Return of the Quickbeam

I recently sold my Titus Silk Road ATB, and my old Trek multi track, and my new Dahon folder, and my Rockhopper cheap bike challenge, and even my modern Vaast gravel bike, so my bike fund was unusually flush. As was garage space. I just bought a Surly Straggler frameset, because in the great tradition of Surly bikes, I had almost all of the parts on hand to throw at it:

The Straggler is a fine bike, really a slightly updated Cross Check with disc brakes. The slight updates are worthy: a bit taller head tube and a bit lower bottom bracket start to fix two of my biggest concerns with the old CC. With the fancy Rene Herse tires, it rolls along really well. But... I'm not really in love with disc brakes for road bikes. They stop fine. These old Shimano mechanical units are super simple to work on. But I just like the simple look and feel of rim brakes.

A few weeks ago, I sat down at my computer before work with the idea to order a Crust Lightning Bolt single speed frame for a build. Great clearance, skinny tubes, and now with canti brake posts. Give low trail a try again. But on my list of daily tabs in my browser, my ebay search popped up with a green 64cm Rivendell Quickbeam. The pictures were few and murky, as was the description, but the price was decent. I thought about it for only a few minutes then clicked the "buy it now." (I had to later confirm with the seller that it was for the complete bike, not just the frameset... that's how limited the description was)

Packed up nicely, it arrived on Saturday:

Single speeds are easy to assemble, it went together quickly:

It was being sold by some reseller in Arizona, but clearly some previous owner put some care and thought into this build. The cork grips and wrapped, shellaced, and twined bars put my bars to shame. And look at that bell patina!

Brooks saddle, Nitto parts and accessories, even brass ferules on the cable ends:

First real ride on Sunday morning:

The drivetrain is the stock 32/40/guard Sugino setup, but the rear is a WI 18t freewheel and a 15t fixed cog:

You can see above the most significant flaw on this bike: the right side downtube decal is partially ripped. Also a few paint chips here and there, but it's in good shape for a 20 year old bike.

The B17 Special looks nice and holds a saddle bag, but that's all the good I can say about it.

Nitto cro-mo bars.

The brakes were pretty weak and squealy, even with these fancy Scott pads. I found the lever was set to the long pull position, but fixing that didn't really fix the brakes. 

Another look at that bell. I hope I age so well:

I started making more change to make the bike work for me. The 40/18 gearing is too low for flat central Ohio, so I swapped the WI 18t freewheel for my fancy 16/19 WI dual speed freewheel. But the resulting 40/16 was still too low, so I need to get a 42t chainring to make this work. For now, the 40/15 fixed side works fine.

I replaced the B17 with the much nicer (for me) C17:

With the smaller banana bag, the rear Nitto rack really isn't doing much for me. It might come off at some point.

I replaced with brakes with some old Dia Compe 980s I had on hand. They stop fine. I initially planned to use my shiny Tektro CR720 brakes, but I could only find 3/4 of the brake springs. Good to have spare parts on hand then.

I prefer front loads (hence the interest in the Crust). I added this generic ebay front rack and a Cardiff bag from Soma. The Cardiff bag looks great, but I don't recommend it: the entire mounting system is two too-short velcro straps on the bottom. These did nothing to secure the bag to my rack, so I ended up flipping it around so I could run a bolt through the bag to the back of the rack. Combined with an extra zip tie on the bottom, it's now stable enough.

This is actually my second experience with a Quickbeam. I previously had an orange one. I liked it, but never loved it. Maybe due to the moustache bars, or maybe because the green QB was The Bike I Always Wanted for a long time. I'm hoping to give this one more of a chance.