Last summer I picked up a Takara Professional frame from hazetguy . He clearly knew the smart move was to avoid sinking time, effort, or money into it, and he made me a deal good enough that I couldn’t say no. I, on the other hand, have absolutely no problem making questionable decisions when it comes to old Takaras.

Every decal but one was gone, and the normally durable Takara paint looked like someone had tried to angrily stab at it with a butter knife. With the paint already a lost cause and me not interested in rattle canning it or paying for a proper repaint or powder coat, I decided to go through everything mechanical and make it dependable while still giving the bike the vibe of something that had been chained outside the library for a year.

I even considered wrapping the bars with electrical tape and turning them up bum bar style to complete the look, but that idea lasted about three seconds. Then I thought about pulling some Newbaum’s off another bike that needed freshening and reusing it here, but that didn’t stick either because I didn’t want to wrap two bikes because I’m too busy (lazy). I did buy a Takara branded saddle on eBay with a small tear in it, which fits the beater bike aesthetic perfectly.

hazetguy included enough parts to get me going, plus a bunch of little extras. Between eBay scavenging, Amazon deliveries, and the stash of parts I have because I was sure I may need them one day I had enough era appropriate components to move forward. The important things like brakes, bearings, and cables were all replaced to be dependable. I did use some sketchy Continental tires I already had they ride well, but because I bruise easily and heal slowly I will probably do something with them sooner than later. Parts were only cleaned, not polished preserving a little of the patina.

The abandoned‑beater idea started to fall apart when the wheels in my stash turned out to have spokes rustier than a Wyoming barbed wire fence. They weren’t just ugly, they were so corroded that spokes snapped when I tried removing a few to measure for replacements. I could live with new stainless spokes a lot better than I could live with them breaking on the way to a Saturday morning coffee and waffle. The missing decals were another detail that bugged me. I made some on water slide paper that looked good enough that I couldn’t bring myself to distress them to match the paint. Then the new black bar tape didn’t exactly fit the neglected‑but‑functional theme either.

Now I have a Takara Professional that, if you stand twenty feet away and squint, looks mint. If you squint harder and have a couple cold ones in you, it might even look as good as any of my Takara survivors. I may add brake hoods and reroute the rear brake cable because it bugs me. After that the only thing left bothering me will be the paint. And I may do something stupid like have it painted

A defective inner tube and a spring in the rear derailleur that sopped doing spring things cut my test ride today to the duck pond short. But I have a new tube in it and have corrected the spring so a ride on the MUP to the coffee shop may happen tomorrow.





During a period this winter while we had to wait for a new garage door to be delivered, I had plenty of room in the garage to work on this. But I did not have the time, so it drug on.