What is real ?

I have a bike I am working on right now for the bike exchange. Here is what I know about it.

It is a Fuji road bike, the seat tube is 58 cm and the serial number is FJ 119399 which indicates the frame was built in October 1981 for the 82 model year. The frame came in weighing 5.25 lbs including the drive side bottom bracket cup and the top and bottom head set cups. The fork has chrome ends and a cast chromed crown with Fuji pantographed on it . The fork is stamped Ishiwata and it has forged Ishiwata ends with fender eyelets The frame has braze on’s for cables but not for a water bottle.

The frame has forged Suntour dropouts without an integrated derailleur hanger or adjusting screws. The wheels and cranks are not original.

The brakes are Dia Comp 500 g side pulls and the derailleurs are Suntour arx . The down tube shifters are Blue line.

I have been looking at old Fuji catalogue specs and can’t find anything that exactly matches the parts I have. Many of the different models share the same frame with different mixes of parts for different models. I have enough parts in inventory to build it up to a few different specs. Perhaps the closest spec. I found was for the Team Fuji. I would like to get a decal set for the bike and the team Fuji decals are available. I don’t want to misrepresent the bike though.

If I build the bike mostly to the catalogue spec can I legitimately decal it as a team Fuji? I will be using 700 c Araya rims and a Sugino GT crank, plus a different seat post, and saddle. I replaced the original black paint with A burgundy red which is not a stock color.

The bike is painted and looks great. I would really like to decal it too.

The suspicion that nothing is real, is the realisation that anything is possible.

And remember that you'll never really know a thing, only your relationship to it.

Not sure where that leaves us.

...no spoon.

Could be a Del Ray

Only the now.

The past is memory. The future is unknowable.

Breathe deep.

We Each only LIVE 5 minutes at a Time.

I’m pretty slow, takes me seven minutes.

As I have CRS, it seems that my buffer now over writes after 3 minutes. Ah, what was the OPs question?

Cycling solipsism. I sense the beginnings of a movement...

Many of us are spending too much time in isolation. Between covid and 24" of snow outside, my world is pretty small. There's a lot of living going on inside my head right now.

Since it has not yet been said, I will take this opportunity "Steel is Real"
As far as a 1981 Fuji, another I saw was a handmade lugged steel triple-butted Valite frame.
bianchigirl maybe able to help as another of his prior posts noted:

Here is some info on Valite. Apparently it is between HiTen, Mangaloy and ChrMoly. Fuji made tones of bikes with it in various buttings https://classicfuji.com/1982_04_Information3_Page.htm

Thank you all for the above.

So, I take it that no one is going to complain if I decal this bike and sell it as a Team Fuji and list it on E Bay for $1000.

and when the E Bay buyer complains that it can't be a Team because the color is wrong or it weighs half a pound more than the catalogue weight I can refer them to your hearty endorsements here on the worlds most authoritative forum?

On a more prosaic note, Anyone care to opine on the Ishiwata fork? Does that indicate anything? Nowhere in the catalogue does it say anything about Ishiwata.

"Steel is real".

Be forewarned. I posted awhile back about painting a thoroughly trashed '85 Raleigh Grand Prix with a 1971 Grand Prix paint scheme and decals as a tribute to my first adult bike, a 1971 Grand Prix. I loved the paint and graphics but let's be honest, those old GP's left a lot to be desired. I was basically accused of deception and potential fraud by more than one member here as I would be representing it as something it wasn't. Yeah, disguising a nice quality bike as an older far lower quality bike with the same name is clearly a devious plot. No one would ever suspect there was a better bike hiding under that metallic red paint. Nobody was upset about me potentially "devaluing" the higher end '85 though.

Are you looking at the right catalogs? Could it be a Canadian bike? or even a Japanese market bike brought back by some Sailor? San Francisco was a regular port of call for the USS Eldridge

The gathering gloom. Watch lights fade from every room. Bedsitter people look back and lament. Another day's useless energy spent.

capnjonny-
Don't quote me to your $1,000 customer but I recall that Ishiwata drew the Valite tubing for Fuji so an Ishiwata fork would seem legit.

ISHIWATA.................

Question 1: Why are there no photos?

Question 2: Could we get pictures, please?

Your comment on braze-ons for cables was vague, so after a little thinking, without pictures, you would have to be saying that there are down tube cable stop braze-ons, not down tube shifter braze-ons. Water bottle boss braze-ons--as far as I have seen on many a bike--were always available (or a feature) before down tube shifter braze-ons were. So that clears up the confusion and now positions the bike lower down in the ranks (in the middle) and more of a sport touring/touring type model (eyelets). Chrome keeps the rank off the bottom of the barrel...

The bike may have original paint, or it may be a repaint. There are non-original components on that bike as they are from different years/eras. As with any vintage bike (let alone any bike ever), components can be a clue, but aren't gospel. It takes less than five minutes after a new bike sale to swap something out and render it non-original. Give that this bike has had a 38 year head start on things, we have to go by other clues.

The lowest end model to have both a chrome fork crown and fork ends/socks would be the Royale II (for 1982) and the S-12-S (for 1981), but it has water bottle braze-ons and no cable stop braze-ons. (no water bottle braze-ons means low end, so I aimed for there)

At the end of the day, we have incongruencies, and they can only be aided by photos. Maybe that fork isn't real. Maybe the cable stops were brazed-on after the fact, and then the bike was repainted. Many things could have happened in 38 years.

The date of the bike (October 1981 aka a 1982 build/model) is accurate. No need to consult T-mar for that. We just need photos to help sort things out--the rest of us have eyes and a brain, too, and are able to look at a catalog.

Hey folks,
Glad you all came to the party.
I admit I need to post pictures. I will try to take close ups of al the details.
At the moment I am at the very final stage of the restoration. Everything is done except installing the front derailleur and the down tube levers. I spent hours today getting the crank and rear wheel to play nice. I had stretched the rear drop outs from 120 to 128 mm and had a nice set of Arya 700 c wheels with an 8 spd cassette that seemed to fit nicely with just a nudge of the stays . I couldn't adjust he Cyclone rear derailleur enough to go past the 6th cog with the 130 mm spacing so I swapped it another wheel with a 7 speed cassette. That fit better. Then I installed the Sugino GT crank and it was way too far out from the bottom bracket cup. I dug into my stash of spindles and found a shorter one. That moved the crank in some but not enough. That is when I decided to add the third chainring . I had intended to use it as a double. with the inner ring installed the crank fit the frame and the chain line problem was solved. I hadn't thought about it but I guess double and triple cranks are different in their offset.

Anyway, I will take some pics tomorrow and post them. I have gotten all my info so far here https://classicfuji.posthaven.com/archive .

If you were keeping it for yourself, do whatever the heck you want. Since your intent is to pass it on, however, don't try and pass it off as something it isn't. If you have two identical bikes in exact same condition but one is a clone, the clone is worth less. You may be honest and tell potential buyers the backstory and they would expect a certain price break for a "clone" over an original but what about the next time the bike changes hands? At some point the clone gets sold as an original and some buyer pays more than they should have. This has been a problem in car world for decades. Its also been an issue with bikes, and bikes are more easily cloned and that's one reason original paint and decals are so valued.

here are the photos of the 82 Fuji I just finished. I decided to order a downtube wrap decal and leave it at that . No model designation

and here are the rest of the photos

I say whatever it is, you did a great job with it.

Best I can come up with is a 1982 Del Rey frame with a 1982 Royalle II or better fork. All in a non-original--but very nice--color. Being a Fuji, it will ride better than its rank suggests, which is to say, very nicely. And at just over 23 lbs, it's decently light as well. Thanks for the photos!