Hot.

2010 Allez Steel frame 54CM
paid $550 came with Shimano 2300 crap.

$150-2003 litespeed atlas that was to big with only 25 miles on it.
It came with Campagnolo Centaur Gorup 10spd & Proton wheelset

I took all the parts and sold the frameset for $400...

what is the purpose of this thread? a bike does not have to have 2k carbon wheels to be hot. and just because you did not spend much does not mean that you cannot have an ugly bike.

Oops. Please accept my apology.

I am SO loving this Schwinn!!!

Here is my meager entry. Well under $2K and I love it!


Cheers,

Brian J.

and I thought I was one of the best deal hunters here.

Got a Rival group w/ Force cranks (now for sale) for much more than that. I thought it was a heck of a deal.

^^^you are total redneck!! this bike is awesome. im pretty jealous of your humvee grade lighting system too. thats sweet.

well since there is a cyclocross bike I'll post mine up.

2011 Surly Crosscheck
Canecreek 40 series threadless hs
Controltech stem
FSA wing pro(Undecided if I'm gonna keep, thats why they are untaped)
Brooks B17
Campagnolo Ti post
Crappy nashbar cranks/bb
Crappy performance wheelset

I dont have a dollar figure, but I'm pretty sure it was much less than 800 with all the parts I already had

Owning a bike company budget bikes are the only bikes I ever get to ride.
Scavenging parts bins and looking for cast-off tubes in the tubing piles and hand me downs from friends let me put this thing together last winter-


The frame is the custom geometry I always run for myself, at least in terms of contact points. I mellowed the bike out a little bit for a lazier feel(slacker angles, lower bb, slightly longer stays) the fork is something that a customer with a longer headtube cracked the steer tube on(don't do this). The Ultegra stuff came off a CX bike I'd given to one of my riders 2 season previously.

Thomson stems just float around at a place like this, the Selcof post, god I don't know where it came from and the SLR was stolen from my BMX race bike
The fulcrum wheels are something I keep. They're fantastic.
Brakes are Durace 7400(8 speed era).
It was a pretty fun bike and pieced together out of stuff I had. The most important thing with any bike is that it fits right, nothing to complain about there. I prefer my personal bikes to feel a little peppier so the frame went into the hand-me-down pile.


I'm really much more a fan of the aluminum bikes so when I got this Skeletor production frame back for a warranty issue(cracked seatube) I ran some bead over it and re-reamed it moved most of the parts from the Ritchey to it while that frame was down for repairs. It's one of my production frames, but, big secret, I always make a production size identical to what my personal custom numbers are. One of my distributors had 105/Velocity a23 wheels for unfathomably short cash so I picked a pair up to have around to check tire clearance on rear wheels. They ride great too and for me, being semi-crusty, the ride of 32 butted spokes 3x with a Shimano hub in the middle of the whole shebang is second nature. The new Enve fork on there has been replaced by the cracked Edge fork. Can't let the bike get too fancy. Parts-bin Selle San Marco saddle, ubiquitos Thomson post, base-model Syntace stem, etc. I like the Fulcrum cranks enough that I scrounged enough money to buy them wholesale and that's a lot of money for a starving bike maker.

The bike that I have more miles on than i can even fathom is my Ritchey from 1995.

A solid 6 seasons of full-time elite level MTB training and my primary bike every winter until I had the oppourtunity to start building bikes for myself.
The American classic post and Ringle stem have been there since day one.
The rear wheel in this picture is a total piece of **** that an ex-roomate left in my basement. I normally run a velocity deep v 32h 3x on a re-spaced deore mtb hub.
Front wheel is a close-out bin 16h Ritchey hub on a deep v 16h radial. One of the best riding wheels I own. The Turbo was in the trash at a bike shop.
The Ultegra cranks have been on this bike since 1999. 9 speed Durace DT shifters are cheap and super reliable and the 3t Rotundo bars and Sram aero levers were scrounged from my parts bin. That frame has somewhere over 175,000 miles on it, maybe 200,000 at this point.

The frame itself has been under the torch twice. Once to fix some pinhole rust spots

on the chainstays and once to fix a massively bent deraileur hanger.

The bike I am riding right now is one of our new production models with the equivalent of our base-level Apex build kit.

I'm proud to be able to offer a $2350 complete bike with an American made frame, full 3t cockpit Enve 2.0 fork and Velocity A23/105 wheels and even Michelin ProRace3 tires that's not full of crappy stuff and make a little money off of it.

