auchencrow

In the course of prepping bikes for sale or to keep, I have accumulated many cheesy gel saddles or saddles with scuffed covers, boxes of kickstands, buckets of reflectors, and piles of 27" steel wheels, dork disks and other such goodies.

- What do you do with your junk?

ColonelJLloyd 

I keep a close eye on it these days but use it as often as I can. It's gotten me in trouble a time or two and I'm a married man with a lovely wife.

A saddle with a decent shape can be recovered easily and at little expense. They would do well on the bikes you put up for sale.

Put an ad on CL for the gel saddles. There are lots of people out there who think that's what they need. Just give them away.

Same for the reflectors. I've seen people use them to make pieces of outdoor art.

Recycle the steel wheels, I suppose. Thankfully I haven't had too many to deal with.

septacycles

Currently it resides in boxes under my work bench... some times I find I have parts I need in the junk box...

A few times a year I clean it out... sell what I can, give stuff away, donate to my local bike coop, recycle some, and last resort trash the rest...

Probably worthy of a new thread but ColonelJLloyd... how do you go about recovering saddles? I'm not sure it would be worth my time or effort but I'm curios.

+1000... got to keep the wife happy

+1... I've give lots or trashed tubes, chains, and random bike parts to artists... one guys play was to do an art / performance piece where he wraps a nake women in rusted bike chains and old tubes... I didn't see finished but happy to have the parts go toward the cause.

randyjawa 

I have way too much stuff to store and frequently give bikes, wheels and components to Bicycles for Humanity. My guess is that there is a bicycle co-op or charitable organization that would love to have the stuff you have little or no need for and even less space to store it in.

Aluminum junk I save up in a big garbage can and, when the can is full, its off to the scrap metal yard. Easy to make a few bucks that way.

The rest is still stuffed into The Old Shed.

ColonelJLloyd 

Oh, man! You missed it? Awesome thread started by the talented THEJAPINO. My LBS owner bought four FULL sides of leather at a garage sale the other day. It's a touch thick, but I think I can make it work. Pardon me for the derailment, Auchen. Continue discussing your junk.

Michael Angelo 

I give it to Kurt

Zaphod Beeblebrox 

Twice Yearly Swap meet.

I bring my junk and convert what I can to cash. Whatever doesn't sell gets donated to whichever bike co-op comes by first.

Fenway

Well if you happen to have spare parts for Raleigh brakes (really just the notched washers to hold the backs of the springs against the frames) or brake levers themselves I'd be happy to take those off your hands.....

I'm sure lots of COOPs would love the wheels too.

sailorbenjamin

I put it in a flat rate box and send it to some other C+V guy.

khatfull

The cartoon bubble on that isn't very pretty...

r0ckh0und 

The steel wheels and junk parts. I give to a local scrapper that lets me have anything I want from his yard. If they have hi flange hubs I cut them out and save them. The trashed alloy rims I take to the scrapper for cash. I have several step thru frames piling up that I am still undecided as to their demise.

cycleheimer

Murphy's Law

That hard to find part you will need tomorrow is the one you threw out 2 weeks ago.

cudak888 

I give it to Mike.

-Kurt

55/Rad

I keep it in my pants.

I can't believe I was the first to post this.

wrk101

Good saddles I keep. I buy a lot of bikes that need work, pretty much all of them. The first thing to go is the saddle, followed by pedals. The plush saddles go on recreational level bikes. I commonly run out of pedals and buy basic platform pedals (just got several in as part of my Performance Bike order). I still have some basic LBS branded MTB frames to build up. So when I run out of projects, I'll build one up just to consume leftovers. And some parts go back onto donors, which I then donate. I donate several bikes a year.

I also recently started selling donor bike carcasses, err, I mean, frame sets. At the right price, they go, typically in the $25 to $50 range.

WNG

Lotta junk in my trunk. There I said it.

Most of my junk pile stayed behind when I moved, so the pile begins anew. Not a lot of useless junk at the moment. All the stuff I deem to have utility is stockpiled in cardboard boxes by category. Or course to the casual observer, it's all useless junk.

-holiday76

I sell it on ebay.

auchencrow

It took me a long time to figure out what the Colonel was talking about, but I finally got it.
- I am surprised no one else suggested pushing a box or two into the metal detector at the airport.
That would keep mouths agape and eyes bugged out for a very long time, judging from the reaction I got from trying to carry a tube-amplifier onboard.

But there are a lot of really good suggestions here.

jeepr

It's all sorted into bins and gets re-cycled into repairs. I end up giving a lot of it away to kids and people who talk nice to me..

bikemanbob

When I sell a bike, I give the potential buyer an opportunity to trade the old uncomfortable saddle for a nice, comfortable gel seat. Surprising it works. I was able to keep a Selle Italia saddle recently by offering a comfort seat. It now sits on my Trek 600.

auchencrow

Trade your gel saddles for leather ones. Why didn't I think of that?

robtown

I leave the steel wheels on flip bikes. I toss bad saddles, tires, pie plates, pedals, and sometimes kickstands. For junk bikes that I dismantle for parts I sell the steel wheels on Craigslist cheap $10 - $20. I've found the bikes are worth more (for less work) if I sell the frame to fixie crowd and reuse or sell the parts. Once or twice I've sold miscellaneous lots of tires in small lots. The tires were mismatched and new tires always improve sale price.

I recently bought out another enthusiasts bike stash and ended up donating 30% or more of it to the bike coop. I do keep some lower end but serviceable parts (e.g. claw connected RD) for repairs to flip bikes. My collection of bottle holders is getting a bit large. I find the bikes look better w/o them and offering one for free sometimes makes the buyer feel he's gotten a deal.

JunkYardBike

Isn't that illegal?

khatfull

Only on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Drillium Dude 

Pack it in a Flat Rate box and wait for the next "Box 'o Crap" game

In fact, I have a box-full right now just waiting to unload on some unsuspecting BFer.

DD