Throwing away good bike parts
 

Yep, just like the title reads. I don't like keeping unused stuff around. If you have perfectly good bike parts, how long do you keep them listed before you crap-can them?

I have brand new Claris brifters, some Bontrager bars, a couple Microshift triple shifters, an Altus FD, some new 700x35c Kenda tires and tubes, little stuff like that. Have it listed on the local CL (huge metro area) for CHEAP and not even a sniff. It seems like such a waste to throw this stuff away, but obviously no one wants it. Seems pretty weird given the combination of low availability, cheap prices, and people building and selling bikes for profit right now. I feel like I should give it about 6 weeks, at that point I'm going to be tired of looking at it and will send it to the landfill. It's so cheap it isn't worth shipping (except maybe the brifters) or dealing with 'free' listing crazies. FB marketplace is not an option, I don't have an account with that cesspool site.

Do you guys just throw perfectly good stuff in a garbage when it's as popular as month-old fruit?

No. I’ll give it away to someone who can use it. A bike co-op is a good place.

John

CoOp
 

Please do find a Bike CoOp in your area.
If you have enough of it, they may even collect it from you.

Barry

Good call, hadn't thought about a co-op. Let me see if I can track down one in my area.

Bike clubs?

I tend to use bike club's classified section first, both for buying and selling. It's a more informed audience.

Some people in my club swear by CL, some even frequent eBay for bikes & parts. I use CL for furniture and household items. But haven't had as good a result when it comes to more specialized hobby equipments such as bikes and boats. I have much better luck with specific hobby groups as above.

List the Claris and Microshift shifters on ebay if you get no hits locally...or send them to me for the price of shipping.
Donate the rest to a co-op, as mentioned.

I only throw out consumables. The rest go in drawers and sit there until I am fed up enough to sell it or donate it.

Never hesitate to list stuff here (according to whatever the rules might be. I am sure you can list parts and say "Trying to be adopted" and people can PM you for a price list without creating a furor .... on the other hand, this is BF ,....

A related question is: "How do you decide which part from your spares bin to use for a particular repair or rebuild?"

The sock drawer theory is to grab the oldest, cheapest part that is still useable. Otherwise your spares bin gradually fills up with cheap old stuff that will never get used.
The pope tablecloth theory is to use the best part that will fit. Otherwise you will accumulate a collection of gradually ageing high end parts that never get used.

If it's worth your time throw it on ebay, by shipping it you open up to a lot more people

Before you send it to the landfill, simply post it on the FREE section of Craigslist, put it out on the curb on a certain date, and in the listing put "On the curb at 7am on 9/21/2021 at <address>. First come, first serve. Don't contact me to ask if it's still there." I've gotten rid of big furniture, old car batteries, old ski boots, junk aluminum, old (but good) bike frames.

I don't throw out anything that may potentially have more life left in it, especially not bike related gear! Waste not.

My local not-for-profit bike co-op is always in need. If it's something in really good nick and still worth a few $$ then I may list it on eBay.

It has taken the entire summer to sell 3 front wheels on CL. The wheels are good quality road wheels, one of them was a new Roval QR wheel at a give away price. I have a 105 9 speed drive train with few miles on it and not a single inquiry, yet reasonably priced. On the other hand I sold 4 bikes without delay this summer. Not sure what gives, but I see the recycling station in the near future.

Stuff that has life in it goes in a bin for a future project. I built up a CX bike and TT with mostly spare parts from road bikes that had been upgraded. Stuff I can't use goes to the Bike Kitchen.

You can also donate to a thrift shop.
This will help keep these bits get used again.
Just a little more work than trashing and much more rewarding to others

Agreed on donating to co-op. I’m actually about to text some photos of what I have to the guy who runs our co-op, so he can tell me what he can use and what he doesn’t need.

Some of it I will keep, mostly in case I ever decide to put gears and a shifter back on a bike. And also in case I decide to run drop bars on a bike.

Otto

There is always the "Pay it Forward" thread under Marketplace for Sale

If it's just old stuff that I'll never use -- 26mm road bars, 25.4mm mtb bars, short seatposts, OEM saddles, Look pedals, and the like -- it goes to the bike co-op. Anything that's current but unwanted (alt bars, cartridge bottom brackets, wheels, tires, road brakes, 9-speed cassettes) goes on Craigslist. Anything current and useful, I keep until it falls into one of the other categories. 90% of the stuff I think I'll use one day eventually finds a new home.

I volunteer regularly at a busy bike Co-op. Please donate your good stuff to your local Co-op, it makes a major difference in keeping decent older bikes on the roads.

We rarely see usable brifters coming in the door. Almost all are unrecoverable, often due to crash damage. Sometimes we do not discover that the shifter bodies are cracked until we attempt to install them on a bike.

Please do NOT donate if your bike or gear is:

• covered in rust due to to having been outdoors uncovered for the last 2 winters,
• has been involved in a crash, and the shop told you it was damaged, and
• is a department-store full-suspension bike. We get several of these per week; these bikes are so poorly designed, constructed and assembled, and feature such poor componentry, that they all go straight to the landfill. They just consume our resources and impede our ability to serve our mission.

Thank you.

Helps if you put your location in the profile.

​​​​​​https://www.bikecollectives.org/wiki..._Organizations

The amount of parts I have is massive and I wouldn't have it any other way. Parts bins are super handy and I have built a few bikes with mine. One of my favorite bikes is made of some awesome parts that I had laying about or that people gave to me.

Granted really cheap parts might be best donated to those needed if I am already looking to get rid of them. Dave Mayer had excellent advice and you should follow it if donating.

I cleaned house except for a fews things last fall and tried to sell some stuff here, gave some stuff away, and put a lot on ebay. I made of 2k for the stuff I had on ebay. I had this stuff for 7 or 8 years. I have finally decided to start unloading some old cassettes I thought I might use, but realized I wont be any more.

I have no co-op anywhere near me and I just threw out a bunch of low end vintage stuff I've had for years. Old cheap non-ramped freewheels, low end dia compe brake calipers that flex like a rubber band, cheapo vinyl covered saddles, ect. But I do remove every allen bolt, nuts and all that from the parts and keep those. You can never have enough spare bolts.

Eventually I'll box up the bike stuff I'm not using in a USPS flat rate box and charge actual shipping cost. There's a generous weight limit for whatever we can stuff into the box (70 pounds for standard Flat Rate boxes and a limit of 20 pounds for Flat Rate Express services). Good way to let someone else have a crack at potentially useful stuff, rather than tossing it out.

Oh, hell no. I even keep stuff that I don't think I ever will use but sometimes do. Case in point. A couple of weeks ago during a ride, I noticed my MTB headset (a 1" threaded - I know, a really, really old MTB from 1988) had some play. So once I got home, I tried to adjust it to take out the play. I fiddled with it for about an hour or so but every time I got the play out, it was binding really bad, and once I got it to turn freely, it had lots of play. Finally I realized that the top locknut threads were stripped. After thinking about where I was going to try to get a new 1" threaded headset from for a while, I realized that I had a 1" threaded headset in my old crashed Fuji frameset sitting in the corner of my basement. So I took the top nut off the Fuji headset and put it on my MTB and got it adjusted in about 5 minutes. About 20 years ago, I sawed out part of the Fuji's seattube to use as a support for the sagging shelf on top of my homebuilt basement workbench. I only rode that Fuji for about 3 years before the frame was bent beyond repair in a crash. But I still get use out of it.
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