moulden team

You are looking at a Moulden Team road bike from 1996 - probably. There's no serial number on it, so the age is a guess based on the Dura Ace parts. I'm not a big road bike guy, but this was something that I just couldn't pass up. So, let's check it out, and see how I've set it up in a way I can live with;

Jim Moulden made bikes in Edmonton from the late 80's through 2000 or so, mostly making mountain bikes, but also road bikes, as this Team shows. It is in a typically under-stated colour, like most Mouldens, and in this case the paint was done by Shiny Shiny in Edmonton. It has a couple of his trademark features; the side-mounted seatpost bolt, a chainstay to downtube bridge, but not the cable noodles you would find on a lot of his mountain bikes.

It's made from Ritchey Logic tubing, and is very traditional in it's appearance - which I really like. When I bought it, as pictured at the top, it had mismatched wheels, the seller telling me the Mavic Cosmic on the rear was long ago replaced as the spokes had pulled through the rim.  Which is really too bad because those wheels were hot.

The seller knew this was not just any mass-produced road bike, but I don't think he truly grasped how rare this is. I assume Moulden would have built this for the Hard Core road team, which couldn't have been that big. And I can't think of another Moulden road bike that I've ever seen, so I feel pretty confident that less than ten of these were made.

Couple more cool things on it; I've never seen a Moulden with this 'jm' logo on the headtube. The mountain bike of his that I've seen had the Moulden Bicycle Works 'mbw' logo. A quick Google search shows that logo is not that rare though. Not that there's a lot of Moulden pics in the first place.

Secondly, you may have noticed that this bike appears to have a threaded Dura Ace headset, and a threadless 3T stem.  Both are true. Pictured above is the lock ring from the threaded headset that someone has perfectly machined the threads off, so that it now fits perfectly on the Time fork. The Internet says this is a thing, but I wonder if Jim himself didn't do that, as it really seems like a pro did this. If I did it, there's no way I could get it this perfect. 

And now for your enjoyment, or horror, is what I've done to it. Gone are the Bontrager seatpost and seat, replaced with a Chromag post and Selle Italia Turbo Special saddle. Silver Mavic Ksyriums have cleaned up the wheel situation. I really wanted black ones, but these are growing on me. We also have some Dura Ace bar cons and a moustache bar.

I've learned from the two road bikes I've owned to this point that I don't like drop bars. I never ever ride on the drops. So, instead lets flatten things out and have three or four hand positions on the same plane? It's way better.

Only issue is the Dura Ace STI levers are a little weird in this setup. The levers flare out a bit, which means they flare up in this application. I have some nice 105 levers which I'm sure would work better, but they don't have clamps, and the clamps are stupid expensive on ebay.

I'm ok with this for now - apart from that stem, which is kinda ugly, and the bar tape, which was just for practise. I'll redo it with some proper black tape after I decide if I want to pursue the 105 lever clamps.

I hope to get out on this this summer as it feels pretty good to ride - though I'm certain it was built for someone that weighs a hundred pounds less than I do, so that worries me a bit. I promise to be carfeul with it.