Porter Bicycles – Made in New Mexico, USA

Just a quick notation on my “restoration” services. This frame from 1991 was one I’d made for one of the shop’s team riders.  Gabe was/is very hard on his equipment. I don’t recall seeing as many dents in any one frame or fork before.  Of course he explained it away as being this crash or that incident…. here’s a look at it when it arrived a couple days ago..

Well used MAX Porter click on to enlarge-arrow back

The frame was at the bike store hanging in the repair area. I asked about it and the guys said that he wanted to build it up again and ride it as his last “lightweight” (steel-bamboo) had broken in half..  Anyway, not wanting him “out there” on one of my frames that was as beat up as this old race bike, I offered a Bro deal to make it at least presentable again and the “deal” allowed me some discretion in how it would look..  His fork was the worst as it had been laying in the dirt in his back yard for years…

really rusted steerer tube

The fork had been in one of the previously mentioned crashes.. a crit where he’d got off line and sucked a marker cone between the blade and wheel..  I always liked the look of the MAX crown and the fat aero blades though they never fit worth a damn and required excess filler to look half way right. Nevertheless I spent some extra time to make this one safe and functional again..  Here’s a couple after the repair shots.. even still I missed a big ding in the top tube.. maybe a decal will cover it, just like the old PowerBar decal in the first picture..

AH! Signal Green.. like FM pumps..

seat lug

a real pump peg

Well, it is what it is.. probably good for a couple more years hammering from an old guy, but former National jersey winner..

As usual send me your comments and critiques…

Comments (0)

I got this oldish tube set from Omar at Oasis Bikes in AZ, he’d had it kicking around his shop for nearly ten years I think he said. At any rate his price was fair and I wanted a project and thought it would be well suited to long day rides, commuting and even touring, though I’ll admit I didn’t design it for fenders as originally it was going to be a cross bike… As Dale (CR list serve) alluded to, it has some NM turquoise and some NV Buffalo turquoise and some silver, chrome and polished steel bits to make it stand apart.If anyone wants custom racks, that’s possible too. My dog and a neighbors dog got into a bit of a well, dog fight and now I have some pending expenses I hadn’t planned on and that explains the low pricing. It’s a 1″ steerer if that makes or breaks the deal. The tubes are from Columbus and are the over sized FOCO kit with the unicrown fork and pre-mitered straight blades. It’s sized 57 x 56cm.

FOCO is made from an alloy called “Thermachrome”. It has the interesting and specific characteristic of having the same tensile strength after brazing or welding as before. There are no “hard” spots on the frame. This brings the frame closer to the builder’s ideal of taking the 8 tubes of the frame and uniting them into a single cohesive unit.

Here’s some pictures of the finished bike dolled up with paint and decals. I didn’t get the original Columbus decal from Omar so I just used an old Columbus “special tubes” decal for the job. Enjoy. Click on pics to enlarge..

Pumpkin patch Fondo

Buffalo Turquoise on the stays treatment

Chromed dropouts

Sterling silver and Turquoise head badge

silver wedding bands at the ends of the head tube too..

email me  frogeye@porterscustom.com  Well, I got through the City’s extortion proceedings without this frame, now built up and hanging in a local bike store (Bike Coop) being sold, so the killer deal is gone and it is priced accordingly.

Comments (0)

The title is misleading. I just saw a post on the frame builders forum asking the members what they were taking to this years Philly Expo, well I’m not going simply because it’s a long way from here. I did however just finish another Spirit tubed racer for an old friend whose Eisentraut was totaled by an automobile. It was at least 30 years old and overdue for replacement anyway. So here’s a couple shots before it gets delivered to Colorado next week.

click on pics to enlarge.double click for huge. arrow back to text.

Santa Fe Style racer 52x51.5cm

BB shot-SRAM newRed group-nice stuff!

Turquoise on turquoise Imron

Already have the tires dirty..couldn't resist a 1st ride

So was my old friend happy? Yeah, I’d say he was..

Rick after his 1st 20 miler.

We did 19.8 miles at a 16.9 average into and back with a 10-15 mph quartering wind and no drafting except when passing other riders on the busy Bosque trail, all while BS’ing about the new bike and components and what not. I reckon Rick is over 50 and I’m over 60 so all in all not a bad shake down ride. We never even had to stop for adjustments.

