Hi all,

Just thought I'd quickly show you a bike I restored for my fiance. Being quite eagle-eyed, she saw it on the side of the road during a vergeside rubbish collection.

We put it in the back of the car and I promised to restore it for her. It took a couple of months and donor parts from around 8 other bikes and I think it came up great!

All up we spent less than half of the cost of an entry-level road bike.

The frame is an early 80's Seiko step through which had stem shifters and safety levers on it when we found it. The frame is a Tamaguchi sports frame, and has Tange Hi-Tensile tubing and althought probably a cheaper bike when new the frame was very light and well made, and the entire bike now is about 10.5kg.

It now has late 80's Shimano 105 derailleur's, Araya alloy rims on Suntour Sprint and Shimano Exage hubs, Dia-Compe Gran Sport levers, Dia-Compe 500 brakes, Champion alloy bars, SunRace indexed DT shifters, Shimano BioPace Sport LX cranks and runs a 13-26 cassette.

Here are some before and after pictures!

As it was found:



After stripping with a wire wheel on the tubes and sandblasting on the fork and lugs:



After powdercoating in Lemon Yellow:



105 derailleurs ready to go on:



Drilled and tapped the rear drop outs to accept an adaptor claw to run a modern derailleur without an integrated claw:



Drilled and tapped the bottom bracket for a cable guide so I could run the shifter cables under the bottom bracket:



The 7 speed sequenced down tube shifters came from eBay, you can also see the gold pinstriping I added to break up all the yellow:



All done:



The only thing I'm not happy with is the seat having those grey panels on it. I'd like an all white seat, but she's happy with the bike so that's what matters. We're going to put white wall tyres on it later and I will probably change the brakes for double pivot callipers aswell.

Hope you like it,

Ben