This is the story of building up the Mercian from spring of 2022 to April 2023.

Touching up
First, I removed the headset and bottom bracket that came with the frame and gave it a look over. The headset, interestingly, was a Tange with “Mercian” stamped on the inside. Looking inside the bottom bracket, I could see the pins that were used to hold the tubes for brazing – Mercian are known for their open-hearth brazing method. I hadn’t known Shimano made dropouts, but there we are. The rather stretched seat clamp hole was a known issue.

Parts of a headset, threaded together on a cable tie, are held showing the inside of the top race, with the stamped text "TANGE 25.4x24T MERCIAN"
The Tange headset was apparently made for Mercian
Camera flash lights inside bottom bracket shell revealing something like the point of a nail sticking out inside one of the main tubes
The Mercian method involved pinning the tubes before brazing
A front dropout is held to the light revealing a (somewhat faint) stamped text "SHIMANO SF"
Shimano dropouts
Closeup of a seat lug showing that the set bolt hole has been stretched and deformed to an oval shape
That ovalized seat bolt hole
Some things I noticed at the beginning

Then I wiped the frame down with degreaser and washed it with detergent and water. I got a little bottle of touch-up paint from a car parts shop that is a reasonable match. The paint on the top tube cable guides was a bit bashed, & they were a bit rusty inside, so I masked them off & sanded & painted them. And after that, I worked over various other little scratches with the touch-up paint. Going over the touched- up bits with 1200 grade paper and then polishing the whole thing with car wax worked pretty well.

a top tube cable guide surrounded by paper and pvc tape masking
The top tube cable guides needed a bit of attention
a cable outer housing stripped of its outer plastic covering, held against a frame tube wrapped in brown paper
To sand the inside, I stripped the covering off a bit of cable outer …
a piece of sandpaper wrapped around something inside a cable guide, some rusty coloured dust has appeared
… and wrapped a bit of sandpaper around it. It was a little bit rusty in there.
a cable guide painted with metallic blue touch-up paint. a couple of drops of paint are on the masking around it
Touched up
Touching up the top tube cable guides

First offerings-up
Shortly after the first batch of parts arrived, I had a first go at partly assembling the bike. The parts in the box at this point included the following:

  • New Tecora ‘E’ headset
  • New Neco bottom bracket (first attempt: 118 mm, because that was what worked on the Alves with the Specialized cranks)
  • NOS Sachs Quarz MTB triple cranks, 170 mm (chainrings 48-44-24, different manufacturers, as available)
  • NOS Sachs-Huret plain friction downtube levers, clamp-on (the frame doesn’t have bosses)
  • New Dia-Compe Gran Compe 610 centre-pull brakes, with Kool Stop Supra2 brake pads
  • Old front brake cable hanger (the original one I’d had on the Alves)
  • Old Nitto 6 cm technomic stem
  • Old Cinelli Giro d’Italia handlebar (40 cm)
  • Old wheels (borrowed from the Alves), IRD Cyclone mark 2 freewheel (7 speed, 13–32)
  • Old SunTour XCD 6000 rear and front derailleurs
  • Old non-aero Campagnolo Nuovo Record brake levers (chosen partly because it is easy to unhook the brake cables from the levers, and I want the bike to be Rinko-able)
  • Old Crank Brothers Candy 2 pedals (borrowed from the Alves)
  • New seatpost (no brand)
  • It was immediately obvious that the 118 mm bottom bracket spindle was too long – the front derailleur could barely reach the big ring – so I ordered a 110.5 one to replace it. I also had to get curved washers for mounting the brakes, and stainless bolts for them, which I then cut exactly to length, instead of the ones that came with the brakes.


Some metalwork was needed
Further progress required metalwork & I decided I needed a proper workshop setup for it. I finally had time in the summer to build a workbench, & also invested in a work stand for the bike.

Once the workshop existed, I began to apply myself to the trickier issues. The first job was to rescue the seat clamp: the frame has a stamped seat lug instead of a cast one, and the bolt hole was quite badly ovalized. The hole at the top of the seat tube also wasn’t perfectly round. I suspect what might have happened is that the previous owner used a 27.0 mm seatpost by mistake, and then had to tighten the bolt brutally to get it to stick. The Mercian catalogue said the seatpost would be 27.2, and I was able to stuff a bit of 27.2 seatpost offcut in without getting violent. I then worked on fitting a couple of small inserts, made out of 3 mm stainless, into the inside of the seat clamp, so that the rearward force on the bolt would be pushing on the sound metal at the back, rather than on the stretched edge of the hole. After that I made a couple of pieces to fit on the outside of the clamp, to transfer the lateral force of the bolt onto sound metal and to cover up the damage. All of these bits I fixed in place with epoxy, as I’m not equipped for brazing and also didn’t want to start burning off the paint. Finally a bit of tweaking and filing of edges got the opening of the seat tube into a state where it would accept a seatpost fairly smoothly. I polished the outside parts and painted over the rest with the touch-up paint. Not brilliant – the correct repair would be to replace the seat lug – but it’ll do.