Comments (0)

Rogues Galley: Keith, Dave and Chauncey

and again

...and again

Well, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a few words and show a few pictures of this falls concorso.

This year the bicycles became an official part of the show and were judged by a team of judges, one of which knew a thing or two about bicycles and the others relied on what their parents taught them as kids, I suppose.

I was joined this year by Keith Anderson (OR) and Chauncey Matthews (NM) as current frame builders/painters. The other bikes in the concorso were privately owned collector bikes. They being mostly from the ’80s if I had to make a guess, though there was a very early Swiss Army bike in the mix.

I had fully expected Keith to take the top honors and the very, very cool trophy. I thought this because he had an exquisitely hand made kids bike with modern touches that connected bicycle history with modern technology. Well, I was wrong.

Second place, I thought could go to Keith or Chauncey or me. I was wrong again. Hmmmm.

OK then, third would go to Keith and it did. However, this time it wasn’t because it had new technology, but rather that it was a racing bike from the 80’s with a provenance on the track.

So who was the winner? Well, it was a1990s bike, a Sterling or more apt perhaps, a Bilenky. It was made from a stupidly ultra light Columbus KL tube set and some time was spent filing the lugs into graceful curlycues. It has probably never been ridden for fear of collapsing in on itself.

Second place was a late 90’s Ricard Sachs Campy equipped road bike.  It was an unusual green paint scheme and supposedly never ridden.  Good grief! Put it in a time capsule then..

Chauncey had 2 of his Ride the Divide 29er’s nicely decked out. I think if he had all the bags and bottles and racks and radios for the event on the bike he may have fared better.

I ended up with a Directors Award ribbon for one of my Santa Fe Style Spirit road bikes, as did Keith for his GT40 kids bike. We decided the ribbons were like Miss Congeniality prizes or consolation for just being there.

But the good news is that I took an order for a frame, Keith got an order for a Pinnarello  re-spray and Chauncey, he was just happy to be there and like the rest of us had a really nice day and a bit of a sun burn.

Here’s a shot of the 1st place award for the bicycles. I would really like to win one. It is the stylized bird of prey on the pedestal at the head of the table.. click on the photo to enlarge.

The Awards. Stunning!

Comments (0)

After my good friend Pino Morroni died I purchased some of his tooling from the family. Among the odds and ends were an assortment of frame building jigs of his own design. The other day I was cleaning up the shop and decided to give one of the jigs, that had become particularly dirty, a good dust off.

Much to my surprise I found that Pino had signed this one and written an interesting bit of philosophy in his own hand. It said, in Italian:

Pino Morroni
Detroit maggio 1978
alla facciaccia di tutti i maghi del telaio di tutti i Walden mel mondo

Made in Warren, MI Click to enlarge

The best translation I’ve heard is: In the brazen face of all
the frame sorcerers to all the “Walden’s” of the world..

I’m not sure what he was trying to get at, but knowing that Pino was usually disappointed with the way his ideas were generally received, I suspect it’s a rebuke to them.  That’ a purely WAG on my part. Any other ideas are welcomed.

Here’s what the wonderful little jig looks like. The legs are off and its sitting on the floor, but you get the idea.

Pino Morroni frame jig 1978- CLICK ON IT

Just a fun piece of cycling lore for all.

DP

Comments (1)

Here are the best set of pictures that I was able to find.. well, to be absolutely truthful,  the one’s with my bikes in it ;~`)  http://www.flickr.com/photos/royal-h/sets/72157626487451816/?page=2 and here’s another set http://www.flickr.com/photos/channone/5602084007/in/photostream/

Comments (0)

I’ve had a few days between projects to dust off some old stuff and try to tie down things that have gotten away from me. Because of interest from some of the CR bike list I’ll post this today and add others details as I am able.
This first one dates from 1989 and and may be one of the oldest surviving records.
It is Carolyn Donnelly in the midst of her US senior woman’s Hour record ride..

Donnelly Hour Record ride

5 km 6:40.61 Carolyn Donnelly, Colo. Springs, CO, 10/29/90

10 km 13:31.15 Carolyn Donnelly, Colo. Springs, CO, 10/29/90

20 km 17:12.40 Carolyn Donnelly, Colo. Springs, CO, 10/29/90

1 hour 44.028 km Carolyn Donnelly, Colo. Springs, CO, 10/29/90

50 km 1:08:26.24 Carolyn Donnelly, Colo. Springs, CO, 10/29/90

 

This next one is from a recent Velo-News article, no doubt about Lance.
 Nevertheless, on his elbow is New Mexico's own Noah Kaufman.
click on to enlarge.






