Well, isn't that quite a name. "Waterford Adventure Cycle" It was named back in the day when the meaning was somewhat different than today. It is a touring bike. So adveturing by travel. Not a gravel or bikepacking adventure. But conveniently, this is exactly what I was looking for.
Why a touring bike
The question you may be asking is "why do you want a touring bike?" Not unreasonable. I just did a tour from Salzburg to Udine on my gravel bike and that worked fine. So, clearly it is possible. But that was 'credit card touring' not carrying sleep systems, shelter, etc. What a touring bike brings to the table is being a bike made specifically for longer days in the saddle, riding as efficiently as can be and carrying up to obscene amounts of cargo. The gravel bike was a bit racier (lower, longer) and was limited to two, smaller panniers or a saddle and frame bag. Fine for clothes, toiletries etc but could not have carried a tent, sleeping bag, cooking supplies too.
A touring bike like the Waterford Adventure Cycle has a few specific features:
- A more upright position. Still drop bar, but a higher 'stack' that brings the bars up relative to the saddle to not spend so many hours bent as far over.
- Shorter reach from saddle to bars to also reduce the lean. Yes, a bit of an aero penalty but wtih more comfort
- All the mounts. There are M5 mounting points all over. Double eyelets on the dropouts front and rear to allow mounting pannier racks and fenders. Eyelets higher on the fork to anchor a rack (no three-pack like modern gravel setup). Eyelets on the chainstays for the rear rack. Fender mounts in the brake bridge, fork, and BB.
- Steel. No muss. No fuss. Sturdy and rugged. Steel frame. Steel fork. But top quality tubing, finely welded.
Background on Waterford
Waterford has a fascinating history that ties to the foundations of American bicycles. It all grows from Schwinn bikes founded in the 1890s. Schwinn started out building lots of high-end race bikes but eventually successfully shifted to producing bikes for the masses. But in 1938 they decided they wanted a 'halo brand' of bike using the best of new CroMo alloys and elegant lugs for the racing scene. For decades the Paramount brand of Schwinn was the top of the line in US bikes including being built for professional teams and olympians. In the 1970s they were making 1,200 a year to dominate american-built race bikes.
In 1979, the new generation came in with Ed Schwinn who felt they'd lost their path at the top of the game and shut down Paramount until he was satisfied that their product was world class again. They succeeded and built bikes for Eric Heiden and the 7/11 team in 1980. They also started selling super custom 'Elite' Paramounts for the small sum of $3000 1980 dollars (nearly 12k in today's dollars). That went well enough that they opened up a separate factory in Waterford WI (see where this is going?) to focus on the high end business that was eventually known as PDG or the Paramount Design Group. PDG was known for using top end tubing and quality builds. They led the move to 'oversized' 1-1/4" tubing with thinner walls.
But, in 1992, Schwinn corporate got into a financial trouble and filed for bankruptcy. The creditors had no interest in the low-volume, low-margin Paramount business. In 1993 Marc Muller (who'd built PDG) and Richard Schwinn bought out the Waterford factory and continued to make Paramounts under contract for a couple of years. Helpfully, these bikes became known as 'Waterford Paramounts' (vs the versions Schwinn had built overseas) and they built a reputation that let them launch as Waterford with two bikes including the 1900 Adventure Cycle. Waterford went on to build the business under the brands Waterford (custom), Gunnar ('standard' bikes, named after the shop dog) and as OEM for a few others. But in 2023 Richard Schwinn was ready to retire and realized that the bulk of his team at Waterford was as well. They decided to have an orderly (if quick) shutdown of the business.
The Build
The Frame
The frame showed up on Craigslist with the listing:
An all-day riding bicycle. The color is a beautiful green. There are some touch-ups and chips.
It includes the seatpost, headset, stem, spacers, water bottle cages and cable stops shown. Everything you see, you get.
Along with pictures showing it to really be a beautiful green and in excellent but not babied condition.
What became interesting though was to figure out its provenance. The seller believed he was the second owner. The first appears to have taken delivery of his (most likely, given the 62cm size) custom frame in Pacific Grove. But he didn't know when. It turns out that despite the modern threadless stem setup, it has a 1" steerer under shims. Based on that, and how long the Adventure Cycle was in production, we guessed it was built in the late 80s to the mid-90s (before everything went to 1-1/8" steerers).
