angelina and max with the steyr, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.There was roll of film in one of the cameras I sold last week, and there were some amazing pictures from 2002.
This is Max in the Bobike front child seat on the Steyr. He grew up in that seat.
This was before we put in recycled French doors instead of the busted-ass garage door.
This bike is for sale – $125. Portland to Corvallis area. No shipping.
Cranks, pedals and seat from Trek Belleville.
Front Wald basket, rear Blackburn Mt rack from about 1987
Aluminum CR18 590 rims, stainless spokes, 1972 AW hub from a Schwinn Breeze, front WTB grease-guard hub. The original Sachs Dreigang wheels went on the Breeze, which went to a friend.
Minoura fork-mounted battery light, and a Superflash-style blinkie.
Kickstand.
Angelina has ridden this bike for about 13 years. She’s never had a drivers’ license, so this has gotten a lot of useful use, and a lot of useful upgrades.
50cm frame, $120 (shipping is extra, but I can deliver it locally from Portland to Salem). If you’re interested, please email me at philip (at) biketinker (dot) com, or use the contact form.
The tires are dirty, but have plenty of tread. Your bike shop probably carries this size of tire (EA3, ISO 590, or 1 3/8″), so don’t worry.
These are the first wheels I ever built. They’ve held up really well for 7 years or so. I may never have tried wheelbuilding at all, except for these. I kept replacing the horrible galvanized spokes on the original wheelset, until the last time, I started out replacing five and ended up replacing TWELVE SPOKES. I figured “if I can do that, I can build a wheel.” It ain’t rocket science. Rocket science probably isn’t that hard, either.
It’s a nice bike; it rides great. Highly highly recommended with the Bobike front-mount childs’ seat. My kid spent three years in one on this bike, riding 100s of miles. Put some panniers or fold-out baskets on the back, and you can shop the hell out of the Farmer’s Market.
A kind reader pointed out that Angelina wrote a blog post about this bike, under the title “Favorite Things: My Steyr Bicycle.“
My old friend, inspiration, and mentor* Sheldon Brown, states that a “Mixte” is a ladies’ style of bike characterized by twin top tubes that extend all the way to the rear dropouts. He further states that there is a variant with a single top tube and the extra set of stays. He says if it don’t have three sets of stays, it ain’t no mixte.
I have always been leery of this interesting pedantic fact, because:
His main point was “don’t use the word mixte to refer to any old ladies’ frame bike,” because it’s a specific style.” I generally skirted** the issue: I tried not to make any embarrassing gaffes, but didn’t correct people on the internet.
Cut to the big mixte news this week on the iBOB list:  Greg Reiche posted a link to a C. S. Hiroshi page about creating a ladies bicyle, specifically a “Sport.” One of the pictures showed a publication from FNCRM (Fédération Nationale du Commerce et de la Réparation du Cycle et Motocycle), a French bicycle and motorcycle trade group. Another image was of a page of that publication, showing some of the different styles of step-through frames.
I’ve redrawn the graphic here. Don’t sue me, bro. 
Mixte – Twin tubes from the upper head lug all the way to the rear dropouts. Hot.
Sport – A single top tube, with a third set of stays. Also hot. Rivendell and J.P. Weigle style. Sheldon calls this a kind of Mixte.
Berceau – Bendy twin top tubes, for more standover height. Lots of potential, but I’ve never seen a truly sexy implementation of this style.
Jumele – Twin top tubes, with NO third set of stays. I have never seen this style of bike. Doofy.
Anglais – Second top tube, no extra stays. Angelina’s Steyr was this style. Workmanlike.
Col de Cygne – Swoopy top tube, with supporting struts to the down tube. Nice, but tend to look heavy.
Double Col de Cygne – Swoopy top tube, and down tube, with struts.  Trying too hard?
Of bikes that have passed through my house, apparently the Steyr was a “style Anglais,” while the Belleville is a true mixte. The couple Suburbans Angelina had were… variations on the Anglais?
* Internet-style. He may or may not have recognized me on the street. ** See what I did there?
One last “State of the Bikes” post: Angelina’s Trek Belleville. She still loves this bike, and wants me to get the Steyr gone.
Ritchey Cranks, white rubber-block pedals, large basket (thrift store bin of some sort), Brooks B72 that I re-mounted, vintage black grips, Wald fold-out rear baskets.
Blue 1970s Sears department store bike, made in Austria by Steyr-Daimler-Puch. Steel rims, steel cranks, matching vinyl seat. The red Steyr was like this before it got aluminum cranks, a square-taper BB, and aluminum rims.
