- 2 weeks ago
What do you think of Simon Smythe's restomod Chas Roberts?
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:09I ride a lot of carbon bikes here in my day job at Cycling Weekly but on a Sunday morning
00:15you're
00:15more likely to find me heading out to some far-flung chintzy cafe with my club mates on
00:20a steel bike. Steel is real is a bit of a cliche now but I just love the fact the
00:26thought that my
00:26bike was made by a local frame builder in a small workshop instead of popping out of a mold in
00:32a
00:32huge factory on the other side of the world. In my opinion some of the best steel frames were made
00:37by Roberts in Croydon from the 1960s until 2015 when they closed their doors so when a club mate
00:44of mine said that he was wanting to get rid of his Roberts I could just hardly get around to
00:48his
00:48house fast enough I was knocking on the door virtually before he'd finished typing the whatsapp
00:52message. My club mate had the frame made to measure in 2001 out of Columbus Max tubing which was the
00:57stiffest tubing there was at the time it was his number one race bike and when I first saw it
01:02it
01:02was black but had a sort of a brown growth on it from sitting in his garage for years it
01:09really needed
01:09rescuing pretty badly. So I took it to Colotech in Dartford to be blasted and resprayed by Dave Crowe
01:15who actually used to spray Roberts frames for Roberts themselves before they closed so I knew the frame
01:21was in really good hands and he's a he's a great sprayer I really raised his work and here it
01:26is
01:28I'm really pleased with it.
01:33I asked Dave to copy a Trek project one paint scheme that I really liked
01:38and I think he's done such a good job of it it's actually even nicer than the original Trek
01:42he used automotive two-pack acrylic enamel paint over a metallic base coat and it just looks really
01:48stunning especially in the daylight and the cost to do the frame and the fork which is a carbon
01:54Columbus fork was 200 pounds and I think that's a pretty fair price for giving a bike like this a
01:59new
01:59lease of life. There's nothing like the ride of a really good steel bike the feel of steel is how
02:06the
02:06saying goes I've heard it said that really steel is the benchmark for the way a bike should ride and
02:11every other bike is trying to copy the ride of steel but just making it lighter like carbon does
02:16or making it stiffer like aluminium does but really steel is the ride. The workmanship is just such high
02:23quality that the the fillet raising is just amazing it just one tube just flows into the other really
02:29seamlessly it's it's it's really lovely work. It was a race frame but it actually weighs just over two
02:34kilos the frame itself without the fork and that's seems like a hell of a heavy weight these days it's
02:39like twice the weight of a of a carbon bike but that was how it was at the time and
02:44I think that
02:45really the weight with this type of bike it doesn't really matter so much and with what I'm going to
02:49be
02:50doing on it which is club runs and fast-paced riding it's a cafe racer it doesn't really matter that
02:56it's
02:56a bit heavier than a carbon bike. Yes the frame is 20 years old but I didn't want to build
03:01it up into
03:01some kind of museum piece out of retro components NOS that were painstakingly sourced on ebay or anything like
03:08that I wanted it to be a modern bike that I could ride and that meant a modern group set
03:12with modern
03:13ratios okay so Shimano everybody knows that it's great functionally it works brilliantly but a frame
03:19like this really needs Campagnolo so I've got a full rim brake mechanical Campagnolo chorus group set
03:27chorus is high-end but it's not ridiculously expensive it's a little bit more expensive than Shimano
03:32Altegra you're looking at about 1250 pounds for the whole group set but that's a whole 600 pounds
03:39cheaper than record for about 100 grams extra weight so it makes a lot of sense the other thing about
03:45chorus is that it's aimed at keen amateurs rather than pros which really suits my purposes perfectly
03:51so I've got 52 36 up front and I've gone for the 11 29 cassette which is the closest ratio
03:57cassette you
03:58can get with chorus and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to get up any hill in Surrey on a
04:02bottom gear
04:03of 36 29 which is a lot lower than this bike probably had originally 20 years ago a Campagnolo group
04:10set deserves Campagnolo wheels and these are the Bora WTO 45s I've ridden them a couple of times
04:17recently on a couple of different test bikes and they're just some of my favorite wheels at the moment
04:21they are lightweight at just under 1500 grams they're stiff they're aerodynamic and they have
04:28an internal rim width of 19 millimeters which is wider than the type of wheels that that bike was
04:33designed for but I'm pretty sure that they'll just about fit in the clearance is going to be pretty tight
04:38but in those days clearance tight clearance was what racing bikes were all about the the more fag paper
04:44the clearance the faster your bike was I've already got the tires on these they're the Vittoria Corsa
04:49Graphene 2.0s they're really lovely supple tire beautiful rolling and Italian which goes nicely
04:57with Campagnolo so these are going to be my tires the finishing kit is by Vision and it's all carbon
05:04and it's very statementy and it's pretty expensive too but this is a dream build after all this is the
05:11handlebar I'm going to be using this is the Vision Metron bar it's very lightweight at 250 grams it's very
05:17expensive at 350 pounds and I think it's going to look great on this bike the stem is another Vision
