You honor my memory, sir.

I wish I had time to play these games, again. That bike and that thread turned out to be a lot of fun

Is that Granny's ice cream in your avatar?

I'd test that with a geiger counter.

The original Magna sticker.

Yes! I was just thinking about this and wondering when it was happening again, will get in the shed tomorrow and sort some possibilities.
This thread is always a lot of fun

I liked your entry too.

Those trash bikes are a lot of pressure to live down to. The Redline reveal was imperfection incarnate.

The two biggest factors are starting quality of the bike and how much it has been neglected.

A bottom end bike will tend to be garbage after 25 years even if it wasn't neglected. A nicer bike will require severe neglect to reach the same level of un-rideability.

If you look at previous year's entries in this contest, I think the more memorable bikes are ones where there was a high pain level at some point. The bike was difficult to get, or frustrating to work on, or a struggle to get dialed in, or embarrassing/uncomfortable to ride.

The idea is cheap fun. Sometimes the cheapness is the fun, and sometimes the fun is cheap. It is a silly little thing to make the days not blend as much and it keeps us from shooting up park grease behind the lbs dumpsters.

it actually promotes it...

10 more miles today with 500ft or so of climbing. I do not enjoy hills on this bike. Raising my seat post a tiny bit helped a lot. Maybe I'll care enough to remove the stem spacers but I doubt it. How do I grease a bike? the rolling resistance garbage, it barely accelerates down hills on it's own.


Obligatory red barn shot


lake

Total = 24 miles

Had to make a stem change back to the original stem just to much wiggle with the slight difference in bars on the Stone Grinder with this sorted out and the BB rebuilt I'm pretty much done and gained back $15 in budget for the nice stem couldn't use so I'm at about $85 total so I may just have enough to put a rear shifter on the bike figure I have a older rough looking but good deore thumb shifter that I can say has $15 or so FMV so I just may get this build done with a fully good working bike with brakes and gears on budget that meets pretty much all the criteria of a clunker challenge bike is it semi garbage yes is it safe and good to ride yes is it all vintage used yes only thing missing is a big ugly dork disk. Took a nice short ride to the library to volunteer and sell some books so I'm 20 miles in and have some budget left and 80miles to go.

I've read in a couple places that you can't make up for missed training so I cut my ride short to work on the Impact Pro. Picked up some MTB brake cables at REI for $6, and some shift housing at Safety Cycles for $6. 10m of brake cable housing arrived in the post and I used a little more than a meter for $5. My DIY treadless adapter set me back $9. With the adapter, I lost the front brake cable hanger so I kludged one that long ago lost its key and with a piece of rubber shim jammed in with a screwdriver without stabbing myself too badly for $5. I saw used on eBay Ritchey stems looking nicer than mine for $15 and used Oxford bars sell for $50. Both the stem and bars came from the parts bin. The saddle belongs in the trash (I use it to hammer stuck seat posts) $1.
$104 total so far with the initial 2 bikes for 20 bucks and I sold the Roadmaster for 30.


Crazy long front center. Maybe I'll flip the bars.

Cables need work. The bars look cool.

Kinda Diggin the Saddle.

Exage 300 LX is ok?

I like the front brake cable treatment.

I rode it around the block and at first the front end felt odd but I quickly got the hang of it. I think the Exage 300 LX is an ok group even though the the front derailleur is very clunky at the moment and hesitates to down shift. After Eroica, this Impact Pro will be my commuter and within a week I'll have my 100 miles.

This is an important distinction. The bike I rode in last year's edition had been sitting out in the elements, not even locked, on a bike rack for ten years. It was nothing special to begin with but not bad -- a mid-level Takara -- but after I cleaned it up it was a pretty decent bike, definitely not garbage.

I thought you guys might like this photo of what I think is a 1987 Schwinn SuperSport I bought at a yard-sale for ten-dollars. It had been stored leaning against the side of a garage under a sort of car-port for quite a while so it needed some lube and cleaning. I am sorry there is no big story with refurbishing it, all I had to do was put some tires on it that would hold air, a new chain, and I have been riding it. It has a few rust spots I should take care of, but since I will be storing it indoors, it should not deteriorate any further. It really handles great, it is light, and I bought it because it was a good size for me.

