The Climb

Here's one of the bikes that I recently finished building for myself. I'm not 100% finished but had to throw some parts on there because I couldn't wait to ride it.

Lets start with the frame:

Its a Team Miyata ~1985 frame. This was Miyata's flagship bike back in the day. The reason why I picked it was mainly because of the geometry. It has a rather long top tube compared to the seat tube to compensate for my long torso and stumpier legs. Other than the geometry, its a Miyata, and around the 80s Miyata was leading the way with frame tubing. Originally being a Japanese rifle company, Miyata made a great transition into making thinner, lighter and less deadly tubes used for building bikes. They were innovative with their double, triple, and went crazy when they did their butted and splined frame tubes (go here for an explanation of frame butting). The frame I got was just a normal Double Butted frame. The crazy Quad butted ones came later in the early 90s.

I decided to build it as a vintage frame but with all modern components and also decided to keep it all Japanese so two words came to mind DURA ACE. Dura Ace is Shimano's flagship component family. It is the best component set that they offer. I chose the 7700 series Dura Ace group because it's rather new, but not brand new so you can find used parts floating around. Without being able to buy used, these components cost way too much for this kind of build, that'll take the fun and "Vintage" out of it I think.


The cranks! very hard to find my size because of my short legs. I bought the 7700 series with 165mm crank arms. Octalink bottom bracket, ohh soo smooth.


I'm especially proud of these. Dura Ace 7700 series hubs front and rear laced Mavic Open Pro rims with Stainless spokes with purple anodized nipples!


After that I couldn't wait any more and started to slap some parts on. The big problem I'm having right now is that my front derailleur (7700 double) is a braze on type. Shimano sells the clamps but nothing small enough for these vintage bikes with the smaller frame tubes. So those are sitting in the box until i get some shims made. This bike is also going to get dura ace brake calipers and STI levers once I'm finished. Here's how it's furnished right now.



I have a complete set of Shimano 600 components lying around so I made use of the derailleurs and brake calipers. These are GREAT components but they don't offer the matching bling that I'm ultimately after. =D



And here's how the whole package looks


Hopes this helps anyone out there who's looking to build their own bike. Let me know if you have any questions.

Du