The Lotus is back ... briefly

Since the last time I posted about the Lotus, I put a lot of miles on it for about a year, until tearing it apart in the summer of 2018, running out of time to put it back together, and not finishing it until the summer of 2019. I have loved this bike yet at the same time, never quite felt completely satisfied with it.

This was going to be my main commuter bike when I moved to Pittsburgh in the summer of 2017. And it was. It had a 3x6 drivetrain - 30-40-50 tooth chainrings, a 6-speed 14-30 tooth Suntour freewheel, and SunRace friction bar-end shifters. Within the first week of moving here, I had taken the bike all around the popular parks and tourist spots just to get a feel for the city. It was fun. The soft tires were great on the roads, which were in worse shape and more uneven than the ones I frequented in Michigan.

I had so much fun that by the end of the first week, I had gone way too fast in Schenley Park and violently pinch-flatted both tires on a partially-buried rock at 30 mph. Luckily, I lived less than half a mile from where it happened so I carried the bike home and patched the tubes. The rims were also pretty noticeably dented but I decided not to do anything about it.

I basically just rode the Lotus and the Superbe as my main bikes during my first year in Pittsburgh, only occasionally taking out the others. The exception is winter, of course. Aside from swapping out the pedals (because the Wellgo folding ones had terrible bearings), and switching the big ring to a 53-tooth smoother-shifting ramped and pinned one (which necessitated a 40-tooth 110-130mm bcd Origin8 adapter ring to replace the plain Sugino one), the bike didn't change.

By the summer of 2018, I had some changes planned. First, the smooth-sided rear gears didn't seem to shift very easily or accurately (more on that later). Also, the Panaracer tires somehow felt less efficient than they could have been - not that it was the biggest concern, but they always made an audible scrubbing noise even when I ran them beyond the recommended max pressure of 45 psi. They also just weren't as grippy as I felt like they should have been, but that may have been a personal thing. After all, they were pretty inexpensive so I probably expected too much out of them. The last major change I wanted to make was to buy a shorter fork so that the front brake could also be shorter and more effective.

The main changes I wanted to do were to upgrade to a 9-speed 11-34 tooth cassette and to use WTB Horizon tires, which I had realized by that time were the most popular 650b street/commuting/gravel tire. Going to a 9-speed cassette obviously meant that I had to rebuild the rear wheel. I found a suitable Shimano hub that was seemingly unremarkable in every way (perfect) and best of all, I was able to use half of the original spokes and half of the "wrong" spokes I had accidentally bought a year earlier. I also went back to a 2x setup, using 30 and 46-tooth chainrings as well as the smooth bash guard that was on the first iteration of this bike.

Removal of the old Suntour freewheel was a pain in the butt, as pictured above, even after soaking it in penetrating fluid for weeks. I don't remember what I ended up doing that finally broke it loose, but I obviously had to get a new tool. I also successfully cut the steerer tube of new fork using a hack saw, catching the shavings in the bucket hanging from the fork. This is a method I used two more times (on the Tandem and on the Peugeot) before writing this post.

I tore the Lotus apart in late May 2018, between the end of the semester and the beginning of my summer internship. I ordered the parts well in advance so I could use the one week to put it all together. However, due to one piece not arriving in time (I think it was the indexed 9 speed shifter) and the freewheel not coming off, I missed the deadline and the internship started before I could rebuild the bike. The frame and fork ended up sitting on my workstand for an entire year, only being removed periodically so I could service some other bike. All of the parts remained in a box, the wheels and fenders stashed in a corner.

There was absolutely no time to do any major bike work until summer 2019 after I graduated, so I finally finished the bike in June, in time for the move to a different house in Pittsburgh. I couldn't get the rear tire to seat properly, partly due to the dent in it from two years prior, and I also couldn't get the shifting to index properly in every gear. At best, the bike would skip under power in one of the middle gears. I had a feeling it was because the rear dropouts were misaligned. I remember the frame being slightly wonky from the first time I put it together - if I tightened the rear axle nuts one at a time without sitting on the rear rack, the opposite side of the axle would slip downward by few millimeters.

