New Inspectors!

After Alley passed away, it didn't take long for Lisa and I to decide we needed some new cats in our household, but I wasn't sure if they were going to be "shop cats" or not.

Lisa found a little gray tiger kitten named Chuckles at the Milwaukee Humane Society, and when we went to meet him, he was having such a great time playing with his roommate that we adopted them both! Below is Marshall, who seems to be the new Inspector looking over Scott's Waterford refurbish.


Here's Chuckles keeping an eye on me while I work in the office!

With Scott's bike, he was trying to get a bit of extra clearance on his RS-22 so he could run fenders and a bit wider tire. We initially talked about just building a slightly longer fork, but in the end I talked him into doing a fork and making the seat stays a bit longer as well. This way, the bike gets raised up a bit, but the angles and the handling should stay pretty similar.

The new and the old forks, along with the bits of seat stay that I removed. The new fork only has about 3mm more rake, but I must say I really prefer the small radius bend that I do over the rake in the old Waterford fork. The new fork also has an attachment point under the crown for fenders and a single eyelet on the dropouts.

I removed the "fastback" style seat stays and replaced them with these nice flat capped "sidetack" stays. These allow for more tire clearance and better placement for canti studs.

Marshall checking out the curved seat stay bridge with a fender mount.

A shot of the bridge reinforcing tang.

Finally, I had to add a chain stay bridge so Scott would have an attachment point for his fender. Unfortunately, it lands right in the end of the tire clearance "bump". Not an easy part to miter, but I managed to get it in there!

For the fender attachment on the dropout, I just drilled the flat part of the Waterford dropouts and threaded the holes.

Not quite a new bike, but the next best thing!