US Junior squad

L to R:  George Hincapie, Noah Kaufman, Lance Armstrong, Chann McCrae and Bobby Julich.
 Pretty neat old picture.
 Here is one of Noah and relates to my association with him and his parents.

Noah and his medal
The interesting thing here is that they both used the same bike. In the picture of Carolyn

the seat post can be seen as all the way down, and in fact I vaguely remember sawing some of
the seat tube off at the top..This next one is Jane Marshall, who has just won the Moriarity

NM Record Challenge 40K for senior women. Jane went on to the National squad and I believe

she was in the Olympic road race with the then local rider Janniel Parks.
Jane Marshall Gagne
This is a unique bike from the last one above. I think it was sold off to another local rider.

The red and white paint jobs were all shop team equipment.

New World/US record- Kent Bostick

Above John and I are holding Kent up moments after the 100K record. He was, ahh…tired..   Also in the photo is Bruce, who was the manager of the Springs velodrome… Don’t remember where Fred Cappy was that night.. Sorry about the photo, has some water damage-hell it’s been on my refrigerator for 20 years ;~)

Here’s another from 1989. It is John Frey and Kent Bostick.
I think this is the meet where Kent set the US 100km record, which also still stands.  Kent’s 100K record was 2:09:11 which bested Ole Ritter’s record by 20 minutes!

I don’t recall John as having used this MAX tubed funny bike for his Hour ride. I’ll look for that picture. Also its a film photo so it’s a problem to reproduce herein. Click on photo for a better size..

John and Kent around 1989

Picture at the Colorado Springs velodrome..

49.97KM per Hour

There’s John and the Hour bike and ride.. and the last one for today is the crowd around John after the record

ride. The 150 is the lap count around the 333.3m track. It was one of the times the bike was re-badged in accordance with Ten Speed Drive contractual PS. If you can tag anyone, please leave a comment. His record was 49.9 Kilometers .

Victory crowd

OK kids now we’re getting down to it, here’s a rare shot of the bike store team..

Squadra Harvard Bike House ABQ. NM circa 1990

and and even more rare shot of the backup team..

NM Velo

Here are a few shots from the start line at the Record Challenge Time Trial in Moriarity.. not sure if this is Jennifer or Janelle?

two of John Frey warming up and at the start line (nice bike..)

Shaklee sponsored rider

go!

Here’s Gabe Aragon.. he got his National jersey with a tandem time trial ride with Desi Brown from the shop team.

lil Gabe Aragon- nice kid!

This looks like Robbie Quinlan..

Noah Kaufman on a Bruce Gordon (NM) tt bike

The next are from a Tuesday crit in town.. this is Brian Belew on

George Tapley frame..

in the lead..

the pack..

sprint for a prem

That maybe Bart Bowen at the front, I see Frey and his green rims…and several Harvard guys in the hunt..next up is Jim Warsa

Waz

Wow, another oldie.. Frey with his (probably) first win at Moriarity Challenge or the State TT’s ? Early “flintstone” disc wheel. You could hear it coming a mile away, heavy too..

1st "funny bike" and 1st place for JF

Here is a link to a recent NM Sports magazine article about the Record Challenge history: http://www.nmsportsmag.com/2011/fall/

pages 24 and 25..

Here’s one many years later with Ten Speed Drive Rossin funny bike..

~6500 feet above sea level

Another cool pix- Frey and Rod Bush on my first tandem at the Red River Century. JF and Rod still hold the national tt record for a tandem..cool.

togetherness

One of the team sponsors and accomplished frame builder from Albuquerque–Bruce Gordon.

Bruce and Steve Hegg

An ad hoc 4 man TT squad..

Bostick, Frey, the late John Stenner and Hegg

J. Stenner and his very nice Pinarello. John was hit and killed by a motorist. Very tragic.

John Stenner

here they are in action…

Flying

and I guess by now some are wondering about me.. this is about 2006.

impatient with the cameraman

here’s another rare photo of me actually in a race, note the Sidi clown shoes and the Bell helmet on young John Castillo behind me..

downtown crit 1980 something..

and here’s Frey doing his best to hammer the chasers at a local crit.. enlarge to really see the power he had..