Making some headway on the build. I've verified the the wheels are "true enough" - which is a bit of a challenge for me to accept, as they aren't quite what I'd bring them to if I were building them new, but a broken spoke could jeopardize the entire affair.

Dealing with something that's "older" (upon doing a bit of research, I am actually thinking the 30s - 40s date it was sold as may be accurate after all), introduces a few challenges. My stash is by no means immense, but I have just enough stuff to have
no difficulty misplacing things. The storage isn't completely random, but I had to resort to pictures to make sure I was using the correct crank arms, and then I had to find the proper bottom bracket, and then the cups, and then realized that I had not, in fact selected the proper bottom bracket, and then having to break out industrial strength degreaser because special grease that bonds to steel was used, and then finding the proper cotter pins - and after that the nuts to retain them...

Still have a couple days' worth of work (at Z speed) to complete it. My only vise is out in the shed, and it has to be well over 90 degrees in there today, so I am postponing servicing the bearings on the rear hub until a day where I won't be spontaneously transformed into a puddle. I did decide to piece things together just to get an idea of what I'll have when this is built.




The bars need attention, and I hope the 3-speed coaster-brake rear functions, or things could get even more interesting.




Hopefully will get to riding this by the weekend.

Thank you, Narhay.

The Schwinn Paramount PDG2 (Hazetguy) and the Raleigh Super Course (Oldsledz) are quite nice finds, but this year I've decided to go in the opposite direction. So, I'm entering the Green Mirage (might change the name later). When I saw it in February I knew it had to be my clunker ride this year. It was apparently the ultimate value in its class in 1973. After I saw the pic of USAZorro's Huffy, I was resigned to not being the clunkiest, so I started cleaning it up a bit. Some "before" pics

As rescued February 22 from scrap metal pile at town dump



Experts agree that this is a Motobecane Mirage
:

That's a very clunkerific starting condition. Are you going for "as is" riding or are you going to try to make it look nice? I think I have a 1020 tubing sticker somewhere (unless I put it in the box o' crap).

To be clear, I could not bring myself to pull the trigger on that Huffy. I chose to move forward with an 80-ish year old Robin Hood instead. Still on the klunkier side of the spectrum, but you are definitely a serious contender.

rain on and off all day, managed to put in 6 miles & 300 ft.

In honor of the military tradition implied by its name, I'm taking a "hurry up and wait" approach with the Centurion. Right now, I'm mostly in a waiting state -- just random sanding in my spare moments. It's looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. Pretty much rust free. Curiously, there's no trace of rust in the tubes I can see -- none in the bottom bracket, none in the head tube, none in the seat tube. I guess it was a part of an elaborate ruse or a shabby chic finish style.

Late 70s, the late root beer era saw the development of pigments that included glistening faux rust speckles to aid in lengthening the useful life of the paint. And you thought it was real rust...?

...on the other hand, looks great and ready to pint...Er paint.

Thanks for the comments. I wasn't sure what to do with it, my thoughts ranged from leaving it completely (and disgustingly) filthy, to sandblasting it (which would have made it the Silver Mirage). After thinking about it too long, I decided to do (here comes a weird description) what seemed to be what I think I would do. I decided to clean it enough so that I wouldn't be rubbing against rust and animal secretions, but to otherwise leave it as close to as-is as I could stand. So I have taken a wire brush, a wire wheel, some steel wool and some chemical cleaners to it. I am not going to repaint it, nor modernize or improve it, unless it happens as an unintended consequence of making it rideable within the cost constraints of the Challenge. Nevertheless, it will not look nice.

In a twist of fate my Clunker Challenge 3 entry reappeared on my doorstep last week.The guy I passed it on to asked me to give it a tune-up so he can ride with his grandkids. Cleaned the crank, front and rear d's and chain; cleaned and regreased the hubs and bottom bracket. After finishing it I rode it back over to him yesterday and thought, man, it’s a smooth cruiser with those Paselas on it.

Looking at CL I found one candidate with Suntour barcons. Or I could dust off a Miyata I found a long time ago and haven't ridden much at all.