Jacquie’s touring bike

There’s a lot to say about this bike so I’ll try to keep it concise (but I will go on about Jacquie).

When founding WOMBAT, former pro MTB rider, and all around rad person Jacquie Phelan asked me to build her a bike, my heart skipped a beat. We have a few mutual friends but we had (and still have) never met in person. Jacquie and I connected after starting a conversation through a fundraiser for her partner Charlie Cunningham. As many of you know, Charlie is a world renown bicycle component designer and inventor who has been active in the bicycle realm since the 70s. Function was the motivation and form followed in Charlie’s creations. But the form of Charlie’s bikes and components are unmistakeable and beautiful in their own right.

Fast forward to 2015 when Charlie suffered a life altering bicycle crash. He is thankfully still with us but albeit a different Charlie to some degree. Since the crash, Jacquie has become Charlie’s primary caregiver. A fundraiser for Jacquie and Charlie was created by her friend Caroline and is now a very informative blog about the days in the life of Jacquie and Charlie. She blogs in other places too including at jacquiephelan.org and at phelanfood.wordpress.com. She has a lot to say and it is all worth reading.

So the bike is not a Cunningham. Charlie and I have very different building styles, but there is some crossover. One of my obsessions were all the brakes that Charlie developed over the years: the roller cam, the toggle cam, and the lever-link in particular. I ogled over the lever link because of it’s power. I had seen the mechanism before in Henry T. Brown’s 507 Mechanical Movements as a railroad car brake. A year and a half ago I asked Jacquie if it would be okay if I tried to make a set. She gave her blessing and I was on my way.

I made several sets (out of steel of course) and was having a blast. I actually incorporated one of the sets in a build last year with an old friend as an unsuspecting victim (I say victim because the person who has to set those brakes up is in store for a stressful few hours, haha). I played around with even more lever link styles in aluminum even cutting apart some MAFAC Racers to see if I could get the brake a little smaller without sacrificing too much power. Well, they still stopped. And then it was onto the next iteration for Jacquie’s bike.

The arms were based off of Charlie’s mini-cam road brakes but the brake boss spacing was for “standard” MAFAC Raid/Rene Herse/Grand Bois centerpull brakes. Jacquie didn’t specifically ask me to incorporate Charlie’s actual linkages into the brake but I did. There were a few slight modifications to make them work but they look very much at home on this bike. I’m thankful for the help of my friends Ryan Coyle and Joe Roggenbuck for getting the design in SolidWorks and then CNC machined. This was my first foray into incorporating a component that required a full team to make into a build!

Not to be overlooked but the bike also features bilaminate construction, heavily modified Crust fork crown, front and rear dynamo lighting, a custom fillet brazed crankset, stem, and racks among other small details. It was a special build for me and I hope that Jacquie enjoys the ride!