It needs:
Pedals
Hubs overhauled
Sachs 3-speed hub cleaned and oiled (at least)
Fenders bent back into shape
Tires
It’s actually not in bad shape; I just haven’t gotten an afternoon to clean it up.
I just saw this new tire tool on Google+. You hook the little bit under the bead of the tire, hook the big hook over your fork or chainstay and turn the wheel backwards. I usually pop my Pedro’s tool under the bead and shear it off the rim like carving bark off a stick. Same principal, I guess.
It looks good, and I’m in favor of anyone devising new tools, but I usually have trouble MOUNTING tires. That’s where all my tire levers go – into two pieces putting the current tires on Angelina’s old Steyr. When there’s a Cobra tool that can zip the bead back on, I’m buying one. $5.99 each, free shipping for two. Let me know how they work out for you.
The Belleville turned out to be a success! It’s dialed in for fit, and function, with a couple of “form” tradeoffs*. Angelina says it’s heavier than the old bike, but “feels sturdier,” and she loves the dynamo lights. It’s a huge relief not to worry about batteries, or turning the light on. I’ve seen her rolling along at dusk, too, and they’re pretty visible.
Despite all the goodness, Angelina kept riding her old bike, because it had the baskets. She uses the bike as transportation, so she needs to bring things home. I moved the Wald folding baskets to the new bike, which was good, but she didn’t like having to bungie things onto the front rack. I balked at moving the front basket, though, because it didn’t fit the rack or the bike’s aesthetic. After she threatened to wire the old basket on with whatever twine or baling wire she could find, I went to Goodwill, determined to get something basket-like. Wicker picnic baskets (hmm, not bad), heavy storage basket, suitcase… and this. It looks like it might have had a laundry-room or dishwasher function, but it fits the rack almost exactly, and is cut down in back to go right under the bar! Perfect. Plenty of room for a half rack of beer. It even had wire “ears” on the bottom I used to attach it to the rack , through the magic of ‘bending.’ One broke, so a single hoseclamp replaced it.
The stock saddle turned out to be really comfortable, but not at first. I flipped the saddle clamp around, so the post is in front of the clamp, instead of behind. This gives more setback, but also more leverage on the saddle to knock it out of angle, so you have to tighten it like mad. I’m cautious doing that, though, since I snapped the bolt on the Brooks 2-rail clamp (the Brooks bolt had two weak, flat sections, which is really stupid), and had to replace it with a much sturdier Chinese part.
I was a little worried about installing the repaired Brooks, since the Trek Eco saddle has been so comfortable. But I did the work, and it’s a great seat, and I can always put the Eco seat back on. This Brooks has the same flipped clamp, which gives 1/2″ more setback, which surprised me.
The grips are hard plastic, held on with screw-clamp ends, and have to be rotated on the bars so the indentations to line up naturally with the hand. One almost came off in an intersection, and the cap part disappeared, so I replaced it with a cork. And tightened up the little allen bolt. I may leave the Steyr out in the sun, so I can slide the old grips off and use them on the Belleville.
I bumped up the handlebar height about an inch, with spacers. Chris King red, brown and blue spacers would be dynamite, but black goes with everything.
The cranks are 175mm Ritcheys she’s been riding for a few years on her old bike, and she said they made a HUGE difference in comfort. The tread is also much narrower, and the left arm almost hits the kickstand. I think the chainring’s the same size. The white pedals are borrowed from another Austrian-built 3-speed my friend asked me to fix up for him. All I’ve done so far is pull the front wheel off, spin it, wince, and put it down. And steal the pedals.
It looks like I need to get some zip ties to corral that wild shifter cable. There are brazed-on lugs for the zip-ties, which is pretty cool.
I took these pictures with my new camera and old, old lens. Some are nicely focused, some not. More practice!
*The baskets are dumpy, but the cranks and (stolen) pedals are prettier.
Morning time, Tarzan take Boy halfway school, turn ’round when him feel sick like Sloth Bear. Take Boy back hour later when Jane say “WTF? Did he throw up?” Me say “No.” Me pick Boy up three hour later when him still feel sick.
Tarzan work. Tarzan make website. Tarzan eat so-so flauta and gummy tamale. Tarzan talk on phone.
Tarzan do hard Kung Fu class, sweat like hippo when she dance opera “La Giaconda.”  Tarzan ride bike home slow.
Tarzan have beer. Maybe two beers, mess with bikes, write short post and go to bed.
______________________
From reading the Far Side book with the Boy, probably. Maybe I’ll channel Captain Ahab tomorrow.
I fooled around a bit tonight, tightening the Quickbeam’s cranks, skateboard pedal decks and raising the chain tension. Still some lash in the hub, but a little better. The axle nuts were loose like I never tightened them.
