bikemig 

It seems as if it was raining vintage Treks in Iowa this year.

First, I picked up a 1985 Trek 400 for my daughter. It was a garage queen and the parts and paint were both in near perfect shape.

Then I picked up a 1992 Trek 950. It has become my favorite commuter. The bike was no garage queen but paint job looked almost new with a few scratches. It is a blast to ride with 26 x 2.0 schwalbe supreme touring tires pumped up to 50 psi:

And then I picked up a frame, a 1984 Trek 610. It has reynolds 531 double butted main triangle and a reynolds chrome-moly fork and stays. The bike had its share of scratches but I found a model paint that was almost an exact match and the bike looks pretty good after some touch up and waxing.

I wanted to build the bike completely out of my parts bin and I almost succeeded, . The only part I bought for the bike was the suntour ratcheting down tube shifters which I picked up from my local bike shop. I couldn't resist as those are my favorite non-indexing shifters. Everything else came out of my parts bin.

Wheels:campy tipo hubs laced onto mavic MA-2 rims and DT spokes;
Crankset: an old school shimano 600 triple crank with 48-38-26 rings;
Derailleurs: suntour ratcheting downtube shifters, suntour XC sport 7000 rear derailleur; suntour xc limited front derailleur;
Brakes: single pivot shimano 105; cane creek brake levers;
Seatpost, saddle, bar, and stem: campy aero seatpost, avocet racing saddle, sakae bars, and SR stem;
Freewheels: 7 speed suntour winner pro, 13-28; and
Headset: stronglight B-10.

Enough of the wonky stuff. I took the bike on a 23 mile ride today. There is a MUP north of where I live that is my favorite bike ride. It runs along a river so there are great views, some rolling climbs, and a bit of rough stuff (some gravel and a lot of beat up pavement). The bike rode great. It basically disappeared beneath me which is all you can ask of a bike. I had forgotten how nicely suntour derailleurs shift on a nice crisp new suntour freewheel. The brakes did their job competently. The 700 x 30 IRC gumwall tires soaked up the bumps nicely and the MA-2 are still one of my favorite rims.

Here are some pics of the bike:

Chrome Molly 

The 610 looks awfully comfy, and a real mile eater as you concur based on your statement that it disappeared beneath you.

Our trek market in the Twin Cities wasn't very hot this year, so good to see these nice finds are still out there.

mstateglfr 

Today was a great day to get out and ride! Excellent fall weather.
The partner adventure sprint tri that I did yesterday kicked my tail and I was sore this morning, otherwise I'd have been out on the trails too.
Speaking of the tri- I got a few comments yesterday at the end since I rocked my 87 Miyata 912. Someone actually recognized that it had been marketed as a tri bike back in the day.

Little play on words, but with the Trek bikes and frames you've had and also picked up, you need the title of Des Moines' TrekKing.
Hopefully the weather is good in a couple weeks, we can meet up for a ride and I can see this 610 in person!

dailycommute

Nice looking 610 ride, like the triple. A co-worker has that same bike (but 24) and has built it out different ways but says always a comfortable ride. His was family inherited and has literally 30k miles or so on it but still looks great. I have been really enjoying the 930 similar to yours. Probably the smoothest rigid hardtail ridden, and saying alot for 23+-yo bike, I find it accelerates very fast.

Sounds like a great ride and reason for living, packing in all the road rides I can too with season rapidly fading. Lots of lunch rides on the 930, great conditions in the ME woods right now w/ beautiful colors.

bikemig 

I keep my eye out on the local CL market and it's not as bike like this come up very often. I was lucky to find the Trek 400 and 950 in such great shape and at very reasonable prices. These kinds of bikes almost never show up. I've seen very few vintage Trek road bikes show up in any case. The 610 frame came from a BF member earlier this year. I should give a shout out to @a3inverter who sold me the frame; he did a first class packing job.

I haven't quite figured out yet what I'm going to do about the triple crank. I love the crank but it is, as is common with older cranks, fairly narrow and doesn't play nicely with the triple front derailleur. I could look for a narrower front derailleur or I could look for a slightly more modern triple like a sugino xd 600. I have one sitting on a different bike and I may rob the triple off that bike. I hate breaking down old bikes to build up new old bikes, though, lol.

I'm thinking this bike will be my vintage entry into the Dairyland Dare next year. Not quite as cool as the bikes that @RobbieTunes, @Barretscv, and @Crankaddict have but I like it a lot.

Calling on @golden boy who has a yen for all things suntour even if he'll probably give me a hard time for not restoring my Trek 720 (yeah one of these days), .

old's'cool

I've successfully applied several non-triple specific FDs to triple cranksets. E.g., Shimano Altus, Suntour Cyclone, Shimano 600 (mid/late-80's vintage), and a generic Shimano FD that came on my 87 Miyata 312. So I suggest you try what you have in your stash before cannibalizing a complete bike or shelling out for a new/used FD.

bikemig 

Yeah, that's a good point. I'll look at what I have before I cannibalize a bike.

old's'cool

FYI, what I know don't work are late mid-late 80's: Suntour Superbe & Shimano 105. These do not have enough travel.
And generally any MTB-specific triple, that has the severely staggered cage, the lower plate of which tends to interfere with the middle chainring of a typical relatively closely spaced road combo, not to mention the inappropriate radius of the cage relative to the chainring radii.
The best options are the road touring specific triples of the 70s and 80s, which are quite rare, I gather. Other than that, my son's relatively late model Novarra Forza has a pretty workable index-ready Sora FD.

nesteel 

Nice scores bikemig. Raining Trek's must be a midwest thing this year. Managed to snag an 85 400 (refurb'ed an given to a family member) and a '79 930.
Hope the rest of your year goes as well as it has so far.

bikemig 

I took the 610 out for another long ride today. The weather has just been beautiful in central IA lately, The mornings are brisk but the temp gets up to the 60s by the afternoon and there is plenty of sunlight. This has to be one of the nicest falls I've seen in a while.

I'm still really impressed by how well the bike handles over different types of terrain. The 700 x 30c tires are pretty forgiving. I prefer indexing but when it comes to non-indexing systems, suntour, in my opinion, set the bar. I'm running a full suntour shifting group with a new winner freewheel and suntour derailleurs. Plus I'm excited by how well the touch up looks. The frame was pretty scratched up before I bought it.

bike_forever

I have a similar Trek setup for more casual riding.

bikemig 

Nice, they make fine riders.

Flog00 

How do the levers work for you?
Comfy?

bikemig 

I like the cane creek scr 5 brake levers a lot. They're really comfy and very well made. Plus they come in brown which just looks right on an old bike.

The Golden Boy 

You guys have trees in Iowa?

bikemig 

Trees and vintage treks; lately there appear to be a lot more of the latter than the former,

crank_addict

Wow- shazam and an fleet of classic Treks! They all look so clean.

Might need your advice on what to build out for an incoming shipment 520 frame and fork. Thinking it lower end tubing?? Kind of funny because don't have much details on it but believe has canti- brake bosses. Heck I don't even know the year, but was told it needs paint, no pictures either...lol. I'm hoping to have enough parts mix on hand and figure something out, perhaps a triple, 1/2 step gearing.

The Golden Boy 

Oooh! Can I play? I'm THE guy to tell people to put top of the line components on mid-level frames!