I'm hoping that I can put together a new frameset in the next few weeks to throw the parts off the Ritchey on to. I'm thinking slimmer 90's style aluminum tubing, horizontal toptube with a tig-welded unicrown steel fork with 1" steer tube would be awesome. If I'm not racing I have no desire to use integrated shifters. The price isn't worth it and frankly, I prefer the reliable feel and crispness of (cheap and light) Durace downtube shifters in 9v or 10v flavors. Last time we built a new aluminum frame for me I couldn't find anything to use for the lever bosses for the shifters. A bunch of calling around finally got me a pair that I can use on a new frame and I'm excited as heck. For the cost of tubes, consumables and heat treat I get to have a new ****ty bike to ride the crap out of!

Good to see you around here Mickey.....my budget, and favorite bike ever:


I know you have seen this already.

Man, spooky are so freaking cool, wish I could afford one. Nothing like an American made no BS racing bike.

Resurrecting this thread because I was waiting to post on it while building this bike.

I already know she's a not, but just finished building her and taking her for a maiden ride yesterday. Started with 1995 Bianchi Campione D'Italia frame, added a SRAM 900 crank, old stem and Zipp handlebars from my parts bin, SRAM force RD, SRAM rival FD and brakes, SRAM Red left/front shifter and SRAM Force right/rear shifter. Wheel aren't bike specific, I just swap them between my bikes at the moment, PT Pro+ HED Bastogne rear and Mavic Ksyrium Elite front. Saddle is a Toupe (not normally that tipped up, I must have made a mistake on a mid ride adjustment and not noticed. It's more level now) from my other bike that I had replaced with a Romin.

She's the Blue Daemon (Frankenstein's monster reference)

I like the straightforward look. But I recently refurbished a SR400 for a friend. The test ride nearly rattled my teeth out. Aluminum has come a long way since the 80's.

Bike I built for my wife:



Spicer frame new off ebay, R600/tiagra group, home built wheels (BHS hubs, Kinlin XR-300, Sapim Race). About $850 total.

im not sold on the saddle but it is still a hot bike. i miss the class of silver parts and that frame color is a perfect place to hang them.

I know you say it is the camera angle but I dont buy it. if the saddle works then it works for you, but that would hurt me so bad. get some matching tires also.

4th saddle she's tried. This ones a Terry and their supposed to know about girl parts.

I'm a nut for silver stuff but it doesn't always work on modern frames. On that one it works even better that it appears in the photo because the color is blue powder coat with a slight metal flake clear coat over it. In sun light it's pretty stunning.

i dont buy it. that exuse is used a lot even though you can base saddle angle off other objects. the saddle looks closer to perpendicular with the seatpost than it does parallel to the top tube. the saddle also doesnt look anywhere close to parallel with the fence but the top tube does.

if it is comfortable for you fine, but dont try and convince me that it is only slightly tipped.

the saddle isnt bad, just not my preference. i think it would look stunning if it were the same grey as the tape. either way i think it still looks better than a black saddle would (given that is id a womans bike) trust me, that is only a minor comment on a very nice build.

when i built my wifes bike she wanted silver components, a white saddle, white bar tape, and pink cable housing. the end result was great.

ive got about $350 in this build (the brake levers are now silver)

Glad you liked it! I pretty much went over the top with lighting on the bike in road warrior kind of way. I commute home mostly at night so the lights are literally a life saver.

Some more pics of the nite rider:


Side by side with a streetcar at night:

Meh, Maybe it is, I was fiddled with it at the beginning of the ride. I've also had a migraine all day so haven't looked at it since the photo, and didn't notice it until the photo when I posted, hence why I thought it was an illusion. maybe it slipped during the ride, idk

Although, I'm not hugely concered on convincing anyone of anything or making excuses. It looked weird to me and I guessed at why.

it may have, i had a kalloy post on one of my bikes and i had to tighten the bolt really tight to keep the saddle angle from changing. i dont think the notches in the clamped matched the ones in the post as well as higher end posts.

Case in point...my 2009 Trek 1.5.



I got a 2009 and paid a 2008/leftover price for it.

Here's an 08' 1.5 & Madone 6.9.





The current trend by Cannondale & Specialized of making aluminum
copies of their carbon superbikes was being done by Trek 5 years ago.

________________________________________________________________________

My 2nd budget bike, my 2009 Cannondale CAAD9-7.
Before it was assembled, I had the Ultegra SL crank installed.