FrenchFit 

But are you Cat6 racing on the MUP? You sir, are no racer-poser.

chasm54

Maybe not. But my point is, you couldn't know that by looking at me. It's unwise to chuckle based on stereotypes.

Gravity Aided

I feel a lot more comfortable on a 1980s steel tourer with lugged frame, price, ride, overall workmanship.

Jarrett2

What's a lugged frame?

Clyde1820

Rode a lot in the 1970's through early 1990's, but then not so much since most of the newfangled stuff came out.

Technology can be great. But there are some things like road feel, compliance, simplicity, ease of repair, quality ... these things often don't exist in the same combinations I'm used to. Occasionally, I find it in a newer ride. Occasionally, I find it in an old-school ride. Depends. There are gems here and there at every stage.

One thing I do appreciate, though, is that for a given level of quality, road feel and simplicity, overall I think the strength and weight have gotten better, though at the cost of increased price point. Which is another reason to consider the older vintages.


These tend to be my favorites, as well.

MRT2

Lugged steel frame construction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

youcoming

I love old steel bikes and would love to have one again someday but I have to chuckle at a lot of comments. Get Off My Lawn....lol sound like a bunch of old codgers. I must say it ook a long time to find a bike that felt like my old steel Peugot but I did and I love my Parlee and I can guarantee there is not another one like it in the world. Always remember though that all bikes are made different and for different purposes a $1200 carbon entery level bike will be nothing like a costum steel frame. We all get enjoyment out of our bikes for different reasons, all that mater is we get to ride with a smile on or face.

cyclist2000

What wrong with riding in a kit? isn't this the same as wearing a NBA team jersey when I shoot some hoops? I mean that I am near 60 years old and wear cycling specific clothing because I think it is comfortable, sometimes I will wear a green TDF jersey. I got the jersey in France one year, so why not wear it. I got the green one instead of the yellow one because I like to watch the sprints. Am I a posser? no, I would be really delusional if I thought a racer, but I like comfortable bike clothes.

But to the OP, I have some old bikes and some newer bikes, if you saw me riding an old school road bike, its because I owned it from new and it needs to be ridden and it still works. If you saw me riding a new carbon bike its because I own it and it needs to be ridden, and I enjoy riding it. Why did I get the carbon bike frame? because I wanted to try one. Eventually I will have a TI bike, why? because I want one. Also I like the older bikes with nice lugwork and especially chromed lugs.

Medic Zero

Personally, I prefer a pretty narrow niche. I want an old school diamond frame (not a sloping top tube), I want steel, 26" wheels, and cantilever brakes. Pretty much means my options are older MTB's (which suits me fine) or a Surly LHT, which would be fine, but I prefer an old MTB, particularly for my daily driver and longer rides. Yeah, there are probably a few other new options for me, but I'd be more inclined to have a frame builder make me a custom bike exactly to my specs if I ever get to the point that I think I need something different. For now, I'm pretty content with a '94 MTB (last of the high end steel frames for GT) as my commuter and for longer rides, and a '88 MTB for my tourer/cargo bike. I am on a quest for an aluminum frame to try out off-road, but the geometry I want was only offered one year in my size. Virtually the same as my other frames, I'd just like to give aluminum a try for my actual off-road MTB.

I've been quite happy with good cantilever brakes dialed in well, discs hold no allure for me. I do use rapid-fire shifters, but that's actually within the era of the frames I roll. What other new technology is there? Not going to go for electronic shifting. My lights are quite modern, but now we're getting into peripherals territory, not the bike itself.

chasm54

Ah, now you've opened a can of worms.

I wear "kit". I wear no-name kit, or I wear the kit of the club/team to which I belong. I don't wear pro team kit. Most especially, I wouldn't wear world championship jerseys, green jerseys, maillots jaune, polka dots, maglia rosa etc. People earn the right to wear those things, and doing so, for me, would feel like wearing someone else's medals.

jwarner

Bicycle = ingenious collection of leavers, pulleys, and sometimes cables and springs designed to increase mechanical advantage and speed.

I love old steel. I think there is a lot of beauty in old lugged frames and shiny chrome bits. Don't get me wrong, I don't really have anything against the newest carbon fiber electronic shifted bike, I just don't feel like it has the "soul" of a well-made old bike, and I don't find most new production bikes particularly attractive. Some new bikes are certainly mechanical marvels with exacting tolerances and relatively amazing engineering and technology, which I think in some ways, is also a drawback.

