Is this some BF meme I didn't pick up on, yet?

And what makes you think that frame isn't a nice frame?


Among other things, I have found:
Trek with shimano 600/Sante parts and a while rolls saddle.
Gitane Tour de France with a PERFECT brooks professional and campy c-record hubs.
Bianchi with shimano 600 arabesque group.
Panasonic Touring bike with a brooks saddle.
PERECT early 90s Specialized Stumpjumper, just needed a wheel. The bike I dreamed of having BITD.
One of those Cannondale MTBs with the 24" rear wheel (and pink paint! Rad to the max!)
Three Schwinn Stingrays. (two from the 60s, one of those OCC deals)
Probably 50 other bikes sold on CL: solid, working bikes for $50-$100.
Dozens of good tires, gator skins, gp 3000/4000, you name it.
Busted aluminum frames and aluminum parts, I'm guessing $400-500 worth of scrap over the years.


Watch out dumpster diving noobs, you could end up with a bunch of cool stuff and piles of left over cash if you aren't careful.

for real. this guys got it right.

ok, you lost everything right here. you're just being a jerk.

You just suck at bikes. go home.

if people are pulling bikes out of the trash to play with more power to em

at the worst they could end up frustrated or disappointed and quit cycling

but at the minimum someone got to tinker with and learn about a bike that was in the trash anyway

all noobs should **** with trash bikes for a while

Well, ****. I guess I don't deserve to ride a bicycle. So long guys! I'm gonna walk for fun now.

Edit: I can still have my NJS shoes, right?

Please tell me this is a joke.


Oh, and by the way,

***WTB a Pista wheelset for $50***

I expect it by the end of the day. With tires. Seriously. I am in Madison and am willing to come pick it up on my way home from work. I'll put a posting on CL in just a minute. Let's make this happen!

The OP's post is really lkinda lame--

dumpster diving bikes means more metal gets recycled and used--
and there are some gems out there to be found contrary to what
your post would suggest.

The problem is not that most of the stuff in dumpsters/thriftstores/basements
is crap (it is)--the problem is that the so-called noobs don't know what to look
for.

So instead of being a jerk and getting on a soap box why not write a tutorial on
what to look for in old bikes to encourage people to re-use more stuff--
If the same effort spend soapboxing was spent to actually tell people what
to look for. . .

what an effin waste of a thread.

The GT Peace 9r single-speed has an eccentric BB. Link here. The BB shell diameter is enlarged by about 1cm, and the actual BB is held in place off-center of the shell by two caps with off-center holes that thread into the BB on either side, with the BB clamped to the rings somehow.

some guy was shooting his mouth off on mtber last year about having invented an eccentric bb that fit inside a standard bb shell. but i haven't heard anything about it since.

I agree with the general statement that not all bikes are worth pouring money into, but if anyone can pull a bike/parts out of the trash and make a (non-sketchy) rideable bike out of it I'm all for it.

Just don't try to sell it for $400 on craigslist when you get bored with it.

That first post was written by someone with a big chip on their shoulder. Very strange, even for these forums.

I can see the point of the original post, but it might be better to say something like this:

You should make an educated, non-biased decision about whether the bike you found is a total pile of crap or whether it is going to be useful to you.

You should then figure out how much money and time you are willing to put into the bike and make an educated, non-biased decision as to whether you would be better off buying a pre-made bike.

My two bikes are a Fuji Berkeley fixed-gear conversion and a Raleigh-built Centaur Sports Model. I have added to and taken away from the Fuji gradually over a few years. It fits me well, and it's perfect for what I need it to do. The Centaur has gotten stripped down a bit and has a newer Sturmey-Archer three-speed wheel set from a bike my sister didn't want. When I got it, I had do straighten out the frame with a hammer and some chunks of wood after it had been wrecked a number of times, probably by drunk and careless students who found it before I saved it. With a huge basket, it makes for a great shopping bike.

