Hopefully good to go

It was super-nice to chat last night - thanks - and of course I am thinking of you and your extended family in particular today.

Here's the completed bike, it's pretty cool and sensibly customized, by which I mean that I've ridden it lots and changed little bits here and there without changing the overall philosophy of it (it's alsways seemed really daft to buy a bike and then change it so much that it's a different one).

I get why bar end shifters are good for touring, because you never stand up and pedal a loaded touring bike (they would normally stick out of the bottom of the handle bar).  I also use this one for the beach and for getting fit for touring however, and I've banged my knees on them once too often (also brings about an immediate gear change - not ideal if you are grinding up a hill).  So I bought a pair of these brake-mounted cyclocross friction shifters (which use the same brake levers as the bike originally came with as their base - important if you want to change as little as possible).  Delightfully they are made by a company called The Goats of Gevenalle (yep).  

I opted for these front pannier racks which mount independently on either side of the front fork.  The key is to have a fork which has tapped mounts on both sides of each fork blade.    The next challenge was that there wasn't an available eye for the mud-guards.  I'm way too old for days-on-end of grit-in-crack if the roads are wet, so I was determined to re-attach the mudguards.  I did that by cutting and reshaping the mounts so that they could attach to the pannier rack when it was on, and directly to the fork eye if the racks were off.  

You can see it here, the rack bolts sandwich-like with the fork blade in the middle.  To fit the bottom spacer required to get round the disk brakes on the one side and the fork base, also required a spacer for the top mount.

The racks themselves are pretty cool, made out of  4130 hollow Chromoly - which means lightish, fiendishly strong, easy to weld if broken.  Seemed like a good fit for the rest of the bike which is essentially of the same stuff.

The spacers I needed (you will be amazed at how impossible it is to buy a 12mm steel spacer with a +5mm core) I ended up making out of the end of brass gas nozzles - cheap, rust-proof, easy to cut and trim... seemed perfect).

This is what the front panniers look like when mounted.  Damn cool, low centre of gravity, easy on and off.  I also used strips of hose-pipe between the pannier mounts to stop them moving around unduly under braking :-).  Hopefully I can get all my gear, tools, work-clothes, laptop etc etc in.  Time will tell.