Proflex 854: the epilogue

Oh, you didn't think I'd stop there, did you?

I know, it looks nice. But there were a few things bothering me.

Two of those things were the dust caps on the chainset. They might have been original, but I didn't like them. I replaced them with some new old stock genuine Sugino screw-in caps.

I think they might post-date the chainset; the typeface suggests mid-2000s. But they look better and have the correct name written on them.

Two of the other things were the tyres. The Panaracer Fire Mud Pros actually looked really good on this bike. But, I went for these tyres because they were 1.8 wide. My thinking was that this would give me noticeably less rolling resistance. I wasn't entirely correct.

And those tyres were a compromise. I'd sacrifice period-correctness for an easier life, but it turned out I didn't get much of an easier life. They looked good, but not perfect.

Anyway, the next picture comes from the "if you know, you know" genre.

If you don't know (but also if you do), these are the Panaracer Smoke and Dart tyres. The Smoke, left, is a rear tyre, and the Dart, right, is a front tyre. They were very popular in the early 1990s.

As I said previously, I don't want to deplete stocks of 1990s tyres, even if I thought I could trust tyres that old. These, though, are brand-new re-issues with a folding Kevlar bead. I like the attention to the details that make this look perfect on a retro mountain bike. They even made the labels on the amber sidewalls look exactly as I remember them.

The final thing was the forks. They work perfectly now. And they're shiny! But they did not have the Girvin logo on them.

I fixed that with some reproduction stickers from some Spanish eBay seller. I don't know that these are exactly correct for the bike. They're definitely for the original Girvin Vector fork, but the Proflex bikes of this generation had a different version of the American flag. Oh well, they don't look wrong at all; this isn't a concours restoration. In fact I think they look awesome and it makes the bike looks awesome!

Anyway, that's done.

I'm kidding, it wasn't, because the 2002-ish Avid Speed Dial 5 brake levers were bothering me. They were the only significant non-1990s part on the bike other than the very-1990s-looking tyres. As I said before, I couldn't bring myself to pay the £100+ that some eBay sellers want for the older versions in well-worn condition.

I know, "they're worth whatever someone will pay for them" and so on, but that can still fuck off. And the SD5s didn't look at all out of place; they could pass for 1990s levers well enough. But I had the opportunity to pick up a pair of mint 1998 Speed Dial 2.0L levers for £40 from someone on the Retrobike forums.

All of that'd be pointless if I didn't ride it. I write this a few hours after an outing to Sherwood Pines with my brother and his branch of the family.

The bike worked almost perfectly! I didn't die! The only fault was that one of the rear brake pads jettisoned one of its pad cartridges about a mile in. I'll blame the 30-year-old pins for that one. I'll replace them all with modern one-piece Kool Stop pads before the next ride. Fortunately my brother had some crap spare pads in the back of the car so it didn't write off the day.

That's it for the "off road" version of this bike. But I also want to use this bike on the road from time to time. It's cheaper than using my car on short runs and it'll mean I'm not so terminally cycle-unfit any time I go off-road. Using off-road tyres on the road is bad for the tyres and also bad for my legs. Slick tyres are much better for road use.

I also don't want to change tyres more than I have to. My ideal number of tyre changes is zero. If I have to go to extra efforts to get the bike ready to go out, I'm more likely to just take the car.

That's why I got a second set of wheels for it to put road slicks on. They are Mavic 238s on Alivio hubs from about 1995.

These aren't particularly fancy wheels. The Mavic 238s were on the lower end of "good" rims back in the day. They're not garbage, and they're not fancy. The same is true of the Alivio hubs. No Shimano product that I know of is ever truly bad. Alivio was a couple of steps above the very cheapest.

What I'm saying is: they'll do. They spin and they're not too heavy.

I put it on modern 1.5" slick tyres. They're cheap (about £13), and probably work as well as anything else that doesn't have tread. For road use, I don't care about them being period-appropriate, or even particularly good. These ones have "Vandorm" written on them. It sounds vaguely Dutch which distracts you from the fact they're probably made in the same factory as all the other cheap tyres.

And that is the Proflex 854 finished. For real this time! See you at the next project. (Because of course there is a next project...)