Human power!

here’s a look at a very small mountain bike I made for a chick I was in lust with.. 24 inch wheels! Wish I had a better picture of it. It was really neat. I don’t have any pictures of the girl.

tiny MTB

Here’s Frey (again) this time on one of my full sized MTB’s. My signature brass P is just visible on the head tube.

mud puddles

and lastly today a really out there paint job that was requested by a female customer..

Columbus SLX and Campy Chorus

More to come..

Comments (0)

I have decided to attend the 2011 San Diego custom bike show as an exhibitor.  My last booth was probably an Interbike in the eighties.  Any way, it was suggested by a few that it would be cool to take a couple of the old  record bikes.. I still have a half dozen of them here in the shop. I dusted this one off yesterday. It’s probably one of the oddest of the bunch, but it did set a record the first day on the track. Oddly the men didn’t like the ideas, but the women did. Don’t ask me.. Carol Anne Bostick rode it to two records on two different dates. see

It is Columbus EL tubing.  Has some sheet metal fairing/gusseting, has a 24″ front wheel (which needs to be cleaned up), it has a gazillion holes through it (which should pique the ire of some on the CR list) and it has an eccentric BB. This last feature was an attempt to make some adjustment in seat tube angles for different riders. It added a lot of weight, but was located well below the axle line, so it added some noticeable stability with a lowered center of gravity. And note the skirts on the fork tips.. This was done after wind tunnel tests showed the air flow went up the blade instead of remaining in a horizontal flow..

Here ya go…

fork detail

still ready to go

with flash enhancement

last one- click on to enlarge pixs

I’ll put this in the running for making the trip.. Perhaps a vote is in order as the showtime nears.. dp

I got the 14 foot ladder out and got his bad boy down off the wall the other day. It was so filthy with dust that I’d forgotten it had a pretty cool fade paint scheme.. This one was used exclusively for track record breaking. The most notable is Kent Bostick’s  100 kilometer record. Like some of the other “record” bikes this record is 20 years unbroken, partly because the UCI has stopped doing a 100K event and second is because riding 60 miles at full bore is a really tough challenge, though the popularity of brevets would indicate otherwise.

Kent’s time is 2 hours, 9 minutes and 11 seconds  about 28 mph average! In comparison the UCI record held by Ole Ritter was 20 minutes slower.. Kent, you the man!

Here’s some pictures:

Time machine

It is Columbus MAX tubes, Cinelli cast BB, Zeus track dropouts, streteched Kevlar disc wheels (supplied by Scott & Vickie Gordon), Shimano drive train (supplied by Shimano-Wayne Stetina, Continental Olympic and Panaracer 26″ front tubulars  and a very early CF seat post. The whole package was 15 pounds.

seat "lug" aera

early aero bars

a pretty handsome "working bike"

This next one is a little different, but one that caused both great angst for me and great satisfaction.

The complete story of the bike is in an earlier blog post if one cares to go back a ways.. I’ll try to link to it before I run out of time tonight. Here:

To make a long story short, this is still after 18+ years the National Tandem TT champ.. and here are some pictures of how it’s set up now for riding with anyone who’s daring enough to trust a half blind captain…

The first green machine

It’s all Columbus MAX tubing except the oval boom and the middle seat stays which are fork blades as I recall.

close quarters for stoker

Adjustable stem reach

I got this from Pino Morroni. It’s part 3TTT and part Pino and is very handy for fitting different riders. Also a stayer brace is added to stiffen the bars, which as tandem riders know can deflect a bit with the mass at hand.

More funky Porter forks..

More choke holes and skirts.. what on Earth was I smoking?

I worried that the Max chain stays weren’t up to the job so I added a second set of stays..

Captains seat tube area

Captain's BB and lateral joint

One of the stiffener tubes can be seen in the boom tube. One can click on the photos to enlarge them, then use the “BACK” arrow to return to text..

Stoker's BB and a tangle of tubes

and lastly for those of you curious about the handle bar stem another shot for you..

Pino's handy work..and 3TTT

I’d like to have another of those MAVIC headsets.. a real work horse..

that’s it.. Dave

Comments (2)

..and you thought the banking at Talledega was steep..

Click here:
to see a few laps around the new Boulder indoor 143 meter track.  It’s short and not nearly enough banking for high speeds.

Comments (0)

Here1www.ABQKeirin.com is a link to my life time goal of bringing true Japanese style Keirin to NM.

Comments (0)