Sohnrad_04. 12 - summary

Sohnrad_04 is ready to race :)

So this episode 12 of the the upcycling frame-building project "sohnrad_04", the 4th bike I build for my son, is a short summary of the whole build.


It started with our sons wish to get a racebike to his birthday.


So, I took an old touring steelframe as a basis and started the project.


At the beginning there is always a lot of thinking and planning. Specially at a kids bike, there are a lot of questions. Length of cranks, size of wheels, dimension of tyres, intended use, etc,...


It was aimed to be a classic roadracer, small tyres. The planning I always do in rattle-cad, a free bikes cad-app, offered by Manfred Rosenberger.




With kids bikes one main issue is always the clearance toe to frontwheel.

As 24" inches is a bit to small for him, I went for 26". In 26" you the have the choice between ETRTO 559 - the mountain bike standard - and ETRTO 584 the formerly "triathlon" standard currently more known as 27,5".

As 584 leaded to not enough space between toe and front-wheel, I went for 559. But with this, the selection of slim tyres and rims, useful for a road racer, is very small.
I only found hutchinson top slick II and mavic xm 117 for an affordable price and to be ordered simply here in Germany.

Edith: As the Hutchinsons wheren´t very failsafe, I had to look for alternatives. And I found Continental Gatorskin in 28-559. Very good tyres! Since 9 month no fail...




So - then I took the hacksaw, and started



The only junction of the frame, that I could keep, was chainstays to bb-shell. The others angles just didn't match.
Also the headtube had to be done new, because I wanted to go for 1-1/8", and the frame had 1" - and the fork had to be done new in total...




The seat tube is reinforced with a shell.

Working process



Base colour

further painting process

Cycling Socks :)

buildup
finish

:)




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