RaleighSport

(long winded bridgestone story follows) I was out with my dad today, he's building himself a new greenhouse and needs some muscle to haul his windows/doors etc from the salvage yards/recycle yard at the dump etc, we were at the salvage yard today which normally has a wide variety of garbage kids/box store bmx bikes.. I spotted handlebars sticking up over the crap this time, mountain bike style and adult height, so I made my way over.. 3 bikes pushed up against each other.. outside bikes were both huffy's but I could see the middle bike was something more in line with what I've been hunting lately, so I pulled it out and it's a fairly good condition Bridgestone MB-4, until recently I would have written off anything bridgestone branded as junk, but I spotted some exage bits on it, and I like the blue color of it and I happen to have a pile of spare exage parts at the moment, so the bits that need replacing are probably already swappable and yes I know it's about as low end as bridgestone made but I plan to beat the crap out of it! As we were driving away, I was wondering to myself does my new little bike feel survivors guilt, leaving it's better condition cheaper brothers behind at the yard for god only knows what future life.
Pics to come later today.

Puget Pounder

Nice! Why write off Bridgestone as junk though?

3speedslow

Don't give it too much of a thought. Remember, Cinderella didn't miss her evil step sisters now did she ?I bet the Bridgestone was so happy to be going to another home it didn't even look back.

Ride it hard but miss the hard stuff while doing it!

3SS

CACycling

BSOs have no feelings and real bikes know it.

auchencrow

Why don't you just come right out and ask it? (I never heard of a bike that was a liar.)

Kobe 

It's a trick question, Huffy's never had a soul to begin with.

ftwelder

I typically make a trip to my favorite spots once a month or so and find something interesting on most runs. On one of my normal outings I saw a stunning black Sears 3-speed bike leaning against the recycling bin. I don't flip bikes and didn't have any interest in collecting that marque so I drove away figuring someone would grab it before the truck came. As I was leaving the lot, I glanced to my rear view mirror and noticed the bike again with it's chrome glistening in the sun. I could swear it had been turned from the original angle.

Something told me stop but I didn't.

After a few weeks of finding nothing I drove out to see if the Sears was still there.. It was not.

I decided at that point that if a bike called to me, I would grab it. I can find a home for it later.

wrk101

Kind of what I do. When I find something interesting and cheap, but not to my liking, I'll pick it up and donate it to the local co-op where they can give it a new life.

MB4 is not the lowest. Bridgestone made down to an MB-6 as I recall, probably depends on the year.

The Bridgestones I have come across were surprisingly under-equipped component wise. I saw a RB-2 at a garage sale that had pretty basic components.

RaleighSport

Because until this year I wasn't a cyclist and would have assumed a tire brand name bike was a bad idea! As for those poor lost soul huffies.. I think that's the only good thing they have.. souls.

So, confirmed problem is the chain (I think it's just too dang short), the rear DR cage was bent out of shape, and the FD was messed up to the point where the arm was resting on the seat tube... but as I said before I happened to have some spare components for the derailers at least, new chain tomorrow hopefully.

Here she is in all here hidden glory... as is from the salvage yard.


Derailer fun time!



The swapout


Lots more to come I'm sure!

photogravity

That's the attitude Frank! There's almost always something that is useful or that might serve someone well, but may not interest you personally, but it is a shame that a bike may end up in an early grave when it could have been saved.

photogravity

It looks to me like the chain has doubled up on the chainring... Have fun getting that untangled! Time to grab the chainbreaker atmo.

RaleighSport

Oh don't worry I actually put it back in that position to show you guys what the derailers were doing! I won't say how I made it an ez fix, but I did. Turns out to be an 88 and my brother in law is drooling LoL