four thicknesses of stainless steel are bolted together and at one end there are some green markings and a little dent where it has been bopped with a centrepuch
How it started
the pieces of steel are now in a vice with an 8 mm hole drilled and a hacksaw cut along one of the lines
Cutting out
the steel is now shaped and rounded but still attached to the larger piece, held up to the seat lug eye showing that it is almost the same size and shape
Making bits that will hopefully fit inside the seat clamp
Two small pieces of steel in a magnetic dish on a piece of paper with R and L markings
These fit inside now
view of the seat lug eye with an insert inside, showing that the hole in the insert is circular compared to the elongated hole in the lug
The inserts ought to take the pressure off the lip of the hole
An 8 mm HSS drill bit held in a thread tap holder, inserted through the seat lug eye
Making sure the holes line up
Seat bolt inserted through the seat clamp; view from behind; inserts are inside but not visible
The bolt fits ok
A hand holding a punch to the inner edge of one side of the seat clamp
A small bit of vandalism: punching the edges in so that the inserts can’t slip out
an ordinary bolt holding a roughly shapes piece of metal to the outside of the seat clamp
Now to make a pair of bits for the outside
A slightly less roughly shape piece of metal is held in place by the seat bolt
Shaping …
The piece of metal now has a smooth outline and closely fits the profile of the rear part of the seat lug
Outline is about right
View from behind; two outside pieces are thinned towards the front so that the seat bolt screws down on almost parallel faces; the parts are polished
They are a bit wedge-shaped, to get the faces nearly parallel
Seat lug with shiny polished parts attached to the sides of the clamp, the rest is freshly painted with the blue metallic touchup paint
The bodge is complete.
A strip of metal with markings is held horizontally in a vice. Two halves of the seat bolt and one cable adjuster sit in holes in the metal
That rear cable hanger …
The metals has been cut, bent and polished to form a rear cable hanger. It is chunkier than it needs to be and slightly asymmetrically bent. A cable tie pulls the cable towards the right side so that it enters the adjuster straight.
… also not quite right, but solid.
Work on the seat clamp and rear brake cable hanger

Following on the seat clamp, I made a rear brake hanger. I’m not completely happy with this; I didn’t get the bend in the metal right and the whole thing is slightly twisted, but it is quite massive and works. I may revisit this and try to make a more elegant version.

First rideable setup
Having solved these issues, it wasn’t hard to complete the bike up to a state that was rideable. First test ride was on September 6. My first impression was indeed that the shorter reach was giving me a more comfortable position.

Bike, no mudguards, no handlebar tape, on footpath outside the house
Time for a round-the-block test before handlebar tape
Bike now with a black saddlebag and bright blue handlebar tape, in a garden
Ready to go
Bike leaning against a fence, backlit, casting a shadow on the concrete path, sunlit water behind
First ride, on one of the many hydro dams

To do a more exact comparison, a couple of weeks later I swapped the handlebar and put on the bar and brake levers I’d been using most recently on the Alves:

  • Nitto M176 ‘Dream’ handlebar, 42 cm wide
  • Dia Compe Evo aero brake levers

At this stage I did an experiment with a Brooks Cambium C15 saddle. Suffice to say it did one 60 km round trip and got taken off again. If I were fitter and more mobile and lighter it might just be that my sit bones would be at home on a slightly narrower saddle than the B17. We’ll store that tiny bit of information away somewhere. So I reverted to my “B17”. About that time, I was having a tiny niggly buzz at the base of my spine (it has phases where it’s a bit iffy for a week or two) and found a position where it went away. Possibly a bit on the low side for times when my spine is happier; but made a mental note of how small the adjustment was to go from “pain” to “no pain”; only 5 mm or so. I had a question mark in my mind about whether I shouldn’t revert to the Flyer version of the saddle, with springs, to be on the safe side. But I thought if I get the fit right, and do my exercises, my back should be happy.

