Thanks - I don't suppose you recall what BB length an Escape uses? I've read 113mm online, which looking at the cranks sounds about right, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
I took the 50 mile trip across The Peaks today to the paint shop in Stoke-on-Trent. It's part of Brian Rourke Cycles. It feels appropriate for this to have a Rourke as well as a Dave Yates connection, seeing as they are two of the best known frame builders of this era.
They have some rather nice looking bikes, both old and new...
The paint shop reception is upstairs, where it becomes obvious that in a previous life the building was a snooker club/working men's club or similar, with seating around the walls. They are actually moving to a different building soon so I thought I'd document a bit of it, as it is pretty unusual. They still have a knackered pool table, which now of course has a bike on it.
I was amused to see a line of 3 newly painted Mercians in there. Presumably they picked up some of the work Mercian might otherwise have done when the latter were out of action (I think Mercian are now taking orders again, though I've not checked recently).
Anyway, I definitely got the feeling the frame is in good hands; they were thorough when it came to checking what I wanted. They have the exact dark blue metallic colour I'm after, too – 'jewel blue.' 4-5 weeks and I should have the frame back. I'm getting it posted back to me, seeing as it is a 3 hour round trip, even if it is a relatively scenic one.
Hopefully it will only be a few weeks until the frame and fork are back with me. In the meantime I got the wheels out from the depths of the shed to clean them up. The wheels (Veloce hubs with Omega Hardox rims) are good enough to re-use, but the skewers are a bit too tatty for use on a newly painted frame, I think, so I'll have to source some nicer ones. This is of course the problem with putting parts on a pristine frame.
Now that we might have some warmish weather I'll try and respray the seatpost and stem. There's no way I can save the Condor etching on the seatpost, so I'll have to spray over that unfortunately.
