I suppose everyone on here has picked up an old junker bike just to salvage a part or two, but I think I must have hit theoretical rock bottom yesterday. One last little thing I forgot to get for my fixy build was an extra bottom bracket lock ring to use as insurance on the suicide hub I am (unfortunately) using. No extra ones hanging around. Really did not feel like making another trip to the bike store. But then I spied my neighbors clearing out their back yard, including several wrecked bikes. I wandered over and lifted a much unloved women's bike out of the dump truck and brought it over to steal that 5 cent ring.

Is it possible to salvage a less common or less expensive part?

And in a related note, is anyone interested in a partially incomplete Ladies Free Spirit? Lovely bike. Some new paint, all new components, some wheels and tires, and you will have a sweet little rider. I will deliver it to your front yard under the cover of darkness.

j

Have done similar for a BB cup.

-Kurt

I'd do that. I'll pick bikes out of the hedge even if I DON'T need the parts. They get stripped, anything worthwhile gets put in a box, and eventually, most of it comes out again and finds a use. I fixed up two bikes like that and gave them away over the last year.

+1 and I think the OP meant any more common and less expensive... well I do what sammy boy does... My girlfriend's dad brings me junk bikes from the dump etc.. some I strip and sell the frame (makes my girlfriend happy since her dad is providing me with a bit of cash which is put towards her bikes (which I buy))... sometime I strip the department store MTBs toss stuff in a box.. the rear cables can always be reused for the front on another bike and even if they are rusty I can shine them up with some emery paper and then run them through a greasy oily rag... now that is cheep salvaging.

If it's free, I'll take the bike for the hub and bottom bracket bearings - tossing the rest away doesn't cost me any extra, since it all goes into the back of the pickup for the trip to the county transfer station. EVERY bicycle has something worth salvaging, no matter how small

My depression-era father is smiling down in me as I post this . . . . . . . .

On a tangential topic, I never toss any frame or bicycle without salvaging nuts, bolts, fittings, dust caps, lockrings, bearing cups and races, etc. This packrat habit has saved me on countless occasions, including:

1) My 1981 Bianchi came with an aluminum BB lockring, which requires a full-circle 6-prong tool. Using my trusty curved hook from Sugino, I managed to nick a couple of the ring's slots severely. I replaced the (Italian-threaded) lockring with the steel one I had salvaged from my 1962 Bianchi after that frame finally failed.

2) When I bought the Capo in January of this year, it had all of its original parts, except one Agrati pedal dust cap. You guessed it -- when the original Agrati pedals from my very first Capo fell apart, I saved a dust cap.

3) When my son broke the upper headset race on his Specialized Hardrock mountain bike, I was able to substitute an upper cup-and-race set from my junk box, taken from a mountain bike frame the kids had found in a canyon by the freeway.