nick burns

You're crazy. I do it too.

Artmo 

There is no hanger on my Maclean's dropouts because that's the way I had the frame built in 1957. At that time, having sold my electric train set to buy the frame made-to-measure, I was looking to conserve every penny, so that I could afford to buy the rest of the bike It does have beautiful, curly lugwork, however!

T-Mar

1. Character! I've had so many bicycles over the years, that uniqueness ranks very highly. Whether it's a design feature or purely cosmetic, this is what initially attracts me to a bicycle. It's got to be different from something that I already own.

2. Top end components. The age or manufacturer doesn't matter too much to me. When you're at the top of the line, the difference between Campagnolo, Shimano, SunTour or anybody else is primarily in the execution and not the performance.

3. Tubing. It has to have a high grade, butted tubeset. Again, I could care less if it was Reynolds, Columbus, Tange, Ishiwata or something else.

4. Workmanship and frame details: It has to have clean brazing, nice filework and well applied paint. The brazing and filework at the stay/fork tips and stay caps are areas I tend to concentrate on. Forged dropouts are usually a good indicator, subject the previous discussions. As are reinforcing tangs on the fork blades and stay bridges. Types of brazed on fittings can be another indicator. Bottom bracket shells and headtubes that have been faced after the paint job is usually another indicator of a good craftsman/manufacturer. You can easily tell this on a bare frame, as the paint will be removed, but if the fixed BB cup is a traditional, two flat style, you can see enough of the shell face to determine if it was faced after painting. If it's a bare frame, a peek into the bottom bracket shell to determine if the tubes were mitered, is one of the best indicators. You can also tell if it was brazed using silver solder or brass.

5. Mechanical Condition. A bicycle with major problems is worth a lot less. I check the frame closely for signs of a crash, such as rippled paint or creases behind the head lugs. A no-hands ride will quickly tell if the frame/fork is drastically out of alignment. Sometimes I'll even bring out my string and ruler to do a quick check. On non-ferrous frames, an alignment problem usually results in me bypassing the bicycle (unless its a good deal for just the components) as, in general, you can't re-align them.

I always go beyond just spinning the wheels and check for trueness. I remove the wheels and derail the chain, so that I spin the cranks, hub axles and head bearings with no extra load or momentum which can disguise problems.

6 Size: Many people would place this at the top of the list, with good reason, but I will often consider a bicycle for just the parts, if the price is right. The frame can always be sold to someone else.

7. Use. The level I'm looking for in the criteria, will depend on the anticipated use. My commuter bicycle will not require as high a raring in my criteria as my racing bicycle.

8. Price: It has to fair, given the market.

Given, the discussion on dropouts, I should qualify my statments with a disclaimer. You have to assess the characteristics of a bicycle relative to its era and original design intent. This can take a bit of experience. For instance the presence of a brazed-on fitting for the front derailleur is generally a good indicator of the relative value of a bicycle built in the mid '80s. But they didn't exist in the mid '70s and had trickled down to mid range bicycles by the mid '90s. We can probably come up with exceptions for just about every characteristic mentioned. They are generalities or rules of thumb and should not be taken as anything more.

When you purchase a bicycle, you have to weigh the relative importance of all these characteristics relative to your own unique value of importance. That's the hardest part. I realize that I have gone a bit off topic and morphed this from top end characteristics into general bicycle buying, and for that I apologize to those who are offended.

Iride

Not too far off topic, if it relates to new bikes ,,oh well. Great points (taken by myself). One More question- Does sand blasting repainting and restickering devalue bikes,,, some bikes or only makes them better...
Kind of like antique furniture, some times its on the road show, and has 20 layers of paint, and ugly as heck, yet the price is higher than refinished?

TheOtherGuy

Original finish is only there one time... Once it's gone, that's it. If a frame has already been refinished, then redoing it again can make it better than it was previously, but it's still not the original finish. I say repaint only if the original finish is just too far gone, or you absolutely can't stand to look at it.

Most of the high-end painters these days are capable of finishes far better than the original was... but it's still not original. Nothing wrong with a little "patina". That's my general thought for most quality frames. Admire the chips and scratches... They are your friends.

If, on the other hand, it's a junker that no one cares about anyway, and it makes you feel better about using it, then paint away.

Poguemahone

I'm in agreement with the other guy here. A friend of mine is an art conservator, and one of their main principles is to do as little overpainting as possible, and then only to fill cracks, etc. I like this approach. I'm of a mind that unless a frame's paint is completely shot, just clean up and touch up any rust spots, etc, with as close a match as you can.