Not-so-cool was that he couldn't find the serial number anywhere. Yikes, is it a fake? He asked for some measurements from the frame and based on that, he was able to find the record for the bike where someone had forgotten to input the serial number into the file after building it. Yeah, custom work. It turns out that it was built with a 1" steerer at the buyer's request as they still offered that option in 2003. Yep, we were way off on the year. It was also customized to have an extra short reach.
It was based on what Waterford called the Adventure Cycle model T-14 which was the "T" for touring 14 for TIG welded instead of the 1900 series lugged frame option. (Yeah, I do not approve of their model branding heirarchy but it is what it is) The T-14 used a sloping top tube (cutting edge in the early 'aughties') for a bit higher stack without hurting standover height. And there was no lug set available for those angles.
Richard Schwinn thought this was a "very cool bike" because it would have been one of the very first of this new design, while it was still using 31.8mm top and down tubes. Later builds used their proprietary OS2 tubeset with a 34.9mm downtube. As a naked frameset, this one still looks conventional. Once the wheels are on it, you notice the 3-degree slope to the top tube.
The frame came in great condition. A little dirty as expected coming out of storage, but a smooth headset and essentially no rust even inside the tubes and bottom bracket. I cleaned and treated the raw tube insides with rust preventative oil just in case. A little bit of a chipped area on the brake bridge and no matching touchup paint for this color. So I sanded off the rust and clear coated it for the patina with protection.
How does it fit? Really well. I like the upright riding position. But that position does need a different saddle than I usually use. And the shortened main triangle means there is a bit of toe overlap which surprised me given the long total wheelbase. But it is comfortable enough that after riding it for a few days, getting on the Litespeed Gravel it felt really long and stretched out (despite that I have ridden it comfortably for a thousand miles already).
Components
Drive Train
With the frame sorted out, we move on to how to make it a full bicycle, preferably by raiding my spare parts bin. Even before learning it was a 2003 model, I thought the ideal groupset for a touring bike would be the vintage Shimano 105 5500 3 x 9 groupset I'd removed from my Klein a few years ago. It's the proper silver color and touring bikes traditionally use a 3x drivetrain. But there were a few issues:
Gear ratios:
Problem: This groupset came from a sporty road bike. It had a chainset with a 52-42-30 configuration. And the cassette was only a 12-25. That's pretty high gearing for a loaded bike. In fact one of the reasons it was replaced on the Klein is that the newer 2x R7000 configuration brought lower gearing.
Solution 1 - Bigger cassette: This seems simple. Put on a modern 11-34 cassette with bigger cogs. But no. Even the SGS (long cage) 105 derailleur doesn't reach out to fit a 34t cog. But, with 9-speed drivetrains, Shimano still used the same cable pull ratio on road and mountain groups. So I found a minty used Deore XT M750 rear MTB derailleur like I have on the Ventana. That derailleur supports 34t cassettes (comically small for a MTB config in 2025 but normal back then) and lots of chain wrap like a triple needs. Doing this is questionably 'legal' per Shimano configuration specifications, but I know it works based on the Ventana.
Solution 2 - Breaking the 'law': But I wanted even lower. The 30t granny ring is still pretty big for loads and mountains. The Ventana used 42-32-22 (8t lower low and a 20t difference to to bottom) chainrings with the same 11-34 cassette. So, I replaced the inner ring with a 24t. Combined with the bigger cassette, it ended up with a total takeup (number of teeth difference between the smallest and largest combos) of 51t which kinda-sorta meets spec. Shimano says the M750 can support 33t in the rear ✅. But only 22 in the front (vs 28t of a 52-42-24). So definitely a setup to be used with thought and care. Don't run small-small if you've made the chain long enough to fit big-big (which of course I did because that mistake would break things)
It ended up with a 19.1 inch low vs 17.5" on the Ventana. Not the very lowest in my fleet but pretty close. Although it also has a 131" top gear which is ludicrous for this bike. Spoiler alert: It worked
Shifters/Brifters
The group included the standard 105 3x brifter configuration. These are old school and feel amazingly solid in the hands. Unfortunately, Shimano decided to put a trim cap on the top that was made of plastic that aged terribly. The vast majority of them seem to have been damaged or failed over the years. And less than 10 years after EOL, spares inventory was gone from Shimano. Not cool. And guess what? My left one was gone. The right one had a crack but it responded to superglue.