After confirming that I could not get the bike to shift right, I sent it to a shop to get the tire seated and shifting sorted out. The tire was resolved quickly and they didn't charge me for it. As for shifting, they did what they could, including a minor frame realignment, but the skipping was still very frustrating. I figured that something having to do with alignment was making it so that anything beyond 6 gears was going to be hard to tune, and that may have been what made the previous 6-speed freewheel and Tiagra derailleur a bit clunkier than expected as well.

On the flip side, some of the things I liked about the new build were the new Soma front rack and the new Herrmans taillight that mounted straight to the fender. The presence of a front rack meant the bike was going to be more difficult to put on a bus rack, but that problem was alleviated by removing the large rear taillight from the rear rack so the wheel clip could hold onto the rear wheel in a higher position. The headlight shown here is actually a place holder that I installed just to show off the headlight bracket I cut from an old chainring. The light I ran while using this bike over the summer was a Busch+Muller Lyt B that did not have a standlight feature, much to my dismay. It also was not very bright, so I removed it. It is currently on the Peugeot but I am about to replace it permanently.

The slightly shorter fork allowed me to use a standard Dia Compe center-pull brake. That improved braking a little bit, but not as much as I had hoped. I had the handlebars re-wrapped at the shop because the new Nashbar Softgrip bar tape I used started to crack immediately for some reason - weirdly enough, the same tape I have been using on the Lenton since 2017 is still holding up beautifully.

I had not ridden on the Brooks Cambium C17 saddle since taking the bike out of service in 2018, so it was nice to get back on it. The Planet Bike Eco rear rack spent a few months on the Superbe, but ultimately came back to this bike. I had wanted to swap it out for something else because the rack's forward positioning relative to other racks, such as the Topeak Explorer, coupled with the shorter chainstays on this bike, made one of my larger pannier bags prone to heel strike.

To finish off the build breakdown, a Shimano Acera 9-speed mountain derailleur shifted the rear cluster while the same Shimano Claris front derailleur was kept from the previous iteration. The Nitto Technomic stem, Dimension handlebars, and Tektro brake levers also remained. Not completely visible in any one of these photos are the new Velo Orange fender braces with stainless hardware and leather washers, which replaced the original steel stays that came attached to these 1960s Falter fenders. The original hardware was all steel and was corroding inside the holes where they were fastened to the fenders, making them just loose enough to make rattling noises. The rear brake caliper was carried over from the previous build, and was again extremely unsatisfactory. The extreme length made it difficult to ever apply enough force, but once enough force was applied, the rear wheel would be prone to locking up. Poor modulation.

I have reached the conclusion that while building and riding this bike has been a fun (albeit expensive) experience over the past three years, I have yet to arrive at the "right" mix of parts for it and this frame just isn't the right choice for a 650b conversion, no matter how beautiful the whole thing looked. I wonder how the ride would feel with a more raked fork, since there was an uncomfortable amount of toe overlap with 700c wheels. I did also come to terms with the fact that this bike was going to be more of a comfy cruiser, as the frame has always felt kind of dead, slow, and heavy. It doesn't do any of that sling-shotting (the experts call it "planing")that the Raleighs do under power for some reason but I did thoroughly enjoy it more when I was cruising at ease. At 35 lbs, it was kind of a tank, anyway.

I spontaneously found another very fascinating frame to fill the niche that this bike will be leaving, and many of the components will be moved over onto it. I'm still inclined to keep this beautiful mixte frame at all costs but may have to let it sit bare again for a while. I've been toying with the idea of getting a motorized 700c front wheel and an electric conversion kit. It could be fun to have something with a bit of extra power to get up my hill with groceries and with this frame being slightly stiffer (or so it seems) and a semi-step-through, it might be a good candidate. At the moment, I am still trying to sell off a few previous projects to make room in the house and in the budget. Who knows what form the Lotus will be in the next time it hits the road?