I started out buying a 1984 Schwinn Letour Luxe in kind of tough shape to build up as a utility bike and was pretty happy to sneak 1 more bike home and have a new project. As many of you can relate to, my family considers anything more than 1 bike per person as being unnecessary.

I have tapped into the spouse's love of garage sales and now have her semi trained to spot good deals on older decent quality steel bikes. As long as she gets a cut of any flipping profits she is happy! So far she has netted a $5 Raleigh Super Record (about 1980 vintage), a beautiful $75 1989 Fuji Ace, and a $10 Bridgestone MB 6 (for my daughter). I've been able to add a $20 1980's Maruishi Roadace 404 in very good shape.

Now to find the time to clean them up and get them into the hands of new owners and back on the roads. Making a little extra cash is gradually giving away to the joy of keeping some nice quality bikes out of land fills and finding them a new home. The Fuji is going to be hard to part with though!

BTW: Does anyone know a a source for info about Maruishi bikes? I've done some searching here, but not a lot of info.

Google
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

Yeah, I've got a roadace 404 as well. I like it, and I'm getting it repainted really soon, it'll be good as new!