Free Bike!

In article ,
Zoot Katz writes:
Nothing is free.
.....

While it's not "free" it's certainly a sweet and solid street machine
at a bargain.

I did pretty good, myself. Over the last summer I snagged
a number of put-out gimme bikes, all with combinations of
serious malfunctions and good parts.

I built up one good drop-bar'd streeter out of them.
The frame isn't much to write home about, but it steers
good & true, and has nicely sculpted lugs with the simplist
elegance of mission furniture. The top tube says "Road King"
and the down tube says "Seville." DT shifters. It had
chromed rims. That's okay, I also scored a Centurion roadie
with alloy wheels, so I overhauled those and installed 'em,
along with a beefier alu handlebar (foam grips) with which
to swap out the orig steel one with the tape peeling off.
The Centurion has a bent fork. It also had stem shifters
which I kicked off the stem, and then installed the handlebar
plus stem into Road King's headset. I also have an old Mercier
which has those lovey wide-flanged one-piece Suzue hubs (supporting
textured chrome rims.) I'll have to build wheels on those hubs one
of these days. The rest of the Mercier is, well, French. The
backwards threading, weird sizes and cottered cranks leave me cold.
Although I do appreciate good steel cranks.

I had a nice old Sakae standard BCD 5-bolter crankset kickin'
around, so I stuck that on, c/w a pair of nice KKD cage pedals.
I thought I might have to buy clips & straps, but I found some
spares in one of my parts drawers. The Road King came with
a rattail rear fender and wire rear rack. Maybe I'll reinstall
them. It also had a 7-speed freewheel (one of those Shimano
Magna-whatevers?) that was seized up. I had a 6-spd 14-28T
and its mated chain handy, so that's what makes it go now.

My cost -- a bunch of bike skeletal remains stashed in the
garage that I hope the landlady doesn't find out about before
I get rid of them.

The bike goes pretty fast. Maybe that's to do with the 52/42
ringset, lack of add-ons, and all the work I've invested into
goading Ol' Pig Iron along. I've dubbed it: "Crazy Daisy".

But heck -- a Miyata tourer is an excellent score!
Especially since it's your size.

Pedals & saddle are personal adjustments anyways,
even with a new bike.

Are you gonna keep the moustache bars, or revert to
the more traditional?

Remember the practice among some, to saw half the drops
off, invert the handlebar with the half-drops /up/ and
pointing back (as opposed to simply twisting a handlebar
the wrong way around, with the drops pointing forward,
and having the levers upside down) and remount the brake
levers & shifters, properly oriented?

Of course, that was before brake hoods were comfortable
to ride on, and before brifters.

Maybe that more upright position kept some folks from
riding up the backsides of parked cars ;-)


cheers,
Tom

--
Nothing is safe from me.
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats curlicue vcn dot bc dot ca