Whenever I'm stripping down a bike, I keep a cardboard box full of everything I take off. For clunkers, it usually looks something like this:



But tonight I finished stripping down my Centurion Elite, and the box looks like this. Keep in mind, this is before I've cleaned any of it.



(Bonus points for anyone who knows what was originally in that box.)

Not a bad start. So why does a pretty decent mid-level bike sit on Craigslist for three weeks with an asking price under $100? This. This is why.



But, as they say, that'll buff right out.







One cool thing though, when I pulled the fork I got definitive evidence of the original frame color, confirming the identification as a 1979 Centurion Elite.



The fork is actually in relatively good shape, thus demonstrating that chrome does have some rust deterring capability.



Stripped down like this the frame weighs about 5.5 pounds, plus another 1.8 for the fork. Not light, but it's two pounds lighter than my Nishiki clunker from the 2020 Challenge.