Originally Posted by
lamakila123
While I trust myself enough to build up a bike from a box, I'm not good enough to build a bike up from scratch, let alone that I dont have any tools. as far as assembly goes, thats why I choose the lightning 1200 as a factored in $50 for build up from my LBS.
Fair enough. Building a bike from a frame up can be fairly challenging, and expensive unless you can do everything yourself.
As for your budget, you can work with $500. You have two main directions you can go.
Old bike: For example, an 80's bianchi or something for $100-200, buy a 9/10 speed rear wheel or wheelset ($50-200?) Sora or tiagra shifters, other random parts... Or keep the downtube shifters and save a bunch of money you can put towards higher end vintage parts... These are the routes I've taken with my bikes and I have less than $500 into either.
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...anchi+finished
And the other direction you could take is to buy the cheapest but newer bike you can find, like from BD or a used allez from craigslist, or something like that.
Basically you can have an old bike with 100% solid components or a new-ish lower end bike. The higher end vintage bike will most likely be lighter and more serviceable, but will look "old" and possibly have downtube shifters.