I like old bikes. For me, they hold almost limitless possibilities. If I want my old lugged-steel Bianchi to be a road bike, I can set it up as a road bike. If I want to ride cross with it, well, it will do that too. I can run tires anywhere from skinny 700X22 to studded 700X40, with fenders. Convert it to a single speed or fixie? a Townie? -- yep, also not a problem (ignoring for a moment that this particular bike has vertical drop outs -- but there are ways around that). It has braze-ons for fenders and a rack, and if I want some more, all I have to do is put in the work to add them. I don't think this is true for many modern bikes. All of this, for $80... which is what I paid for this particular bike, which had been hanging unused in some lady's garage since 1980, and has probably carried me over 20k miles in the last three years without a problem at a net cost of maybe $100 (I replaced the bottom bracket with a spare I had laying around, and bought a spring from home depot to rebuild a shifter; I also replaced the tires when the first winter hit -- the old gumwalls had had it). It took me less than a day to pull the bike completely apart, clean, and regrease everything, take a little rubbing compound and wax to the paint, and buff the chrome up a bit, but I get a lot of compliments on it, and it has never left me stranded anywhere. Should something go wrong, I can walk into the nearest bicycle co-op (actually I volunteer at one, so not a big deal to do that) or bike shop, and have no problems finding parts and tools that will work with my old steel bike. I also prefer how steel rides over aluminum or carbon, maybe just because I'm really used to it.

All this being said, I do think there have been some good improvements to bikes. I love the disk brakes on my new Raleigh Sojourn and my older "ubiquitous" Specialized Hardrock... they don't ice up like rims do when it gets cold and icy. Sealed bottom brackets, even though they aren't truly sealed, are way more convenient than having to pull apart, clean, and regrease the old cone and cup set-ups after a rainy spell. Modern wheels are much better than old steel wheels (for braking and weight anyway), and let's just ignore the early aluminum 'beer can' wheels that started popping up in the late '70s (?).... those things are pretty bad.

In the end, I think a bicycle is basically just a tool. Something we use to get around and accomplish goals. I don't have any desire to race anyone -- so a carbon fiber road bike would be of little use to me. I can appreciate their usefulness to someone who does like to race, as well as the engineering that went into producing the latest, greatest race, mountain, downhill, you name it bikes. I do have a desire to get around in a town, often hauling groceries, my laptop, and/or a variety of other stuff. I live in a town with poor bike paths/infrastructure and many aggressive and/or inattentive drivers, one where we only have about four months of bad sledding. I could drive... but quite frankly, I find it kind of boring and pointless unless I have to haul something big like kayaks, or am going a long way to go skiing, climbing, hiking, etc (although I have ridden to do all of these things except kayaking... I haven't figured out how to stick a 15+ foot sea kayak on my bike and drag it a hundred or so miles to good salt access just yet).

I think folks just kind of gravitate to what works best for them, and what best meets their needs, and old steel bikes, can check a broader range of "boxes" that todays' more specialized bikes cannot. They are also a lot more economical, and arguably, easier to maintain without as many specialized tools (when I was a kid I don't think I owned a bicycle specific tool, but I completely tore apart and rebuilt a lot of bikes (and even built a few from scratch using junk parts) using pretty common shop tools -- granted I grew up in a auto repair shop with a few generations of tools and a collection of pretty ingenious mechanical speed freak/adrenaline junkie relatives and friends around, but I still think this would be a lot harder to do with the latest CF bikes without some pretty specialized knowledge, tools, and facilities).

Just my (quite long winded) 2 cents.

Medic Zero

Did you pinstripe those fenders? With reflective tape?

Looks good!

cyccommute 

Exactly. Well put.

Ultraorange

I like my old frames, I'm ok with my old components. If I had the money for some fancy CF road I'd spend it on a custom frame from Bishop. But I have to admit one of the bit turn offs of more CF and modern bikes is the aesthetics, decals and paint.

squirtdad

thanks

yes the pinstriping is reflective tape. Fenders and the black pinstriping on the frame is reflective also

Jarrett2

So I took a little vacation this weekend and stayed in South Austin for a couple of days. It's a cool town. There are cyclists and bike friendly infrastructure everywhere in that town. But the thing I found funny, was in this part of Austin virtually EVERYONE was riding an older bike What appeared to be lots of older steel bikes of different makes and models. Lots of fixies as well. Very few newer race/carbon bikes on the road.

