Originally Posted by
Thulsadoom
I'm thinking just sell it to someone who will build it the way they want.
Yup.
A bit over a decade ago there was a particular bike I wanted to buy, not sold in USA and I was not too interested in paying a lot in customs duty to import it from Europe. Then one popped up on Ebay, it was in Canada. And it was my exact size. I wanted the frame but it had a bunch of parts on it that I was not interested in, so I did not bid. But watched to see what it sold for. Apparently nobody else wanted that mix of parts, nobody bid. I e-mailed the owner to see if he was interested in selling the frame and fork. The end of that story is that I bought the frame and fork from him, have done several tours on it, and I likely will do more on it.
This Trek, not sure if that is still a USA made one or one that was welded in Taiwan, but those old Treks can be sought after for commuting, touring, fixies, etc. At that time I think that was the only steel bike that Trek sold, a friend of mine did not like his aluminum bike, so he bought a 520 to get a steel bike, would have been about that point in time.