Nashbar Touring Frame

I built one of these up a few years ago since I've wanted a loaded tourer for about as long as I've been interested in biking. A few years ago, my wife agreed to accompany me on an overnight camping trip, so I got one of these babies for myself, and picked up a Trek 520 off Craigslist for her. I built the frame up with mix of 9-speed Shimano components including Dura Ace barend shifters. Although I'm very happy with how the build turned out, I did, however, run into a few problems with the build.
- The FD clamp ended up being between the bottle cage braze-ons on the seattube, preventing the cage from being mounted. I just got a few washers to shim the cage, mounted it with longer bolts, and all was good.
- I used V-brakes with Travel Agents, but in retrospect, I should've stuck with cantilevers. The rear brake intereferes with mounting a rack on the rear seatstay eyelets, so I just relocated the left-side rack mount with a C-clamp instead. Works just fine, but looks kinda funky.
- There's plenty of room for my 700x35c tires with fenders, but the fat tubing on the chainstay bridge requires a bit of fender mounting modification.

Nashbar has them on closeout now for $99.99! Any size you want, as long as it's 54cm. I don't know if they ever plan on restocking these frames, so if you've ever considered building one up, now's the time! And really, for the price, you can't go wrong.

I promise my next update will be something vintage 80's related for all the valued regular blog readers out there!