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Old 12-15-11 | 04:16 PM
  #18  
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wrk101
Thrifty Bill
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Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 23,645
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From: Mans of NC & SW UT Desert

Bikes: 86 Katakura Silk, 87 Prologue X2, 88 Cimarron LE, 1975 Sekai 4000 Professional, 73 Paramount, plus more

Find a deal on a complete bike instead. The list of potential brands and models is huge. Even if you have your desired parts in hand, a complete bike as a minimum gives you parts you can resell to offset the cost of the project, and any oddball hardware you will have in hand, rather than needing to search for some obscure clamp or hanger. I've had bikes that I planned to rebuild, and ended up reusing the brake calipers (the ones I had in hand were the wrong reach), headset (for stack height) and so on. Depending on what you buy, the price of a frameset can approach the price of a complete bike.

Now if you find a sweet frameset for sale locally, jump on it. At least around here, framesets sell cheap locally (vs fleecebay). Local buyers want complete bikes, so framesets get ignored.

I am partial to Japanese bikes from the 198os. Lots of good ones, common part sizing, high quality at a reasonable price Several sport touring models come to mind.

I just finished a Bianchi Axis (may be made in Taiwan vs Japan) that meets a lot of your criteria. I just put 700x35 Panaracers on it. That would be the max on this frame. There are many others out there.



Last edited by wrk101; 12-15-11 at 04:27 PM.
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