Well hello guys. I've poked my head in here to look at bike porn once or two, but never payed much attention to the Classic and Vintage section - until now. Tomorrow morning, I'm having what is reported to be a Miyata Pro frame delivered from craigslist. I'm paying 50 bucks for it, which might be kind of high, but I bought it mostly because I liked the paint job, so whatever.

I tried looking up this bike in some Miyata catalogs to determine vintage and find more information, but could not find much. Although I am beginning to doubt that this is a Pro Miyata. It's a nice little mint(or maybe celeste, I don't know) and chrome number, which does not seem to appear anywhere in the 81-86 Miyata catalogs. I saw a 310 that was "cream teal" and silver, but this looks different. So if it is a Pro, I'm guessing the paint is not original, which is fine by me.

The other thing that makes me think it might not be a Pro is that it looks like it has a badge on the seat tube that looks like it says "Made with [something - I assume Hi-Tensile] 1024". It's difficult to make out in the shoddy pictures posted, so I guess I'll know more tomorrow.

Anyway, the pictures:




Can anybody provide more information based on these? I'm not really interested in doing a restoration. If it ends up being a nice frame, I will probably build it up with a NOS/light used Ultegra 9sp with either downtube or bar end shifters. If it's a lower end frame, I might turn it into a fixed gear or single speed.

And finally, to be frivolous: should I go with white saddle/bar tape or black? I think white would look great, but I fear it would get dirty and dingy fast, and have no idea what saddle I would use. Otherwise with black I could put a B17 or Team Pro on there, as I love the B17 on my LHT and be good to go.