Older lugged canti touring frames
 

Who made some of the older lugged steel frames , besides Miyata Trek etc some thing a bit more exotic . Lookin to set up a gravel ish rig .

Fuji
Nishiki
Panasonic
Claud Butler
Dawes

Off the top of me head

Try here: https://www.bikeforums.net/search.php?searchid=11396981

Bridgestone RB-T. Maybe not exotic but hard to come by. :beer:

That might get a little more street cred than an exotic...

If you can find one, a Lotus Eclair would be hard to beat.

Meral...

Specialized Sequoia. I happened to see one in a wild a few months ago. It still had the generator and fenders and racks from new.

older canti frames had closer spaced front canti bosses and sometimes dont play well with modern canti brakes, v brakes even worse. i have/had 3 Nishiki side pull brakes bikes...Ultra Tour 18, Royale, and Gran Tour 15. All could fit a 700x38ish tire and Tektro long reach 559 or Paul Racer brake calipers

That didn't work for me. There is a recent thread on C&V cyclocross bikes which might give you some ideas.

https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...oss-bikes.html

Love that Meral! Very nice brazeon treatment — extremely functional, yet unobtrusive.

If you don’t mind TIG over lugs, check out the Bianchi Volpe. Can be had for a song these days too. Bit of a tank, mind you. This was the first “proper” bike I ever owned and it got me through college.

Sheldon Brown’s website has a nice blurb about them: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/volpe.html

I was thinking 1970's bikes and thought about the Volpe. Early 80's for the first one?

I had a late 90's one for a while and it was a weird bike.

The one I had was definitely from the 80s, even though I rode it in the 90s. Don’t really know how they changed over the years - that one rode like a touring bike. I bought it for $200 from a bike messenger in Berkeley who had it setup with terrible knobby red cross tires and a triple crank with bar ends. The canti brakes must have worked fine because they got me down Euclid Ave alive every day. :)

yeah I recall those.

Mine was late circa 2000 in the vein of an all-rounder. Didn't do anything well IMO