Yesterday, I went a little farther South to the Austin Veloway and it was almost all carbon race bikes in that area. I went down to New Braunsfel and went to a popular ride area and all carbon race bikes there as well.

But after reading this thread, I have a better idea of why people ride older bikes instead of the latest tech:

Nostalgia - like owning a 68 Camaro / had one when they were a kid
Practical - some rides/locales are not good for expensive bikes
Financial - they appear to be very inexpensive comparatively
Prefer the Ride - grew up riding steel, likes steel, not interested in change
Familiar Tech - grew up working on old bikes, not interested in learning to work on new tech

For me, I live and ride in a low crime area. My bikes stay in my garage. I don't commute to work and don't have to leave my bikes in an insecure area. I didn't spend the last decades riding older tech bikes, so it currently holds no appeal to me. My LBS that I like carries and rides newer tech. The group rides I do consist mostly of riders on carbon race inspired bikes.

Every time I ask local riders about steel, they tell me it is too noodly for a rider of my size/strength. And that a stiffer material like carbon or maybe even titanium would be better for me.

Bandera

Find some local riders who understand the history of materials, design & manufacturing technology in the bicycle industry and ask again.

-Bandera

chasm54

LOL. Of all the possible reasons for not riding a steel bike, that's the most ignorant I've heard.

himespau 

I love the look of steel, but at ~200 lbs, I've dropped my chain a number of times. Always while climbing, or sprinting. At first I thought it was just that I'd done a crappy job setting up my FD (I'm far from a pro wrench and it is a campagnolo triple). Or maybe that time my daughter knocked my bike over onto the drive side, the hanger got bent. I've started to suspect, however, that my 63 cm Columbus SLX frame is just flexing under a too heavy load. That'd be a bummer if true because the other problems are fixable, but I'm not sure there's anything I can do about that, and my frame is so pretty (89/90 Concorde Aquila in PDM colors).

Jarrett2

Hmm, is that a sign of flex? I've dropped the chain off my carbon Roubaix twice on climbs so far. Never once on my aluminum Secteur.

adrien

It can be, but the culprit can be frame or (more likely) skewer, spoke flex, hub play. And that's not the material's fault -- any steel frame can flex too much, as can carbon, alloy, or (especially, by reputation) Ti.

To blame this on frame material is to ignore engineering. Or potentially, to justify upgrades.

Bandera

Or to avoid finding a competent mechanic w/ the proper alignment tools to diagnose and fix it.

Knowing that "my daughter knocked my bike over onto the drive side" and doing nothing to have the hanger checked then moaning about dropped chains and suspecting instead that frame flex is the source of your problem is obviously the correct method to get it fixed. You need a new Nano-tech bicycle.

-Bandera

adrien

I've ridden steel almost exclusively for about 4 years now. Only thing that ever cause me to drop a chain was a FD limit screw issue and a worn chain / chainring combo. And I'm about 210.

nesteel 

I don't care what the bike you ride is made of, or when it was made. Could care less about what you're wearing when you ride it. JUST RIDE IT.
My personal preference is steel framed roadies. Do I like the new super-tech bikes? No, but if it's your thing, and it gets you out riding, GO FOR IT.
I ride what I ride because that's what I know and like. Simple as that. I can't justify buying a new fancy dodad bike. If I were to spend that sort of money, I'd either invest in a custom made steel frameset, or the tools to build one myself, which just may happen this coming year.
Oh, and no matter what you ride, or where you ride, or what you're wearing when you ride, be polite and attentive.

himespau 

I do have a dropout alignment tool and am in the process of truing the wheels up well enough to use it (they weren't bad, but I want them to be perfect before using them to check alignment and getting them perfect takes a while as I'm really not good at truing). It shifts through the rear cogs just fine without any more noise than before, so I doubt the hanger got bent, but I am going to check it to rule that out and I have had the FD adjusted professionally when I wasn't happy with the results I got (before the bike got knocked over).