Hey all, so, I've been lurking here. Really starting to get interested in trying to find some vintage bikes to see if I'm any good at restoring thrown out bicycles, to either resell later, or ride them myself.

Been reading http://www.mytenspeeds.com/My_TenSpeeds_1/ for a few days getting the gist of things.

I'm thinking I might start out sending out flyers in mailboxes to see if anyone in the area knows or has any vintage bikes... have any of you had any luck with this route? Also thinking of doing the 'ads' on the bulliton boards at the grocery stores, with the pull off name and number thing. Not sure I want to start browsing CL or ebay yet, since I don't want to get scammed or ripped off at this point. Garage sales are stopping here in central IL, so won't be able to do that till next year possibly.

Last weekend I drove to LeClaire IA and bought an old wooden rim from Mike Wolfe (American Pickers). They had to text him since he was away to see if he'd sell it. 25 bucks. It's pretty bent up, and has a break in the rim, but I don't care. Looks pretty sweet in the living room... haven't decided how to display it just yet... even with the wheel all bent, I still like it. I'm sure I got ripped off, but oh well, I can say I bought something from Mike :-)

Any suggestions on tools I'll need? I have a pair of bike cable cutters, a pedal wrench, shimano cog removal tool, various wrenches & allen wrenches... so yeah, I'm sure I'm missing a lot that I'll need. Probably a good truing stand and bike stand as well.

Any tips would greatly be appreciated! Like where to go for good priced, quality tools. Buy them all at once (big investment I'm guessing at first), or just buy as I need them? What happens if you buy a bike, and a component is shot and can't be restored? I doubt you can just go to some website and buy a 'new' replacement part!?

Thanks for any help you can give me! I'm excited about doing this.