By blackmountaincycles,
Filed under: What's in the stand
What a treat it was to have this bike pass through the shop on its way to a friend of mine who is its new owner. What we have here is an Alan that Charlie Cunningham owned in the ’70s. He sold the bike in the late ’70s to finance equipment that would enable him to start making his own frames and components. That in itself is pretty neat. However, what is even more interesting and outrageously cool are all the custom touches Charlie did to the bike and the parts to make it work better for him. I tried to take pictures of all the custom pieces, but as I was packing it up to send to my friend, I kept noticing more custom bits – the cable stop for the shift cable hidden under the bar tape, the custom aluminum derailleur hanger bolt, the chainring bolts. Not to mention that virtually every single bolt is customized or is aluminum or titanium.
What’s a cool bike without pictures? As it sits in this form, it weighs 17 pounds and change. There is nothing drilled out (okay, some bits are carved up a bit).
Even the brake cable anchors are reduced to only the essential.
Campy down tube shifter grafted into the handlebar end.
Magnesium stem with Nylfor upper headset. The lower headset cup is made from a piece of military scrap-yard magnesium.
Weight savings went as far as running spokes on the short side. Aluminum nut on that brake post too.
Custom drilled Cinelli Unicanitor seat. The steel seat rail were replaced with aluminum rails. Most seat rails are actually one piece of bent steel. This is two pieces which are held in place up front with two tiny screws threaded through the nose and into the end of the rail. Should have gotten a shot of that…
Rear rim.
Hi-E front rim. 200g, hidden spoke nipples. Very light.
Hi-E front hub with interesting 1x spoke pattern.
Rear Hi-E hub.
Super cool bolt on cable stops. This from an era where clips were typically used to secure a full run of housing.
The seat lug is drilled to act as the cable stop.
Probably the most interesting, noticeable feature is the rear derailleur cable routing. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line and that’s exactly how the cable is routed. Nifty guide fixed to the seat tube.
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That's just stunning Mike. How cool.
It's here!