jhess74

Being a huge fan of the various photo threads on here (I mean, who needs all this READING, amiright?? ), I thought of one concept I hadn't seen yet. What's the bike you most regret selling, losing, wrecking, etc?

For me, it's this 197? Raleigh Super Grand Prix that was my intro to old school road bikes. I picked it up off craigslist for $140, added a few new parts like a threadless stem, newer bars and levers, and platform pedals (yes, some of those choices are questionable in retrospect), and rode the hell out of it one summer before stupidly deciding I could sell it and find something even better. I never have, or at least I haven't found anything I LIKED better. Hopefully one day I'll get another... it's an oddly tough model to find, at least around here.

mapleleafs-13 

That's not a terrible loss. I mean i'm sure you liked it. But those are fairly common, at least you didn't sell a super corsa, colnago master or anything in the "grail" categories.

timber_cruiser

I have a Raleigh Super Record, similar to the Raleigh Super Grand Prix. My son picked this up from a pawn shop while he was attending college. He left it in the garage when he finished school. I upgraded components with spare parts. This is a great neighborhood errand bike. A bit heavy, but comfortable ride. These bikes are often seen in pawn shops and CraigsList. Many of these are large frame sizes for some reason.

jhess74

Lol... yeah, I know it wasn't anything high end or irreplaceable, or at least I do now. At the time, when I was just learning about vintage bikes, I thought it was something really special. What I do know now is that it definitely rode better than other similar level bikes I've had since then. And of course, I'm probably romanticizing it a bit as I think back.

jhess74

I actually had one of those for a while as well. It was pretty beat up though, and never grew on me quite like the Super Grand Prix did. Yours looks really nice - the Brooks definitely sets it off.

Lascauxcaveman 

If you feel you can only keep one, get the replacement before retiring the old bike. And swap back and forth a few times between to the two until you are really sure. I very nearly gave away my old beater Lambert frankenbike when I got distracted by this shiny new composite thing that accidentally landed in my lap. Then one day I filled up the tires on the old bike and took it to the grocery store to get some stuff, and remembered why I'd ridden that old thing almost exclusively for 30+ years. I decided at that time it was OK for me to have two road bikes.

That, of course, is when my n+1 sickness began...

Italuminium

funny thing, this thread pops up eevery month in a new guise when somebody feels the dreaded "pang" of regret.

SJX426 

Well it has been a few years since I brought this up, so here we go with pics. This bike was "lost" in an accident in 2009 in May at 6:30 in the morning. Took me out of riding for nearly a year but got me a Colnago!

Impact:

GordoTrek

Not really C and V but my parents got me a 97 trek 700 multitrack, i rode it everywhere until i got a car, it sat in my garage for years, and my bro offered me 100 bucks for it and i took it... Gahh regretted that forever until lastyear when i found a 98 7500 trek multitrack, it was in rough shape, but i brought i back from the brink, it ended being a family ride, trailer puller, and on the weekends i would cruise downtown with my bro (he was on my previous trek bike), till one night i foolishly left it unlocked for 10 mins while visiting my other brother, and they were both stolen... that stung... now i have a 93 trek 750, all steel, feels more like the original.. hopefully i can hang on to this one...

sloar 

Well lets see, I sold a few bikes to buy a new race bike and I really hated to sell them.
colnago super and a ciocc. Both were awesome riding bikes.

bikingshearer 

Fork's bent . . . .



Sorry, I had to. Glad you're better now.

bici_mania

One of the best riding bikes I have ever had the privilege to ride was an '85 Raleigh Grand Prix. The one I had fit me perfectly and seemed to have just the right geometry. IMO, it's an extremely underrated ride. I have known or talked to several people who have/had one and it seems we all say roughly the same thing; 'I know it's not anything special but I really love(d) it'.

I have looked around off and on for the last two years and I have yet to find a mid-eighties Raleigh in my size.



I was hit and it snapped the seat stays and bent the fork. The Olmo San Remo I am in the process of building up has roughly the same geometry but is a hair smaller. I hope it is at least comparable if not surpassing my Raleigh.