05:24stem it's the Trimax carbon it's actually aluminium with a carbon skin what I really like about it is
05:29it's got this little faceplate cover which has a kind of a look of alien about it so this stem
05:36is for
05:36an inch and an eighth steerer but an old bike like this has a one inch steerer so I've got
05:41this shim that
05:42I'm going to have to use in the stem to make sure it fits snugly around the head tube the
05:46Vision Metron
05:47seat post is another component from Vision's top level range and it's another money no object component
05:53which costs over 200 pounds as for the saddle I've gone for really what works for me rather than
05:59something that's really expensive and showy and it's this Sally Italia SLR super flow which has a
06:06nice shape suits me and just manganese rails ordinary manganese rails that that's all I need
06:13it just it works I'm going to be wrapping the bars in this Physic Microtex classic bar tape which has
06:20these nice little perforations that look quite authentic I used to insist on white bar tape and a
06:26white saddle for all my race bikes but in this case I don't want to distract away from the really
06:31beautiful
06:33frame modern handmade steel bikes have to have a Chris King headset they're said to last a lifetime
06:38and this one actually is already pretty old this Chris King one inch no thread set is probably about
06:44the same age as the bike it's it's got to be 20 years old and this was the the first
06:48type of headset
06:49which replaced the quill stem and the threaded headset and hence no thread set you can still get them
06:56in lots of pretty colors as well but black is nice for for this and it's the only one that
07:02my friend
07:02had anyway so this is the only the only old part on the bike apart from the rider I'm going
07:09to use the
07:10new Wahoo Speedplay Zero pedals I really like these I like the look of them I like the feel of
07:15the the
07:16free float I even like the sound of them clipping in and clipping out and I think these are going
07:21to
07:21really get me off to a good start with this bike okay so now we're going to head to the
07:24workshop
07:25and start building it up and hopefully it's going to be done in time for me to get a ride
07:28into the pub later
08:11so here it is the Roberts Cafe Racer and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out it was
08:16just really nice to build the good thing about external cabling is that it's just easy to get them in
08:21you do the run they pop out the other side
08:24there's no messing around and I actually really like the look of the cables just there's something
08:28about the curve of the cable that really goes so nicely just actually sets off a steel frame really
08:34nicely you know why would you want to hide that I know I chose every component for this bike for
08:39myself
08:39so in theory I knew what it was going to look like but it really has surpassed all my expectations
08:43I think
08:44it just looks amazing and I literally can't stop staring at it the other thing is it's really light it's
08:50much lighter than I thought it was going to be just under 8.2 kilos which is just under 18
08:54pounds
08:55in old money and I think that's pretty impressive for a bike with a steel frame especially a 20 year
09:00old steel frame so although the cables went in really nicely we did have a couple of little snags
09:06one of them was with the Campagnolo chain you have to push in this little chain pin really carefully
09:12otherwise it snaps which is yeah that's what happened so I haven't had time to go to a bike
09:17shop and I've had to just put in a sram eagle 12 speed powerlink just here and you can see
09:23that
09:24it's there because it's rainbow colored so there's no hiding it just don't tell anybody the bar tape
09:31I went for this really nice physic perforated retro looking bar tape but what I didn't realize was that
09:36it had the physic logo on one side of it and when you do the little clever loop that means
09:40you don't
09:41have to use the adhesive strip the logo has popped out and you can see it so that's something I'm
09:46going to
09:46have to change unfortunately so does it need any upgrades after this I mean I don't think so really
09:52I'm really happy with the way it is I think probably the next thing I'm going to do is to
09:56put some little
09:57transparent stickers on the head tube here to stop the cable from rubbing the paint and also one on the
10:03chainstay here too but other than that um if I win the lottery I'll upgrade to super record but um
10:10let's
10:11stick with chorus I built this bike up as what we're calling a cafe racer which means it's perfect
10:17for the club run it's not for racing that's what carbon bikes are for it's just for enjoying the
10:22ride but it's light and fast enough that it can turn a nifty pedal if it needs to so I'm
10:28really looking
10:28forward to Sunday when I'm going to ride this bike for the first time with my club club run stopped
10:33for
10:33a long time during the pandemic I have to say I lost a little bit of motivation but something new
10:38and
10:38shiny like this is really going to get things together again for me and I'm just really looking
10:43forward to it so the overall cost of this build is somewhere around four and a half thousand pounds
10:49half of that is in the wheels and unfortunately they come off another bike that I tested and they've
10:56got to go back so I'm going to have to put in a cheaper set of training wheels it looks
11:01like this
11:01Sunday could be the only opportunity I get to ride these really nice wheels but that's life
11:07if you want to ask me any questions about the frame or the build leave me a comment and I'll
11:11answer
11:12I hope you've enjoyed this video don't forget to like and subscribe
11:36so
11:36so
11:36so
Comments