Road Bike Minus Top Tube

[Patrick Bateman]

alt="leader 725"

alt="vendetta"

alt="my tiara"

Has anyone ever tried doing a road bike conversion where they chop off the toptube?

I've built three or four Cruzbike conversions, and my latest one is a Tiara, inspired by Doug's conversion

The Tiara is a big improvement over my previous bike - it handles better and it's more 'aero'

But mine is ugly.

A couple of days ago I picked up a Leader 725 on Craigslist for $150, mostly because I wanted the fork. But the more I look at it, the more I think I can get close to a Vendetta type of geometry, by chopping out the top tube and mounting the seat in the gap.

So it would look similar to the Tiara, with that big fat downtube.




Now I *know* everyone is going to say that the strength of the Leader frame will be completely compromised if you hack out the top tube. To deal with this, I have a couple of ideas. First, the Leader has a big fat downtube, which should be stronger than most road bikes. Second, I'll add a new top tube in the same spot that it's located on the Tiara.


Again, the whole thing would look like the Tiara conversion I already have, just it won't be purple and silver

 

[John Tolhurst]

Hi Patrick, 
I won't say it

Hi Patrick,
I won't say it can't work, but I find it hard to encourage the approach. You will want to remove the top tube right near the head tube. But for structural reasons you will want to leave a bit there, so there is no easily stretched or torn hole in the head tube due to braking stresses.

Doug used a can of blacks spray paint, so his tiara is no longer silver and purple!