Del Rey Thoughts

I've been thinking through the completion of the 1984 Del Rey. I have an orphaned 40mm Berthoud stainless front fender. Peter White Cycles sells fenders without the stays as replacement parts, but only as sets, so when I needed to replace the rear fender on my Trek 620, I ended up with this as an extra. This ends up being useful for mockups as below:

I've also included a Velo Orange front rack that has been bouncing around the shop, looking for a home. I like the 28mm tires on this and the relatively narrow 40mm fender, keeps a leaner, lithe look than 32mm tires with 43 or 45 mm fenders, which I feel is appropriate for this bike.

That is, if I go with fenders/racks at all on this one. The jury is still out, but it does look nice.

Some other parts under consideration are:

From left to right, we have Jagwire braided gold brake cable housing, Suzue gold high flange hubs, a KMC gold chain, and some MKS BM-7 gold cage pedals.

The chain is a no-brainer, gold chains look good on almost any bike. The pedals are out, I believe, simply because the gold is too orangey.

A few days ago, I pretty much ruled out the gold cable housing, it seemed too overwhelming. However, with the fenders and the rack, it seems to be back in play. The oceans of silver added by these reduces the effect of the cable housing to that of an accent. So at this point, the gold housing is in back in the running so long as fenders and racks are.

The gold hubs are the big dilemma. Like the housing, I feel that they are a lot more acceptable with silver fenders and racks adding balance. Without these, the bike starts looking like a solid gold edition that wasn't quite finished.