One of the projects I am really excited about finishing is the MAX bike I am doing for Stephen. We were lucky enough to get our hands on a Columbus MAX tube and lug set complete with the original fork blades and seat stays. We used a nice Walter MAX fork crown and Long Shen dropouts to round out the build.
The first step was to give the lugs and BB a little personality. As you can see, the stock lugs are pretty chunky. But hey, this tube set was all about building a race machine for big, strong dudes. Aesthetics were likely not too high on the old priority list.
There wasn’t much real estate to work with on these lugs. They were short and stubby. But there was one particular feature I liked. The top tube and down tube are ovalized where they meet the head tube. With the long axis of each tube on the vertical plane, it created a broad, flat area that could be carved. I also knew I wanted to remove as much meat from the BB shell as I could.
Here are the lugs and BB out of the box….

Now for a little “Z” treatment….

And now the fun begins. I wanted the design to be simple. This is a race bike. Clean and nothing over the top was the order of the day. After a lot of drawing on the lugs to figure out what I liked, this simple design came to me and I ran with it.

And I added some cable guides to the bottom of the BB.

More tomorrow….thanks for looking!