Kommisar89

You know these things are all relative. Since we're talking bicycles here and the general populace doesn't care much about bicycles, you can pretty well expect to be left along to do what you want with your bike. Doesn't mean it isn't a sin. On the other hand, if you had bought a house in an historic part of town you might find yourself seriously contrained by regulations governing the restoration of historical properties. I remember reading somewhere that the greatest destruction wrought on the treasures of antiquity were not by fires, storms, wars or barbarian invasions but rather by regular people in later centuries to whom the old treasures were just old buildings and old statues that could be torn down and their constituant parts used for new contruction. Interestingly, I was just reading a Wiki article on the "General Lee" of Dukes of Hazard fame and it stated that 256 separate Dodge Chargers were used, abused, and destroyed in the making of the TV show and that by the end of the series they were reusing old scenes of the General Lee jumping or filming the scenes with scale models because vintage Chargers had become too expensive and hard to find.

My attitude would be something like this: if you need to make reversable modifications to make the bike rideable then by all means do so. On the other hand, if your uncle gave you his 60's Cinelli and all you want is a hipster fixie, maybe your best approach would be to sell the Cinelli and buy a bike more suitable to your purposes.