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So my wife and I recently decided we'd like to get into cycling, and having not ridden since we were kids we had to buy some bikes. We love the look of old vintage road bikes, but didn't want to pay the $400-$800+(all dollar figures will be in CAD  money) for one in fully serviced, good condition. We ended up getting some old 10 speed Japanese steel bikes, and set about refurbishing them at the local bike co-op. Don't have good pictures of my wife's bike before we cleaned it up, but it's a Fuji 'Dynamic 10' with their VALite tubing for $80, and mine's a BRC Campus Sport for $50. BRC was based near Vancouver, BC, and they brought in mid grade components from Japan and assembled them here in . They used Tange tubing on a lot of their bikes, and my frame was fairly light and had a bright ring when I tapped it, so I'm guessing? It's maybe somewhat decent tubing. I'm no weight weenie at ~250lbs anyways so a 1 lb difference in tubing on the bike isn't going to matter to me regardless. Here's what the BRC looked like before I sanded all the paint off:Mederlock posted:[First post from maintenance/repair thread] The paint was so faded it was going white, and all the decals were mangled, so I did not feel bad going to town at it with sandpaper. Here's the frame mostly sanded down, and then after it's final coat of clear.   In-between these steps is where I hosed up. I forgot to do the proper prep stages post primer curing.. didn't do a proper wipe down with thinner and tack cloths before I started laying down base coat, I was impatient and sprayed on a cooler/humid day, and the space I was working on had tons of dust in the air that I should've blew out and ran my air purifier in for a while before spraying. As a result, the primer is sticking to the bike great, and the base and clear are adhering to each other just fine.. but the paint is chipping/scraping off the primer at the earliest sign of trouble. It still looks 10x better than before, and I plan on redoing the paint job at the end of the season with the lessons learned, using touch up paints for now until I can do the job proper.  The local bike co-op was amazing to work on these bikes at. We basically stripped and rebuilt them from the bearings up. We upgraded from steel cottered cranks to alloy square taper Sugino cranks and decent flat pedals, installed Tektro aero brake levers with Cyclocross style cross top interrupter brake levers, replaced the saddles with ones with anatomical relief, swapped the chainrings from 52/42 to 48/38, and even managed to get matched Shimano Biopace/Sugino Cycloid rings from the parts bins  they're goofy as gently caress but they've certainly been conversation starters. My favourite upgrades were finding ratcheting friction shifters, a Suntour stem shifter for the Better 3/4's(easier learning curve for her) and Shimano "Fingertip" downtube shifters for me, for like $4 a pair  . Here they are coming back from the last apointment at the co-op. Managed to find the hitch mount carrier for $12 at a thrift store, that was dope. The rest we finished at home.   And here they are on the inaugural ride! Bearings greased, wheels trued, new consumables, and nicely cleaned up original parts where practicable. After a good 30-40 hours of work on these bikes, it was a wonderful feeling taking them out for a nice ride around the local valley. Please forgive the spoke reflectors, my wife insists on keeping them  The 27x1-3/8 Kenda Kross Cyclo tires have been great on road at full pressure, and handled gravel trails, dirt, grass and whatnot swimmingly with some PSI let out.   We happened to be heading out to the mountains for some camping shortly after the bikes were done, so of course we had to bring them along and take 'em for a spin along the beautiful Abraham Lake in David Thompson Country, Alberta. Truth be told, my wife spent more time hunting for cool rocks than we did cycling, but it was well worth it for her suffering me bringing her along through this bike building journey. Future plans: These cranks are both 110/74 BCD with room for triple rings. We found that the lowest gear wasn't quite enough to climb the hills during our gravel ride or around the big elevation changes in our local area. For reference, it's a 5 spd 14-28 in the rear and 38/48 up front. Either we do a 5 speed to 7 speed conversion and get one of those "megarange" freewheels with a 34T dinner plate on the back, with all the redishing/axle changes/RD change/etc. that entails, or we just slap a 28T(maybe 30/32?) Granny ring in the front and find a decent triple front derailleur. Going 3X up front is certainly the easiest way to go about it, but there's been a lot of  faces when I've brought that up at the co-op...Apologies for the   post, I'm just pretty stoked about these bikes, as despite them not being some mega  new bicycles with all the new bells and whistles, they're ours. We just wanted cool bikes with some history that we could modify to be fun, comfortable, enable us to go on new adventures, and do it all for as little $$ as we could get away with.
