A New Bike

The plan here is to turn this pile of metal into a functioning road bike frame. This is going to be the third frame I've built and I'm stoked to get started on it after a small break. Building the first two frames I made mistakes, got frustrated, got lucky on some stuff and basically learned a lot about what goes into building frames. Hopefully by documenting this next build I'll be able to learn even more from my mistakes and use that knowledge to keep building better frames in the future. 

The tubing is just a Nova standard road light tube set and the lugs are the Prugnat S-4 series from Nova as well. I'm pretty broke and Im not confident enough in my building skills yet to throw down some serious money on tubing, lugs, ect. so the cheapest has to do for now. 

This frame is going to be for my girlfriend Rachel who needs a new bike badly. She has been riding the same busted bike since her high school days and its on its last leg even after a couple of revival attempts. She seems pretty willing to put a frame I built to the test so Im going to try extra hard this time to get the design right for her and build the frame solid. She would kill me if this frame blows out in the middle of an intersection some place in the city but I'm confident she wouldn't sue my ass.  I think I've got the specs about right and did a full size drawing of the bike. I wish I had bike Cad but even though drawing the whole thing out is laborious its helps me better visualize how stuff is going to work out.  I got by on the skin of my teeth on the last frame because I overlooked some minor details in the planning process. 

Sorry the picture of the drawing didn't come out so well but here are the specs I'm shooting for. 

74 HT angle

74 ST angle

setback 139mm.

seat tube c-c 505mm.

top tube c-c 535mm.

BB drop 70mm.

chain stay 415mm.

rake 44mm. 

Wheel Base 964mm.

Front Center 560mm.

650c wheel set 

Im going to go with these specs for now but we'll see how things work out when the bike actually starts to come together. It always looks good on paper at first.