NMBuff

I'm going to look at this bike tomorrow after work. He says it's a mid-90s Trek 2000, but Trek didn't make the Trek 2000 in the mid 90s (although Sheldon Brown has a reference to it). Is it a good deal? Looks to be. The cassette looks nasty and I'll probably have to overhaul the bike.


https://albuquerque.craigslist.org/bik/3845688386.html

PatTheSlat 

In my market that would have been gone within an hour of being posted, get there as soon as possible and hope that no one offers the seller more money in the meantime.

NMBuff

I replied within 15 minutes of him posting (he posted at 8pm). Going to check it out tomorrow. Looks like a gem of a bike.

wrk101

Going to check tomorrow = look out for a scooper

Going to check immediately is always the safe choice.

Hopefully it will be there.

+1 All it takes is for someone to ask MORE than selling price, ie., "I know you have a guy coming tomorrow, but I am available now, I can give you $200, and what if the other guy backs out?" This happens all the time on C/L. And have you really completed the deal? A couple of times a week we get a poster here, I offered the seller $xxx for this bike, and I am going to get it. What do you think? Most of the time, buyers back out. As a frequent C/L seller, a buyer today with cash trumps the person coming tomorrow.

There are no referees on C/L. No one to make sure you were first in line, so you get first "dibs". Its the wild west.

NMBuff

Nah, I get it. But he posted it at at 9pm last night. I would have bought it then, but he said he would have time today. :/

NMBuff

Best advice EVER given on this site. Messaged the guy this morning and told him I was definitely interested, but he said there was one guy interested in front of me. Gave him my work # (can't have cell there) and told him I'd buy unseen for $150 and would pay $200 if there weren't any problems with the frame.

He calls me about 10:30am or so and tells me the first guy backed out (didn't want to pony up $200). I worked around his schedule and showed up about 2:30 or so. The bike is WONDERFUL. It needs a good cleaning and I'll have to do some minor things like gear the bearings. The frame has a big nick near the headtube and there's a scratch. No dents or cracks though.

There's also no welds. He said they used some thermal casting. The frame looks spectacular because of this. I wonder why this isn't done anymore. Does anyone know why or anything about this process?

The bike rides like a dream. I'm going to probably put a new longer quill in it, but that's about it.

wrk101

Yes, Trek used bonded aluminum frame technology for a while (glued). They work fine. That era has passed, so alloy frames are now made differently.

Check the vintage Trek site out for details. There was an article there from the late 1980s/early 1990s about Trek's aluminum frame building.


https://www.vintage-trek.com/images/t...mFacts1987.pdf

And here is a listing of models/colors by year. While not perfect, this list is VERY useful.

https://www.vintage-trek.com/model_numbers1.htm


Perfect message by the way. Well done.

FastJake

Yes, as wrk101 said the frame is glued together at the joints. This is before Trek figured out how to weld aluminum. It was a good process and they seem to be very durable frames. But the process limited to simple, round tubes. Now they are using oversized specially shaped (in many cases ovalized) tubes that are lighter and stiffer than the ones used on the old bonded bikes. I'm guessing that welding is also cheaper now that they can do a good job of it.

The bonding process also allowed manufacturers to use whatever combination of materials they wanted. For example, the early carbon frames had three main tubes of carbon fiber and the rest aluminum. Of course now they are building some really amazing one-piece frames out of carbon that are way lighter and stiffer than the old bonded ones. Raleigh also used the bonding process in their Technium frames to build with steel, aluminum, and also carbon I think. There are still a ton of Techniums out there.

Secret Squirrel

I remember the trek 2000 when I worked in the bike shop. We had the dura ace versions and it was state of the art at the time. The glue was a similar to the bador adhesive used by vitus and élan.