Mederlock fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Jul 7, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 00:39
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:55 |
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kimbo305 posted:Very happy you got bikes that fit your aesthetic goals and came in very under budget thanks to some elbow grease and resourcefulness. Yeah, it helped that I'm unemployed currently, so I had the spare time and energy to put the sweat equity in. I think we're about.. $250CAD all in on each bike? And that could've been even less if I knew more at the start and planned out co-op shop time to only the stuff we needed the special bike tools for. Now just to dial in the fit/stem lengths/etc. To get it as comfortable as possible and Just Ride. As is they run smooth, comfortable, and we're stoked to get out this summer.
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Jul 7, 2023 02:05
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tarlibone posted:That's great. Thank you! Pretty sure most of the new parts you'll find that they have listed on the Rivendell website will be compatible with most old bikes, and they're pretty picky about what they'll sell and promote. On top of that, there'll be bins full of used parts at your local bike co-op that just need some cleaning up and refurbishment, and you can get something that was top of line 20-30 years ago for very cheap if you know what you're lookong for and are lucky. For instance, I'm looking at possibly upgrading to the Shimano M310 rear derailleur that Rivendell recommends whenever we make the jump to 7 speed or if we do a free hub conversion and get crazy re-building our wheel sets down the line to 650B or 700C from the 27". From what I understand, almost everything out there is compatible with friction shifting, if you're willing to skip index shifting and all the compatibility headaches that entails. There's even goofy brake levers that can take friction shifters like a MacGyver'd brifter. There's also small companies like IRD and many others making new "old" designs. Definitely do it!
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Jul 7, 2023 16:03
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kimbo305 posted:These are good ideas for getting compatibility, but can be pretty pricy. The Gevenalle shifters are like $200 for example. For Raleigh bikes, the biggest compatibility might be their 71mm bottom bracket. Velo Orange used to have one, but don’t sell it anymore. Sunlite apparently makes one, but it’s for 68mm, and might not have enough threading. Probably does. Yeah I don't see myself getting the Gevenalle's, I'm happy with my ratcheting downtube friction shifters personally. I contemplated going to a sealed BB cartridge but my loose bearing races were in such good shape I just put in new balls and grease and haven't had an issue. I didn't realize Raleigh went so out of their way to be.. special. Leave it to Sheldon Brown to have a great article on the peculiarities and how to get around them though! https://www.sheldonbrown.com/raleigh26.html
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Jul 8, 2023 16:10
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She's a beaut!
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Aug 7, 2023 07:27
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Even just cut a stencil out of plastic and paint one in or something. Or you can buy some cool vinyl stickers for it
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Sep 8, 2023 01:01
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HAIL eSATA-n posted:you know what i mean!! 
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Sep 23, 2023 02:08
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Slavvy posted:I just picked up this immaculately preserved 90's boomer steed for commuting duty, it literally sat in a garage for the past two decades. The paint is perfect. What a bike. Gonna keep it with those bars or switch to something more fun?
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Sep 23, 2023 03:21
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sweat poteto posted:Steerer bells are the best  I have a Tortle :v 
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Oct 1, 2023 07:35
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I put one on each of my bikes.
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MuadDib Atreides posted:Little cross check number. Old and beat up enough that it shan’t be stolen but rides fine suits my needs. Love it! That's rad as hell
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Oct 2, 2023 16:33
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:55 |
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Put some LEDs on it and you're ready for TRON
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Jan 27, 2024 23:50
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