Actually not me..but ddd...I found the ad on sf bay area craigslist. Beautiful white Eisentraut complete bike with a mix of some pretty nice parts. The owner wanted a thousand but I emailed him several times and got him down to 500.00. I figured he needed the cash by his ad. By the time I got the deal going, I realized it was too big for me to drive the 100 miles to San Fran. so I passed it on to my friend in Auburn and he braved the traffic to pick it up.

Pictures or it never happened!

I'm your friend in Seattle, please find me a $500 Eisentraut as described above. Even without pics. 59 - 61cm. Thanks.

they do pop up here every once in a while (as one might suspect) .. I saw one for $400 !!$!! once but was too slow. otherwise they hover in the 900-1500 range usually.

I assume you mean this one?

If that is the one then it looks like a killer deal. I admire the OP's gall in actually negotiating the price down by 50% without even visiting. When I see a bike that is 100% over what I want to pay, I don't even both with it since I know that negotiating that far is an impossible task.

Now tell me, why is it that 90% of craigslist posters can't seem to take a photo without either turning off all the lights first, or shaking the @#$#%@!! camera, or both?

...or resting it with the beautiful top tube against the sharpest corner in the house...

I'd pay $500 for the frameset if it squared up enough in person. Nice grab. I've seen one Eisentraut, very nice. A guy was riding it on F2G2 this past summer (New England gravel ride with a bit of climbing). Good guy, good bike. Cool to see it in the woods and roads of the Berkshires.

Jetboy, were you watching that one too?

That was one helluva drive going into the Mission, navigating through all of the "NO TURNS" intersections and finding parking with all these bicycles and streetcars whizzing past. I had my old glasses on as well, and finally lost my directions sheet (got buried alongside my wallet). I had to recall the address from memory, and the room number, which I actually managed to do under such stressful conditions and after driving three hours in the dark already.
One of the stores I walked into was a marijuana dispensary, I just wanted directions (really), but they kicked my a$$ right out because I didn't have a card.
Then I went into a hotel with a similar street number and the toothless guy sitting behind the door starting laughing heartily when I asked if he could ring the room number. We (me and the guy) were actually both laughing our a$$es off as he tried to tell me "we don't ring no rooms here" (I think I had figured out by this time that it was most likely a prostitute-and-druggie hotel). Really funny, I mean we were both still laughing as I went back out to the street.
So turns out I was looking on the wrong street all this time, ran one block over and literally stumbled onto the exact right address by pure chance.

The seller was actually waiting there in the front hallway of this big apartment/hotel place and looked at me through the window, somehow knew who I was, and had the bike waiting.

The saddle and post were oddly missing, so I asked for a $50 reduction, but he said that he had put the saddle/post into another bike and it couldn't be removed. I offered to help (we were still down in the lobby with the 'traut only), but he said tht had been tried, and that he would un-bolt the saddle and give it to me without the Nitto post. Good enough I said and I paid him in full, he then walking me the two blocks out to my truck, which I felt lucky to even be able to find!

I'm the fourth owner now, but the bike's still in surprisingly low-mileage condition with some scratches only to the left fork leg. Paint is pearl white not gray/blue/whitish as pictured above.
There's no tubing sticker. Serial number suggests fiftieth-something bike made in April 1988, didn't know Eisentraut could have made so many! I guess they farmed out a big batch of their "Limited" model during that time to get such a high count of bikes for that month(?).

Components were the proverbial "dog's breakfast" of quality parts, with heavy leanings toward a "Rivndell-style" build. I will pretty much change every component 'cept the King headset.

Man, to have a bike made by one of the godfathers of American frame building...

That's a special bike!

good story, too. Makes the Mission sound so colorful (still) yet in a few more years people would be shocked to read of druggies and prostitutes in the Mission...
"really?! and they had to buy marijuana from some 'dispensary'?! How outre!"

I had a gray Rainbow just like that, well, mine was a 53cm.

I bought mine in 1991 but I think it was a 1989 or 1990.

Alas, I have no pictures of it.

It did break at the right seat stay and Albert had to repair it. Later, it broke at the head tube and instead of repairing it, he replaced it with a newer model Rainbow which wasn't quite as nice as my original but still, a very nice machine. I ended up selling it to a girl in my local club. I assume she still rides it.

Congrats. Great story. I spied that bike, too, but I'm already over-extended and it's not my size. Tempting at $1k, but a steal at $500. Enjoy!

My neighbors down the street--husband and wife--have four (!) Eisentrauts between them, all custom built for them, including a new lugged beauty Albert just finished around the holidays.

If I understand it, one might have to be an existing customer at this point to get a frame or work out of Albert(?). This I gleaned from a pod-cast featuring Albert himself.

