It’s strange, but this bike was never really planned; it just sort of ‘came about’.
After my friend Nigel Staley’s suggestion to use Girvin Vector MTB girder forks as a basis for the new forks on my rebuilt electric chopper, I looked for them on Ebay and found three sets for sale. Not sure of which would be best, I bought them all! I then discovered that I had actually bought one set of Vector 2s (on a ProFlex 856 frame), which was the most suitable for the chop project, and two sets of the original Vectors.
One of the latter sets came complete with a ‘carbon’ frame that looked quite cool – well, from a distance anyway. It was a Daewoo MTB frame that someone had sprayed black (badly) then stuck ‘carbon-fibre’-effect panels on the main tubes.
The other set of Vectors were on a complete ProFlex 656 MTB.
After much thought, I decided to mix and match all the various components to get the best return for my investment. The Vector 2 came off the ProFlex 856, to be replaced with the Vectors from the 656 along with all the other components, giving me a complete 856 to sell on for a good price, together with the bare 656 frame, included ‘for free’.
This left the other Vectors, and the ‘carbon’ frame. For years, I had wanted to build a bike using cast ‘mag’ wheels, but because all my recent builds had been electric (with hub motors), that had not been possible. Now I decided to build a very lightweight, futuristic bike for a change, that either myself or my partner Linda could ride if we didn’t need a motor.
Luckily, I was able to find a pair of brand-new black cast six-spoke wheels on Ebay for much less than they usually cost, perhaps because they were for V-brakes, not discs. The black frame had already come with some fancy V-brakes that I wanted to re-use, so that was perfect!
As it was important that the bike glided along easily, mainly on the flat tarmac of Bournemouth Promenade (hence the name ‘Stealth Prom’er’), I chose a pair of new Schwalbe ‘City-Jet’ tyres that I fitted to the cast wheels in minutes. A set of secondhand Shimano derailleurs and black chainset/cranks/chain then completed the drive train.
The great quality Vector components were polished up professionally, along with the Shimano levers and alloy ‘brake boosters’ that had come with the frame. The original Vector dampers had perished long ago and had already been replaced with black Land-Rover rubber suspension bushes, which looked good and seemed to work fine too.
All that was needed now was the seat and bars. By pure chance, I had just removed these parts from my chopper, as the brown seat and grips would not match the new red paint I had planned for that bike. The seat tube fitted perfectly and I already knew how wonderfully comfortable the sprung saddle was, so I was very pleased to be able to re-use it here.
The real surprise was that the handlebars also proved ideal. Thankfully, the bends were shallow enough to feed through the awkward cast-in clamp of the Vector stem, just needing a 1mm alloy shim making to build them out to the correct diameter. Also, although they had appeared as low ‘ape-hangers’ on the high chopper headstock, they now looked more like ‘cow-horns’ or ‘flat-tracker’ bars on this bike; just the look I was after! Even the brown leather laced-up grips worked with the saddle, as they had done on the chopper.
So, there you have it; a great looking bike that rode beautifully, built mainly from bits that were left over from other bikes, or simply just lying around.
If only they were all that easy…..!
PS: Massive thanks also go to my friend Tom Cousins for his invaluable help, putting all of these pages online; also thanks to my partner Linda O’Connell for help with some of the photographs.
oldjapbikeguyUK 