Bonehead Moves by Prior Owners: This Years Best!
 

OK, I have seen a variety of bonehead moves, but this one takes the cake. I picked up a Raleigh mixte frameset, with a unique mounting for the front derailleur. Look carefully....

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7081/7...3f141505_b.jpg

Do you see it?

Apparently, the PO wanted to eliminate chainring shifts, and must have lost his cable cutters. And he didn't know how to open up a Suntour FD cage either. So off with one side of the derailleur cage. And lets see, if I loop it around, I can mount it to the DT. Yeah, that's the ticket....

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7225/7...5c209e42_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7084/7...5a1c5c64_b.jpg

Oh yeah, and the genius flipper I bought this from? He described the bike as a Raleigh Split Rail. Huh???

haha - "ready to ride"

Oh boy! :-P

Yup - Necessity is the mother of invention, Thrifty Bill. Give that boy a cigar.

I can't imagine what you had to pay that flipper to part with this split rail Raleigh! They must be unspeakably rare! -I've done Google searches on them and come up with NOTHING!

The capacity to "derail" the flesh off the inside of your leg.

Yeah, almost ready to ride. Except the stem was stuck. And the seat post was stuck... And no wheels. But other than that, sweet.

I did get the stem and post out, so its ready for it reincarnation.

You have to admit that did take considerable effort to accomplish. That and a certain lack of brains.

To paraphrase a famous German general's comments, in re his officers:

'One must beware of [an officer] who is both hard-working and stupid. He must not be given any responsibility, because he will cause only mischief.'

Previous owner did this to the Mavic stem & 3ttt bars on a tandem I just picked up. Used a set screw to secure the bars.....

[IMG]http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k2...603_185039.jpg[/IMG]

:cry:

Bought an 86 Prelude on CL a couple of months ago for $30, bottom racket cups were reversed (fixed installed on non-drive, adjustable on drive). i thought the threads would be shot, but somehow they were fine. I serviced it and reassembled correctly with no problems. No idea how someone installed it without completly destroying the threads.

Had a bike where the owner pounded in a little to big water pipe for a seatpost. Took forever and a big pipe wrench to get it out.

oh wow. Given the world-class nature of that tandem and this bonehead owner, you're lucky it came to you in such a marvelous condition :)

My favorite recently was a seller that showed me a "feature" of his brakes. He could just flip a lever and the brakes would lock up on the wheel so that the bike wouldn't roll off the kickstand...

'split rail' may just be his own unique way of referring to the opposite sex.
i've heard worse.

I bought, for $30, a kind of crappy Lotus (early Taiwan production) that the guy said he had ridden and even raced on in HS. He was not a big guy, maybe my size, 5' 7", but must have been quite small when he first rode the bike because it was something like a 47cm frame. In order to deal with his growth, someone had stuck in an extra-long seatpost, and evidently not having confidence in that, they drilled a hole through the seat tube, with a screw into the seatpost.

I guess in this thread that barely qualifies as 'bonehead.' IIRC the seatpost was even the right diameter.

A parking brake would be kinda useful............

I've seen worse - someone welded a piece of FAT rebar to a frame & saddle to replace a seatpost (maybe the frame was toast before, I didn't look too closely).

Of course I've seen many pedals welded to cranks, cranks welded to spindles, etc. back in my old cottered crank days.

I've talked to people who set up the brakes with the QR open, then when you close it, it clamps against the rim.

When I worked at the bike co-op at my school I had a couple people come in after trying some home modifications. One in particular stuck out. During the height of the fixie craze someone brought in their frame they were converting to a fixie and a bundle of parts. At some point someone told him he could hacksaw off any unnecessary parts. Apparently to him that included the rear brake bridge and the entire bottom half of both rear dropouts.

are you sure this wasn't yo fit a cyclo computer without any visible cables?

This almost killed me, the short story is I brought a bike with this set up and broke a spoke going up alpe d'heuz. The wheel would no longer turn so I took a brake block off to complete the climb. The way down I only had an over heating front brake with a tubular rim/tyre.

I'm kind of interested in hearing the details of the resulting conversation.

Not sure. The holes line up when the bar is centered and there is a little set screw in there. I figured it was to keep the bars from rotating. Would you consider these safe to ride?

Brain donors.