While the tops of the bars now seemed, if anything, closer than they needed to be, I was still finding the hoods a bit of a stretch; at least, my hands were not gravitating to the hoods as the most natural position. Only at this point (!!) did I consider the reach of the handlebars. And as soon as I did so, I realised that the handlebars I’d been using were quite deep from front to back. The Giro d’Italia is officially only 75 mm, but its normal position is with quite a steep downslope on the ramps, so that the hoods are lower/further away. The B135 Randonneur is 105 mm, and the M176 Dream bar is 90 mm. Looking into this, I realized there is such a thing as handlebars that would save 20 mm of reach compared to the M176. So I got a

  • Zipp Service Course Ergo 70 mm handlebar, 42 cm wide

This bar has a 31.8 mm clamp. To fit it, I transferred the A-Head adapter I’d been using in my last experiments on the Alves onto the Mercian. I was also thinking about experimenting with the stem length; Tops 1 cm further away but hoods 1 cm closer seemed like an interesting combination. So I also got two Ritchey Comp 4-Axis 6° stems, one 7cm and one 8 cm.

Bike, with pink handlebar tape and brown brake lever hoods, leaning up against an old apple tree with a partly mossy trunk, front tyre is wet
Nitto Dream bar / Die Compe Evo brake levers
Bike in front of white painted brick wall in a cellar, handlebars are now a short reach model, stem and stem adapter are black, brake levers are black and silver with modern style long hoods
Zipp ergo 70 bar & TRP RRL levers

What I was thinking ahead to was the possibility of a Redshift ShockStop stem, which begins at 8 cm and 6°. Turned up, it would have an effective length of just over 7 cm. But before investing almost € 200 in that, I wanted to be sure that that length of stem is fundamentally ok.

Anyway. I rode the bike a bit with the 7 cm stem and the Zipp handlebar, and the fit seemed pretty good. Now it was time to make the bike more practical: I needed mudguards and bags. On one ride I got an absolute soaking in a matter of a few minutes thanks to not having mudguards, and promptly caught a cold. My saddlebag was in danger of rubbing on the tyre. At the front, something I’d been mulling over for years was to set the bag down on a little rack instead of having it on the KlickFix bracket on the handlebars.

March 2023 setup
It took a long time to get around to the next phase of the work, which involved making a lot of fiddly little bits of metal. To cut a long story short, the parts I bought were:

  • A Carradice Lowsaddle Longflap saddlebag (c’mon guys, admit it, the real name is “shortarse Longflap”)
  • A Carradice Bagman saddlebag support
  • A Nitto M18 front rack, with extra long stays
  • A pair of Honjo mudguards (H31C hammered, 45 mm wide)
  • A Busch & Müller Secula Permanent (AAA batteries) mudguard-mounted rear light.
  • A Rixen & Kaul Daypack Box handlebar bag

It took quite a few days in the workshop to get all of these to fit together. Especially the mudguards, but that is mainly because the frame just doesn’t have the tyre clearance. It’s really tight under the front fork. However, it’s done now. I will draw a veil over my efforts splitting the rear mudguard for future Rinko use; it’s complicated and if I could do it again, I’d do it differently.

A thin strip of metal is folded around a 6 mm stainless steel bar and clamped against one thick piece of mild steel and under another piece
A DIY clamp for the bagman.
The thin metal has now been squashed into a P-shaped loop; side view, still clamped into the improvised jig
Squeezed it around a rod …
A 3mm thick piece of stainless steel is clamped in a vice along with thicker pieces of mild steel and a stainless rod. The end of the workpiece has been hammered over the rod creating a slight bend
… bent a thicker bit over a rod …
The p-shaped loop of thin stainless steel is bolted to the thick bent piece so that the P nestles up against the curve of the other piece. The thick piece has been ground/filed to taper out towards the end. Both still have rectangular outlines that do not match.
… fit them together …
The pieces have now been cut down to a slightly pointy U-shaped outline, their outlines now match and the edges of the tick piece are rounded. On the outside of the thicker piece, an aluminium rod is clamped in an eyebolt that passes though the two pieces.
… cut the lot down to size…
The clamp is turned around revealing a small piece of stainless steel held under the nut ans pressing with a straight edge against the inside of the P. The parts are smoother than they were.
… added a thicker bit at the back …
The clamp is now highly polished, the eyebolt has been painted black and the P is clamped around the rod of a Bagman saddlebag support, while the eyebolt holds an aluminium stay reaching to the seatstay of the bike
… finished. The bolt is a canti eyebolt.
At the seatstay, a clamp of thin, polished stainless steel is bolted to the flattened end of the aluminium stay.
Seatstay end was a bit simpler.
Bagman stuff
An aluminium mudguard is strapped by two blue webbing straps onto a piece of wood in a vice that matches its curvature
Preparing to dent the front mudguard
The mudguard now has a dent about 1 cm deep across its width. Steep at one and and tapering out at the other.
First effort
The mudguard has now been worked into an odd shape, quite narrow with and almost rectangular profile and two different depths of denting. Behind where the crown fork will be it has two holes and a fat shape like the tummy of a crocodile that’s just had its dinner
The final shape it took to squeeze through the font fork. Don’t attempt this at home, folks.
The front mudguard is installed. A shiny stainless bracket behind the fork crown is another DIY creation. The bolts emerging from the mudguard are still a few mm too long.
Bracket at rear of fork crown; the red is marking the screws to be cut to length.
View of the inside of the rear mudguard, near the back end, showing thin stainless reinforcements for the attachment points of the stay and the rear light. The bolts for the stay are in a metal plate with 2 threaded holes and under it is a piece of inner-tube rubber.
Inside where the rear mudguard stay & light are attached.
A piece of stainless steel with red markings. a longish parallel strip widens out at the bottom and has a D-shape marked for a cutout
There wasn’t room between the font brake and the headset to fit the bracket for the front rack in the middle. It had to have a hole and come in from the sides …
Finished highly polished stainless steel bracket held in a dirty hand along with a straight version, without the wide part and the hole. The end at the back of the D shaped hole has been bent down by 90°
Done. Original Nitto part on the right.
closeup of the front of the Nitto M18 rack. A thin, shiny stainless steel strip emerges from under the rack and dips down a little to where it is bolted to the Honjo mudguard, with a washer made of inner-tube rubber.
A little tab attached to the underside of the rack stabilizes the very long front part of the mudguard.
Honjo mudguards & Nitto rack stuff

