Some stopped cycling when they got married and have now come back to it. Often they get the same frame re-sprayed every 10 years or so. Paul Gibson, from Ellis Briggs says, The majority of our customers are men over 50. I wanted a more professional job, which included replacing the Dawes decals and the all-important Reynolds 531 transfers, so I checked out a number of frame builders online before settling on Ellis Briggs ( .uk ). With a bike of this age you can pretty much guarantee youll have to replace the bottom bracket, chain, cassette and possibly the headset bearings.
The shifters didnt work on the existing sit-up-and-beg handlebar so I had to fit a flatter bar, which then necessitated new brake levers. I upgraded the crankset from two chainrings to three to increase the number of gears available, which meant installing a new bottom bracket with a longer axle, a new derailleur and new gear shifters. I decided that if the Stratos was going to be my one and only, summer and winter, road bike I had to do something about all the exposed steel on the frame.Ī total respray means a strip down and rebuild, which offers possibilities The options were to rebuild the Stratos to its original spec or go hog-wild and bring it up to date.
My wife, Fionnuala, said Id grown as a person when I told her about the plan. One Sunday afternoon, while I was searching under Reynolds 531, I came across a Dawes Stratos. I tried to convince myself that the Dawes was fine but in the end I had to accept that it was too small for me.
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