricky is getting a good 7 speed 32T freewheel, as the ones on the market tend to be either expensive or too cheaply made without much in the middle. So, cassettes are the way to go if possible.

I'm still undecided on whether I'll stick with the current RD using the hanger extender, or use a long cage RD instead. In general, I would definitely recommend using a Suntour Cyclone or VX long cage RD if you're thinking of using a lower range of gears and still keeping it retro – they are easily the best retro RDs I've used.