Meet Beakham, the plowshares use of the velodrome machine

The following is circa Y2K, this bike no longer exists, see the demise of beakham

This is my beloved Rugg Road Cycles Track frame, made in Boston semicustom for me in 1994. i used it for fixed gear commuting around boston in 1994 and 1995 and around Berkeley until 1996. In 1996 I got my single speed cross bike, which I then put to most of my commuting, relegating this bike to part time commuting and part time racing. I have raced this bike on the hellyer vellodrome approximately 20 times over the last 5 years (most of that over the last two years). Somewhere in its long history it developed a crack in the head tube. Using the theory that there is nothing quite like just going out there and busting out a repair, Dick DiGennero of Solo Velo and I decided to go ahead and do it. I used to apprentice for Chris Kelly and he used to do a ton of repairs. I had watched him enough to think I knew how to do it. Dick is a excellent framebuilder and brazer, but had not done any repairs yet. I gleefully admit I am a hack with the torch. Using my (alleged) know how and Dick's torch skills we popped out the old head tube and busted a new one in. It worked (not without crushing the lug and then forging it back into shape and using lots of bad bad words). We also removed the solid seat stay bridge and put in a rear brake bridge joke, and we added a chainstay bridge to stiffen up the ride a bit. It was (and still is) a fairly flexy frame. I call it Beakham because it used to be a track bike, but now it has beakham a cruising machine. Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk. Some photos exist of it in its warlike racing configuration (complete with 8-ball handlebar tape wow wow!) but they are not up as of yet. Th bike runs 73.5 degree head and seat tube angles, with a 56 st and tt. The rear has clearance for 35mm tires, the front barely clears a 25mm.

This is a really really nice Euro Asia imports 20T cog, probably the nicest track cog i have ever seen. I run a 48 up front for a 65 ish gear ratio for the hills in berkeley. Also it is a nice cruising gear for the coffee and bar runs. Suntour Track ends for you trivia buffs.

These are very TA cyclotourist cranks, which offer extremely low Q factors. Very nice. Anyone know where to get track specific TA chainwheels? A note about the pedals.

6 Years of working in the bike industry has afforded me many a Chi chi part. This bike gets almost all of them. I am still not sure about the suspension post, but i only have a couple of hundred miles on the post, the jury is still out. The suspension is mitigated a bit by the saddle. The saddle is from a WTB blow out at a cycle swap. it looks cool but is a bit of, well, an ass hatchet, but boy does it look cool. The bike also has a king headset, a pauls non Vbrake brake lever, a hugi 40 hole front hub (tandem surplus), A King Cage waterbottle Cage, A beautiful fillet brazed kelly stem, cool bars (see below) and a crazy rear wheel (see below)

When I was young and weak and had just ordered this bike, I went on a tour of merlin. They had Ken Carpenters Ti track bike there and it had a Nuke Proof track hub on it. I had to have one of those hubs. So i ordered it and got it strung up with a mavic open 4cd rim. Yikes, that almost set me back half as much as the frame did (the frame and fork were a bargain at $400 bucks (with ultegra headset and bb!!!!) at the time, not surprisingly Rugg Road Cycles is now defunct). In my defense, the rear wheel has been virtually maintnance free other than two new sets of bearings and three new axles (aluminum is a poor axle material). The bike itself has needed some major repairs in that time frame.

These retro looking cruiser bars were sold by Sycip in SF for a while for use on their Java boy bikes. They nice and wide and nice and flexy and stylee as all get out.

They look real nice with the sexy stem.

I believe Sycip would refer to them as Spicy, but I could be wrong.
I have also run this bike with flat bars, cowhorns (my favorite confort setup as the frame is a little short on the TT for me) flat bars with two pairs of Newk bar ends (approximately 80 hand positons) and drops.

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questions comments? email tsaleh at rocketmail dot com