I have a single-ended 5/8″ Proto, and something similar in metric would be pretty cool. The gap would fit over the shifter cable, and the six-point wrench would give a really good grip.
I just put in a nice 40 minutes reading about wrenches and screw-head driving patterns. I didn’t know Phillips screws were SUPPOSED to cam out.
Tomorrow we go into Portland after work to drop the bike off at the PedalNation event, meet Angelina at Powell’s and go to the Kennedy School.
Tonight I started moving (reluctantly), Angelina’s old Wald fold-up baskets from her Steyr mixte to her oh-so-pretty Trek Belleville. I put bar tape on the painted rack at each of the attachment points and started squeezing the misshapen mounting bands into some semblance of shape, but realized they were too lame to use. I’ll buy some hose clamps on Saturday morning and get the bike ready to ride to the McMinnville Saturday Market. We get produce there from Growing Wild Farm and Denison Farm.
I got a new Trek Belleville women’s bike from Tommy’s Bike Shop in McMinnville at a nice discount, with part of the price traded for improvements to their website (not implemented yet, in case you were wondering).
Angelina hasn’t had a new bike since she was 11. She’s been riding the same Goodwill-sourced Steyr mixte for 14 years or so, and had nixed the idea of buying new as philosophically repugnant, except that “This bike is so pretty!” It’s also recyclable, and made OF recycled material, supposedly. And it’s pretty. And she doesn’t drive.
I like it because it comes equipped with front and rear generator lights, fenders and racks. All the wiring runs inside the tubes – the fork, the rack the main tubes, under the fenders. My bikes don’t have internal wiring! I also really like the welded mounting tab for the front rack, which I’ve never seen before. It’s clever and strong, and it takes the brakes right out of the rack-mount equation.
I’m a huge fan of custom bikes and bike-makers, and it looks like the Belleville designer(s) are too. I only ever see painted and integrated stem and bars on show bikes. Since most people never change either the stem or the bars, it makes just as much sense to make them all one piece. The bars need to be raised ~2″ to match her old bike’s setup. I only hope there are pretty spacers I can use! I’d like one tall blue one, or three 1/2″ ones in light blue, red and brown like the decorative bands that accent the bike here and there.
I raised the stem with normal ugly spacers and a longer bolt. Eric of Winter Bicycles pointed out that the stem is a lever on the steerer, and shouldn’t come above the top of the steerer tube, but I did it anyway. If Angelina crashes and dies, he can say “I told you so.”
I also ran the wire through the guide tube – you have to fold the spades away from each other to get them through the tube.
There were only a couple of things I would have designed differently, and a couple of assembly details I’ll redo (light wiring doesn’t go through a wiring tube, and I prefer as wide a rack mount as possible).
The front rack struts are tubes that are open at the top, but closed at the bottom! I think they’ll fill up with Oregon rainwater in short order. I plan to plug the tops before that happens. The outer tube is actually for the headlight wiring. Oops.
Rear fender woggles a bit. A support tab from the rear rack to the top of the rear fender would be ideal. I plan to make a U-bracket from the rack bolts to the fender.
And the pedal bearings are really crunchy. White rubber block pedals would be the bomb for this bike.
Other than those tiny nits, this is a beautiful bike.
skateboard grip tape on MKS GR9 platform pedals, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.
I’ve had these pedals for a while, but found them to be too narrow for my size 12 feet. I put them on my wife’s 3 speed Steyr when she broke a pedal axle.
They get a little slippery in the rain, at least for me. Hopefully the grip tape will add some gription when it’s wet. She wants rubber block pedals again, so I’ll probably try them with clips and straps on another bike pretty soon. I don’t know if the tape will make it too hard to use clips, or not.
I cut out a square of “Mob” grip tape for each pedal, and used a woodworking blade to cut around the pedal shape.
I also used the flat of the blade to press down around the bumps on the surface of the pedal. In some cases, I scored the edge of the bump in order to make it look ‘raised’ enough.
For the last month or so I haven’t been riding to work or for pleasure after dark, because my main light was out. I bought new bulbs and a new lens, but it didn’t fix it.
Today I put the word out to the Rivendell group, and got nice deal on two replacement E6 halogen lights. One for the Quickbeam, to get it rolling with dual lights again, and the other for my wife’s Steyr.
I have an old bottle dynamo for her bike, but I’d need to gen up a mounting bracket. The ones I’ve seen are fairly sucktacular.
I want to switch over to an LED light like the IQ Cyo for my dynamo hub, but I have a bag of 3 watt halogen bulbs, and a (fairly small) number of bikes, so I think I’ll stick with the halogens for the next year. Maybe then get a Cyo for the Quickbeam and move the E6s to the less-used bikes.