TampaRaleigh

Sometimes those old Raleighs come back home.

jhess74

^^ bici_mania, it looks like you had the same Origin8/Velo faux-brown leather saddle I had on mine. That thing is still one of my favorite low-price bike seats.

mktng

80's Rossi. Full Chrome SLX. Super Record.
Got hit on Fathers Day last year. Paid out .... amazingly well by drivers insurance. But bike cannot be replaced.

jrickards

Nothing really special but I had an mid-90s Bianchi; I don't know what model other than I paid about $600 for it new (here in Canada) and it had 105 components (all I believe). I looked in a couple of catalogs but, because it was bright lemon yellow, I can't find it. I rode it for a while but just wasn't into it and eventually, it got left in a damp garage and rotted to death (ok, eject me from this forum, I accept my fate). I now pine for it and wished I had looked after it.

bici_mania

I bought it because it was all I could afford at the time and had low expectations but it has proven to be an excellent seat. The one in the pictures was torn up when I got hit so I bought another and have put few thousand miles on it, I like it better than the fizik saddles I rode before. I have got much more than my money's worth out of it.

That is a great love story, I love happy endings.

conradpdx

Wish I had pics of mine, but I regret two bikes.

a 1981/2 (can't remember- but it was one of the last years before the Chicago plant shut down I think) Schwinn Cruiser that I did my paper route on, it was one of the beefed up workman types. Nearly 5 years of daily riding (and all the rest of my riding before getting my DL) with an extra 50-100 lbs of papers and honestly I don't ever remember even changing a tube on it. Not sure what happened to it, I also miss the paper boy bags as well. Sew a (p)leather top on them and they'd make cool panniers.

And then a 93 Raliegh Mt800 (I could be wrong on this- I know i bought the bike in 93- but I can't find any info pre 95 for the MT 800 and I remember joking that my bike was 10 times the bike of the local police who rode M80's). I had just moved here and was living downtown Portland, and not being able to afford to park a car near my apartment, I spent $1300 dollars on it new. I didn't really know much about bikes but the local cops rode MT 80's and I figured that I needed a better bike than what they were riding (just in case my 22 year old butt got into trouble). It was a great bike, tore up the local trails, and handled the streets well too. Mine was red to black fade and just looked kinda mean and tough compared to most bikes (Stumpjumpers) here at the time.

There were not too many bike commuters here then- just a small batch of us crazies and the messengers though on the week ends Forrest Park was packed with week end riders. Though honestly I think the streets were way more dangerous than any of the fire lanes, I'm not sure how may rear view mirrors I took out while riding downtown.

Rode that baby enough that when visiting my parents in Indiana I took a little ride, got a flat (forgot my tools wasn't planning on going for a long ride just a nice afternoon country ride- not much else to do in NE Indiana) walked up to an old farmers house explained my situation and he looked at me, said "I don't have a patch kit, but I can give you ride home if you like" and as I'm putting the bike in the bed of his pick up, he says "Hope you don't mind Willie Nelson it's the only tape I got and its gunna be over an hour drive". I looked at him, and he read the confusion on my face "Son your about 60 miles from you house right now"

Ended up giving it to a friend of mine to use about 10 years later, and I haven't seen much of either of them since about the same time that I loaned him the bike.

The Schwinn I could find a suitable replacement still, the Raleigh would be hard to track down now (though with MT bikes kind of on the outs now would be the time to find one if I could).

balindamood

In 2008, I bought a bike from Craiglist from an older gentleman who served in Europe in the 1970's. Hanging next to the bike I bought was a pristine, candy-apple-red, Jack Taylor Tandem, fully TA/Campy, 650B, french hammered fenders, Ideal saddles. His wife didn't like it, so it had been hanging for 35 years. I couldn't scrape up the $1000 he wanted for it, and I am still kicking myself. A CR list guy found out about it and bought it. FedEx killed it on the way to the lower 48. Truely sad.

The Golden Boy 

Terrible shame about the bike- glad you're OK.

But seeing how that chrome gleams in the sun- just makes me want a chrome bike just THAT much more.