eBay has a few NOS or just good condition ones but a) for some reason, mostly right caps and b) for absurd amounts of money. $50 for a $0.20 chunk of plastic. The part is just cosmetic so one can just run it naked. But it's ugly. I'm going to try a 3D printed alternative and we'll see how that goes.
The old hoods are also known to get very sticky over the years. These are no exception. But several people online recommended baby powder to tamp down the sticky and that seems to work well enough for now. (it requires occasional reapplication but doesn't leave the hoods white and dusty). There is a maker in Taiwan for replicas but is out of stock at the mement.
Brakes
Even in 2003, a touring bike would run cantilever brakes (or V brakes using the same bosses). Not many disc brakes yet outside of some mountain bikes (see the 2002 Ventana). That's cool. Properly set up cantis work fine for normal use. I even have some on the Cannondale tandem. The frame seller happened to have a set of Tektro CR720s available as well that he swore by on other bikes. Classic wide-stance cantis are my stylistic preference anyway. After swapping in some of my favorite Kool-Stop pads and they work great.
Wheels
Wheels were the gap in my parts bin strategy. I didn't have any spare QR wheels. But fortunately, there are lots of QR, rim-brake wheels on the market for cheap. But not so fortunately, this frame does not use the normal 130mm rear road spacing but the 135mm MTB rear spacing. This is a rather rare combo. Lots of 26" 135mm wheelsets from old MTBs. But not very many 700c 135mm wheels out there. (This was used for other touring bikes. It wasn't a custom, just unuusal). Add in the desire for higher spoke count wheels and we're at the proverbial needle in a haystack. But I found some. Apparently they'd been used on a cyclocross bike before, which made sense. Unforunately, I'm an idiot and trusted the seller's measurement instead of making my own. When I went to install them, I found the rear hub was actually 130mm. Grrrr. But with a steel frame, one can get away with it for a while and they were dirt cheap and in good condition. Eventually, I'll probably build a wheel based on an M750 MTB hub.
For tires, I stole the road-friendly Tarravail Washburn tires I'd used on the Litespeed Gravel to tour since it was back to knobbies.
Contact points
Handlebar was a lucky find of a silver (didn't even know they made that) Salsa Cowchipper on Craigslist. I knew they worked for me from the Cutthroat. And these were a size smaller which made sense too for this application.
For the saddle, I initially threw on an Ergon I had which was 'ok'. But once I rode it for real, it became obvious that the more upright position required a different saddle for comfort. So, on went a Brooks C19 Carved. Just a bit wider than the one I have on the gravel bike and intended for a more upright position on a touring bike. 60 miles so far and I can say 'comfy'.
Racks
I'm glad he did, because when I tried to assemble and mount it, I was having a terrible time finding the right combinations of holes to end up with a properly spaced and level rack. If I hadn't known it was possible, I might have thought I bought a rack that didn't fit. These racks are amazingly sturdy once mounted. After years of playing with lightweight racks, it's reassuring how they feel. My only complaint is that I hadn't really thought about the fact that the 'silver' steel version is only painted silver. It's not raw metal. Duh, just like the black ones. So the color isn't quite right (but close enough) and the paint does wear at the contact points (a known issue). There is a solution from Tubus in the stainless steel or even titanium versions. But I wasn't going to spend more on the racks than the rest of the bike.
Completed Bike
How did it come out? Beautiful. The shiny 'sherwood forest green' paint and silver build out is a real, classic look. And for the most part, it worked straight out. The only problem was that with a fresh chain, the worn middle chainring became evident wtih some nasty skipping. I'd never had that before and really didn't see the damage until I put it up next to the undamaged used replacement. But now it's fine even with the 'illegal' configuration.
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