But after an $87 trip to the bike shop and an hour or so of work, I’ve got a brand new steed.
It rides like one of those dreams that I wake up from at 3am, asking myself, “what in the hell just happened?” A dream, sure, but not one that leaves me with an unbridled sense of wonderment. A dream that I can absolutely believe cost me $87.
It’s aluminum, and maybe part of the problem is that it’s not the springy steel I’m used to in 26ers. Part of the problem as well could be that the rear tire I bought for $10 is a NOS Schwalbe Marathon Dureme. Given that I’ll be riding mostly city streets, I was thrilled by this find, but marathons aren’t renowned for their ride quality. The front is a less-new Bontrager something with some chunk.
The bars were $10 I think, ditto the shifter/brake combos and the rear tire.
The front tire was $5, along with the ergon rip-off Bontrager grips and the pedals, which sadly were the wrong thread size for my cranks. I’ll be bringing those back and trading them out for something with the correct threads.
The good folks at Express are very cool about stuff like that (and cool about pretty much everything, in my experience, whether you know stuff about bikes or nothing at all). Their used parts exchange policy is laid out pretty clearly on the bottom of the receipt, too.
I don’t mean to suggest that you could have a brand new, freshly tuned bike for $87. I had the wheels laying around which would probably cost about $50, and the cable housing would set you back $20 or so, with bottle cages at $5-ish apiece. But even with those, you’d be sitting just north of $150 all-in for a ripping rig that nobody else could mistake for theirs.
And it’s not yet perfect. This winter, I’ll go through and fully service and grease the hubs, bottom bracket, and headset. That’ll take a little time sitting in front of the TV, re-watching My Lady Jane, trying to keep my girlfriend’s dog from absconding with my tube of bike grease. It could definitely use a wash, which I’ll do around then when I have it fully taken apart again. The old ferrules on the shifter cables fully corroded into their cable stops on the down tube. Maybe one day I’ll drill them out or lop the cable stops off entirely and braze on some new ones. Probably not. As is, they still accept my new cable housing.
I could dump a couple hundred more dollars into it without breaking a sweat. And I’m tempted to. New brakes. A flashier seatpost, stem, and bars. New saddle. Better grips. Matching tires.
The one thing I’m always itching to do is build a custom wheelset. On this bike, I’d love to throw some colored spokes (lime green to match the decals? or black with lime green nipples?) and black rims. I’d pop an SP dynamo hub in the front faster than you can sneeze in ragweed season, and I’d put a nice internally-geared hub in the back with a 1x setup up front. In cursory research, I’ve seen a belt drive you can put on bikes that don’t have split frames? Looks sick. Also looks to be around $500.
Those things aren’t what this bike is about. I wanted a bike I could ride to the store or a friend’s place. My other 3 bikes are high in both monetary and sentimental value. I wanted a donkey I could leave tied up outside the saloon without worrying if a band of rustlers was rolling through town.
I got what I was looking for.
Elliot DH 