My wife rides a Trek 310 fixed gear conversion on a redished stock rear wheel and a history of assorted fronts. My friend found it abandoned on our college campus after the students moved out, and it sat in front of my other friend's house for a few months before being rescued. It's perfect for her, and she loves it. Her other bike is a Raleigh Grand Prix with a set of fenders and some newer replacement wheels, making for a serviceable vintage tourer.

I don't feel that I have wasted time or money on any of these bikes, and I am very happy with all of them. On the other hand, I have friends that ride gas pipe hunks of crap and have spent either no money at all or far more than they should have.

I realize that whoever is actually riding a bike is doing better than I am typing on the Internet.

I know - and by the way, that's not the only frame to have an eccentric BB shell, there's the beautiful Zion frames, too. That's WHY I asked if there's some special type of BB (bottom bracket, not BB shell) that would function as an eccentric BB when put in a norma BB. I don't know how to explain this any more clearly. A BB that has external bearings connected with a spindle - and this spindle can move in the BB shell.

Should I patent my idea? Seems to be inexistent and un-obvious. I thought it was obvious enough that someone did it by now.

WIN! That's what I'm looking for.

I have never seen one. If you take a bare axle and stick it in the shell you can see how little room there is for bearings if the axle were offset enough to get any real adjustment range out of it. The bearings would be so small they would not hold up to well.
Outboard bearings could give you plenty of room. A guy with a mill and a lathe could take a set of out board cups, cut them down to fit a band clamp(you could also weld tabs but then they might not end up where you wanted when the cup was in the frame) and slot them to pinch. Then a make alloy discs to fit in place of the bearings. The disc would be bored and threaded to fit some old style shells. Then cut an axle, widen it and weld it back together to fit the new width shells(or make a new axle on the lathe) This might cause some trouble with Q factor and chain line. You would need to widen the center section to mate to the bearings and shorten the axle past the race to get the width back down.

stamped drops, slack geometry indicative of lower end bike-boom touring frames (probably hi-tensile straight gauge tubes). Paint is likely hiding some corrosion. Univega isn't exactly known for making thoroughbreds...

if he loves the frame, more power to him and i hope he rides the snot out of it. just don't tout is as some amazing value of a build.

Im not saying you cant find great stuff in the garbage, but you gotta know whats worth throwing any amount of money at. Unless the frame is some jewel, buying everything else new is just silly.

oh and if you want a learning experience, tear down your bike and rebuild it. you dont have to hang new parts to learn how to install them.

I am not worried about chainline. By now I have developed enough tricks to accomodate almost any immaginable chainline situation, and still have it straight as an arrow.

The Q-factor is a bit more worrisome, though. I would pretty much have to use low Q-factor crankarms to have a comfortable distance between pedals. And such cranksets are expensive (for no good reason, I should add). A bit more worrisome I said, but not all that much - it might be a manageable problem.

EDIT: by the way, yours was one of the best bike-mechanics related post I have ever read. Much respect.

Conversions are perfect for people that aren't sure if they'll enjoy the whole fixed/ss thing and don't want to go balls deep in something they might hate. I wasn't sure so I made a conversion for $35 (could be made for even less) and tried it out.

go with it!

My Peugeot is everthing you just listed and I love it to death. There's nothing wrong Univegas, if it came in under 25lbs chances are it wasn't hi ten.

This thread just makes me want to build a conversion.....

Neither of the bikes pictured on page three has stamped drop outs. They both look to be cast, one with double eyelets and the other with a cutout. The frames ae lugged and they have a nice scallop fill at the top of the seat stay. Probably decent Tange tubing or 531(everybody used 531) Univega may not have made tons of super highend bikes but they made LOTS of good mid range stuff, they did not use much hi-ten(I have had a couple of their MTBs and none were hi-ten)

The trick is finding someone willing to do the work. Most machine shops need to make money and tinkering usually does not do that.

I think a spring loaded tension pulley would work, and be much easier to do. The chain is tight on top when you pedal and on the bottom when you slow/resist. If you added a pulley to keep the slack out of the system, that did it by spring tension so there would be no real load on its mount. It would just jockey thru its range to keep the slack out of the system. So it could be clamped to the chain stay and would not be subject to lots of load.