miamijim

It was a mid 80's 620 frameset with a dual position rear brake bridge. Lower hole for 700's upper for 27's.

cudak888 

No pictures? Shame.

-Kurt

scozim 

Did it look like a factory thing or something done later by a framebuilder?

cudak888 

If the former, JohnDThompson might know something of it.

-Kurt

EjustE

I am pretty sure that it is not a factory feature. The 620 was made only 3 years (1983-85) and all 3 years used 27 inch wheels. Maybe the owner added that later to use with 700c wheels, for convenience and better tire selection. On second thought, it has to be an '83 because the other 2 years it used canti brakes.

miamijim

My bad.... Trek 610 and it looked very factory to me. The big is actually decent, Brooks saddle, Campy NR seatpost, Specialized sealed bearing hubs, Stronglight roller bearing headset, everything else is 600EX and minimal rust speckling.

cudak888 

Looks like the point of using 27's is lost with your clearance being taken up by that lower bolt.

Is there anything that didn't get spraybombed on that thing?

-Kurt

RobE30

Hmmm.... Interesting bike Jim, very interesting

miamijim

I hear 'ya on the 27's but it appeared to have adequete clearance. 15 minutes w/ a can of paint stripper and it'll look good. Honestly, it looks much better in person.

EjustE

the 610 is a totally different beast from the 620 (other than the 531 frame). I am 99% sure that this is an '84. Factory spec'd with 27 inch rims. Again, I suspect that this is a later user modification. 6207 was spec'd with this bike, so that is correct, as was spec'd with the Maillard Helicomatic freewheel (be glad that this one does not have it) ... That is a 6207 brake, but the quick release lever is gone. To show you what I mean this is a pair of 6207 brakes (not the extra special gios blue variety) :



(also looks like the shoes were replaced at some point)

JunkYardBike

He made a visit to our valuations subforum recently: https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...a-home-for-her

EjustE

Darn, I couldn't put one plus one together on this one

miamijim, do you have any plans for those handlebars? I'd trade you a pair of 410mm alloy anatomical Sakae CT if you are interested...

Charles Wahl

Mebbe it was part of a Blue Man Group performance.

Why would one need to go back and forth between 27“ and 700C wheels? Choose one and ride on!

luker

I rode with a guy that rode that bike, for several years. I know the back end of that blue 610 as well as anything, and it didn't have a dual position brake mount. Cool idea, though.

cudak888 

I'm figuring someone brazed on the extension in order to use 700C's permenantly, leaving the second hole purely out of laziness or sloppiness.

Granted, it looks as if very little damage was done (or this fellow did a heck of a job matching the paint). The whole spraybomb job is a disaster though.

I'd probably give it a shot myself if he was selling it for $50, but I know I'd regret it later. I dislike Treks in the first place; I'd end up flipping it. If I wanted one, there's a fellow selling a nice semi-complete 410 and an equally sharp 670 frameset locally for the same price this fellow wants for his rattlecan handiwork.

-Kurt

Sixty Fiver

Kurt - Why don't you like Treks ?

Those early handbuilt frames are a nice as any frame out there and the workmanship tends to be far better and more consistent on lets say... vintage Raleighs.



I have had quite a few of these pass through my hands and it was only because they were all the wrong size... the folks I gave them to were really happy and say these are the nicest bikes they have ever owned.

One was so happy he brought me a 1954 Raleigh Sports which is going on it's maiden voyage tomorrow.

cudak888 

Treks look great, and ride like crap.
Raleighs look like crap, and ride great.

I know I'm being a bit over-general (face it, I did the above more for laughs than anything else), but a few forum searches should bring up my full opinion of Treks, based on my 1981 610 and 1982 720/728. I'd have a bit more to say if it wasn't 1:41 AM over here. Dull and dead pretty much sum up the ride characteristics of each.

I will, however, say that I'd give anything to have the opportunity to run 10 to 20 pre-'85 Trek frames (with full Wisconsin frames, not the Japanese rear triangles) through an X-ray machine. I'll bet that a lot of those nice shorelines are as a result of insufficient brass penetration, especially on the brake bridges, which I've noted are prone to failure.

No offense to JohnDThompson intended.

-Kurt

EjustE

and it made it way from Idaho to South Florida? Pretty amazing

Mr IGH

Back in the day, people rode wire-ons and sew-ups on the same bike. 700C wasn't universal for wire-ons (in fact, rare until the early 80s), if your bike came with nice 27" wheels you might just have ridden them weekdays and your sew-up wheels on weekends. Just so ya know how things worked before brake cables where hidden

Mr IGH

No worse than the 70's Paramounts...I saw the 8 year warrenty backlog in 80-82 up close, there was some ugly brazing and mis-matched tubeset coming from the UAW workers, that's why they shut it down and moved out of state...it was beyond hope.

cudak888 

Chicago or Don Mainland frames? I'd bet the former. My '61 is unquestionably a Chicago machine (Mainland hadn't been contracted yet at that time), while my Superior is equally known to be a Don Mainland frame. If the craftsmanship between Chicago and Mainland remained on par with my two reference points, one can quickly tell a Mainland frameset from the Chicago work. If look squarely at the Chicago frames, the off-and-on sloppiness is apparent.

Anyone mention that some Columbus bits worked their way onto the supposedly all-531 Superiors?

-Kurt

Mr IGH

Whatever was in the backlog, Schwinn didn't do any warrenty work for several years through the early eighties. I worked at the shop that cleared all the warrenty backlog while Schwinn moved production the Waterford.

Most 70's era frames have their bad examples, Masi, Colango, Bob Jackson, Raleigh, etc. I remember when Raleigh released 753 tubing and wouldn't sell it until they trained the builder in a brand new brazing technique...silver It's very difficult to have complete brazing penetration when brass is used, esp in the BB.

luker

sorry for the lax grammer: "I rode with a guy that rode that model of bike..." Would have been clearer.

I did buy one from Florida a few years ago, though.