Charlie's Worldbike restoration
As you may remember, I am restoring my old mountain bike from 1993 with plans to turn it into a lightweight singlespeed demon street racer.
Having stripped the frame, bought the replacement parts, fixed up the old suspension forks with parts from a niche supplier in the US, prepared, under coated and resprayed the frame in storm trooper white, I then discovered that the headset I had is too tall for the steerer tube of the fork.
In short, I can’t go any further
Not without sourcing a really low stack height vintage threaded headset, which they haven’t really made since the mid 90’s, or scouring ebay for a fork with smooth steerer that will work with a modern style headset (or a vintage one with a longer threaded steerer)
Arse.So I have a frame, a fork, some wheels, a box of parts and a handlebar with brakes dangling from their hydraulic hoses and no real way to turn them into a bike.
Here it is mid respray (in my rather messy workshop)
Bah.
What’s a boy to do.
Well, get straight onto the interwebs of course – the only way to stave off such misery is start looking at possible new bikes along the lines of the one I was going to build.
Or something a bit different…
Help me choose 🙂
1. Pashley Tube Rider – this is an awesome bike and in cool colours too. Hub brakes and gears and a laid back attitude.. They say you can’t buy cool – well, you can certainly go a long way towards it.
2. Pashley Guv’nor – super cool retro 30’s style path racer. 3 speed gears and the wearing of tweed is mandatory on any outing, whatwhat. Pure class, British made too, but in the Aston Martin way, not the rust-in-one-year way of the Austin Allegro.
3. Mojobike. Based in Melbourne, they make startlingly good value singlespeed hacks. In every colour combination you can ever imagine. Hip? More so than you or I could ever dream of.
*girl not supplied.
4. Globe Roll – a minimalist singlespeed street demon. Slicker than velvet coated treacle being poured over a game show host. Fast, slick and with the kind of attention to detail you get on half million dollar sports cars. Only they don’t have quite the same impact when picking up your hot celebrity date.
5. Globe Live. Fantastic retro urban do everything bike. Gears, disk brakes, even a rack for bringing back the takeaway or carrying a gorgeous girl (possibly fresh from the set of the Mojobike campaign)
So, there you go – choices choices.
Of course, none of this is budgeted for, I still have to get the bathrooms replaced and we just discovered that the ridge tiles on the roof need repointing.
But you can’t ride around and look cool and be sensible 😉
Charlie's World 
Well, keep all the parts as they might be the answer for somebody else’s problem.
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Pashley Guv’nor, come on. You KNOW you want a pedal powered cafe racer… it’s too cool for words.
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I don’t know which one to choose.. I really don’t. You have amazing choices listed here. I like Globe Live design without the basket.. and I love Pashley Tube Rider without the weird looking seat lol. Both of those are somewhat similar. But my heart also loves the Pashley Guv’nor.. I;m no help am I? I know lol
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Good choice! The Guv’nor is my fave, sadly (for now at least) budgetary constraints and urgent roof repairs mean it’ll have to wait 😦 back to real life!
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See! Kay agrees about the weird ass basket. Although even without it, I think the Globe Live looks like a girls’ bike.
I still say Pashley Guv.
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I agree with Jay.
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