Trsnrtr , did your frame have a very large number of miles on it when it failed? Hard usage?
I've had both a Merckx and a Windsor develop cracks at the back of the seattube lug, and in the Windsor's case it appeared that the lug was machined paper-thin where the bore of the bolt passed. The Merckx on the other hand appears to be starting to crack at the relief hole at the bottom of the clamping slot fwiw.

Since it didn't happen:

nice run! The mission still has a few streets like that. far less than before... but still a few my favorite is Capp st!

That is a Rainbow Traut. Eisentrauts 2nd venture to 'mass' produce a standard, non-custom bike. (The Limited was the first).

nice score.

[MENTION=185430]dddd[/MENTION]: does yours have the BB shell-integrated cable guides?

Here are a couple shots of the Limited I facilitated a few years ago. Note the spade cutouts.









DD

That is the one. I hope DDD post some other pics

I figure it this way....if the price is not a killer deal...I will not do the 100 mile or more drive to see it. I have quite a few sellers that really get offended sometimes by my "lowballing" but I can live with that if I get one killer deal once in a while. It happens more than one would think actually

Joe, I'll post some more photos in a few minutes and edit them into this post. THANKS for the tip-off and for your skilled negotiation, wow is all I can say.

Joe put me onto the Merckx EX Titanium that I got for $500 a few months back and that I posted. My first contact with that seller was after Joe had worked him over, and he really sounded like he wanted to ring Joe's neck. This guy was a 6'2" veteran, ex-pro BSA motorcycle racer and Ironman finisher, and as I recall his last offer (after the legit $500) was for $300 if Joe came right over so he could give Joe some "talking to". It took me some effort to calm him down and explain that I was ready to drive to Reno and pay the already-low $500 that Joe had negotiated earlier.

Drillium Dude, your frame looks like an earlier Custom 'Traut, mine's a production bike, albeit well-finished. The bb cable guiding is normal, under-the-bb routing with little ribs/grooves and loops, in other words it is ordinary. I'm glad that the bike didn't turn out to be a Limited, those were much lower cost frames with a lot less finishing. I found a couple of tiny "bug"-type defects in the paint, but the Imron looks good and shiny overall. Workmanship at the dropouts is also very clean.

I've suddenly learned so much about the Eisentraut bikes, especially his special Italian-derived geometry which is also reflected in the Nobilette frame that I rode today. Marc Nobillette was a student and employee of Albert Eisentraut and has said that Eisentraut was his greatest influence in bike building. Their geometry favors a very steep headtube for shorter wheelbase, steeper on the bigger frames as more weight on the front wheel supposedly lends stability. My 'Traut has a 73.5-degree seattube with a 75.2-degree headtube, while the top tube is of modest 57cm length for a 59cm frame. My 59cm Nobilette also has steep angles (just north of 74-degrees), with only a 56cm toptube, so there is "heavy" overlap between my foot and the front wheel. The Nobillette is quite stable at all speeds, surprisingly, perhaps in part because it has a 13cm stem extension. I am expecting my new 'Traut to handle similarly.

Anyone who is interested in how the high-end American road bike developed over the last 60 years should in my opinion read what is posted on the Classic Rendezvous site under Albert Eisentraut, particularly the 1987 article in Bicycling that featured American frame builders and which can be found linked on CR's site. The article is linked below:

pg_1

Congratulations! A beautiful bike and a piece of our cycling history.

I believe that Drillium Dude is correct that the bike he posted is one of the "Limited" bikes, an earlier Eisentraut production bike. They came with at least a couple different lug sets.

Thanks for posting the article by Owen Mulholland. On a sadder note we lost Owen, a fine writer and an avid cyclist, to cancer a few weeks ago.
Brent

Yep. I've owned 3 'trauts: two Limiteds and a Rainbow. SWEET bikes!

Still have the Rainbow, tho' it's awaiting a head tube transplant, thanks to a driver making an "improper right turn" 15 years ago.

And I'd LOVE to get my mitts on one of Albert's customs in my size (65 - 66cm)...

SP
OC, OR

My 63cm Rainbow has a 98cm (38.5") wheelbase, 74.5 head angle and 72 seat angle. Best-handling bike I've ridden I 50+ years at this game. I'd call the steering "telepathic": it always does EXACTLY what I want it to do. Nimble as all get-out and rock solid up to 50mph (never had the nerve to ride ANY bike faster than that!)

SP
OC, OR

That Limited model looks like a very good frame. I can't wait to get this Rainbow set up and out on the road, still figuring out what parts that I want to put on it!

Here's the photos I promised, can anyone identify the non-indexing Campagnolo touring derailer?

I've got the exact same Henry James fork crown on the first frame I built. Sweet bike!