So Will It Work? – Bike Snob NYC

I’ve got a new Outside column, and it’s all about the joy of getting rid of bikes:

Of course I just got rid of a bunch of bikes, so I wrote this mostly to make myself feel better.

As for my remaining bikes, when I last rode the Cervino this is what happened:

Like toe clips and straps, there’s little reason to be using tubular tires in 2024–but like toe clips and straps, that’s what’s on the Cervino, and riding the bike in all its period-correct inconvenient glory is part of the fun. So I’ve got some new (and more flat-resistant) tubular tires on their way, and once they arrive I will undertake the process of ritually adhering them to the rim. It’s been a long time since I’ve glued a tubular, and I was never particularly good at it, so it will be interesting if I can do it without somehow getting them stuck to the cat.

In the meantime, few things taunt me more than an unrideable bicycle–especially when it’s the only bicycle that lives with me inside my actual apartment and I look at it all the time, as is the case with the Cervino. Alas, the only other pair of 126mm-spaced wheels I have are on the Normcore Bike, and I couldn’t steal those, since, well, they’re on the Normcore Bike, which is how my elder son gets to school every day:

[Not with those pedals though.]

But then I realized, “Wait, it’s a steel bike! Who the hell cares what the rear spacing is?” And since I’d just switched wheels on the Milwaukee, I had the other pair just sitting there in abeyance:

The frame is spaced at 126mm and the rear wheel is 130mm, so four measly millimeters wouldn’t be an issue. (The Faggin is also ostensibly a 126mm frame, and I’ve never even had a 126mm-spaced wheel in there.) As for the number of cogs, the Cervino’s rear wheel has a six-speed freewheel, and the new wheel has a nine-speed cassette–not necessarily an issue thanks to the miracle of friction shifting, but as I know from experience, in practice some older derailleurs don’t always have enough range for today’s (or in the case of 9-speed, 1998’s) wider cassettes, and even if they do, sometimes those older derailleurs can contact the spokes when you’re in your lowest gear.

The only thing I knew absolutely wouldn’t work would be the chain, since you need at least a 9-speed chain if you’re going to use a 9-speed cassette. So at the very least I’d need to change that. This could potentially be an issue, since it would be reasonable to think that the narrower chain wouldn’t work on those old chainrings and pulleys. However, when I’d put a 10-speed chain on the otherwise 6-speed C-Record Vengeance Bike, it worked just fine:

Actually, it worked more than fine, as it noticeably improved the shifting.

Furthermore, at one point I’d put that same C-Record rear derailleur on the Faggin, which at the time had a 9-speed cassette, and that too worked without issue:

Obviously the Super Record stuff on the Cervino was a few years older than the C-Record stuff on the Vengeance Bike, but both had been designed to work with six-speed freewheels, and if I knew Campy I figured there was a pretty good chance that most of the differences between the two rear derailleurs came down to aesthetics. Furthermore, if I was right, once I had a modern chain on there I could switch back and forth between the old freewheel and a newer cassette with abandon.

So I changed the chain on the Cervino for a 10-speed and swapped in the new wheels. They slotted into the dropouts with minimal effort, and getting the derailleur to shift across the entire cassette took nothing more than a few turns of the low limit screw. There was no apparent spoke contact issue with the derailleur, either, which I confirmed when I took it out for a ride:

In fact the bike felt fantastic, and the overall improvement in shifting was dramatic:

Not only that, but going from a low gear of 42×21 to 42X25 felt positively decadent:

No doubt a modern slant parallelogram derailleur would be an even bigger improvement, but having played with all sorts of combinations in recent years I’ve come to learn that much of what informs shift quality is the chain and the cassette, and going from old freewheels and chains to modern Hyperglide (or its equivalent) is probably the biggest shifting upgrade you can make by a long shot:

Friction shifting isn’t for everybody, and integrated shifters are great, but you’ve got to admit, a drivetrain that gives you over 40 years of wheel compatibility with nothing more than a simple chain swap is pretty darn impressive–and addictive if you’re a tinkerer, or cheap, or both.

And not only did I net a lower gear, but I also netted wider tires, and here’s some 28mm clearance porn:

Unsurprisingly, they fit with room to spare:

The tightest spot was in the crotch, but even there it was sufficient, and I could buy myself even more clearance by backing out on the dropout adjuster screws and moving the wheel back:

I’d wondered if switching from tubulars to clinchers might diminish the Cervino’s pleasing ride quality somewhat, but it felt as good as ever and possibly even better–which really isn’t surprising, since not only are the clinchers wider, but I was also using very non-fancy tubulars. (Braking also felt better, probably due to those machined sidewalls I was recently whining about.) I also thought the all-black wheels might look funky on a classic road bike, but it’s got enough silver stuff on it that if anything I’d say they complement it:

All of this is to say the wheels seem to be an improvement all around, so much so that I’m wondering if it was silly to order new tubulars–though it would be even more silly not to use the lovely classic wheels that came with the Cervino, so I’ll still be seeing the gluing project through, much to the cat’s chagrin.

But yes, when switching from tubulars to clinchers you can certainly loosen your sphincter at least a few PSI. This in turn affects your wardrobe, and instead of going Full Retrogrouch, I went Full Rivendell with my attire. “But isn’t that the same thing?,” you’re wondering. No, it is not. See, you can go Full Rivendell and not look like a freak when you make a stop at the post office, which is emphatically not the case when you go Full Retrogrouch. I mean, yes, the gloves are the same:

But in a pair of MUSA pants and a Woolywarm sweater you actually look like a normal person:

Even my painfully pretentious vintage shoes look almost like something a normal person would wear:

Almost:

Yes, unlike a bad tubular, you can keep breathing new life into an old road bike:

No wonder they had to foist disc brakes on us, this sort of cross-era compatibility simply cannot be allowed.