On the front end, I created a bracket that connects the business end of an old KlickFix adapter to a clamp on the stem, so that the “handlebar” bag is not attached to the handlebars. Instead, it rests on the front rack. The clamp is a Salsa post lock seat collar 27.2 mm. A shim made out of a bit of 27.2 mm seatpost reduces it to fit on the 22.2 mm shaft of the stem.

Credit where credit is due, modifying a KlickFix to attach to something that isn’t a handlebar was partly inspired by the Smut Pedaller, though I’ve gone full Klickaleur, so to speak, by attaching it to the stem instead of the rack. I’d seen this post years ago and forgot what bag he was using; turns out I chose the same one. Great minds, eh.

An old kodel of KlickFix adapter has been cut off at the back and a 3 mm aluminium plate has been inserted; it is held by 4 bolts though the holes that would have formerly held the screws for the plastic handlebar loops.
An old KlickFix-type adapter from about 2002; the current ones aren’t flat at the back of the clip.
The truncated KlickFix adapter is turned over, revealing two stainless strips inserted into the grooves between the middle clip and the hook parts on the front. The strips have holes for bolts.
Belt and braces solution. Using all the holes for screws.
The KlickIx adapter is now bolted to two polished stainless arms which are attached at the other end to a clamp on the stem of the bike. The adapter is positioned above the gravestone of the M18 rack.
I woudn’t call it pretty
A view from the side and above shows the shape of the arms and how the adapted is bolted to them with 3 bolts per side, which may be more than strictly necessary.
… but it does stuff other brackets don’t do …
Side view of one of the stainless arms, showing that it is quite highly polished.
… and you can make any bit of stainless look nicer by polishing it.
Clicky bracket thing for the front bag

A few further parts were just improvements on the existing ones:

  • TRP RRL brake levers have quick-release buttons which make it a lot easier to get the wheels off.
  • A NOS Shogun 25.4 mm front brake cable hanger (from mtb-kult.de) is a lot stiffer than the original steel one.
  • Time Atac 4 pedals as an alternative to the Crank Brothers ones, whose bearings were not in great shape.
  • Swapped the middle chainring for a 38 (48-38-24), abandoning the half-step idea.
  • Also tried Mounty Special Power Cages for the bottles. That didn’t turn out so well.
Headset area of the bike showing the thick black cast/forged aluminium brake cable hanger. The brand SHOGUN is on it in white.
That Shogun brake cable hanger is nice and rigid.
IQ Eyro headlight attached to the front end of the Nitto M18 rack via its standard bracket bolted to a hastily made aluminium plate, attached to the rack with 6 cable ties
A rapid bodge in order to attach the headlight
Bike parked by a house in a sunset glow. The rear light is on.
After a nice ride up to Pernegg
Honjo mudguard and downtube of the bike with part of its Mercian logo, in soft light, with grass behind
Those hammered Honjos tho 🤩
Side view of the bike with mudguards, front rack, front bag and saddlebag attached.
The bike with all the stuff attached. Sharp eyes may notice that the Klickaleur is a first rough version..
Then the bike was ready to ride a bit

With that I did a bit more riding. Though not without continuing to faff around in an unorganized way.