peacer

hey people,

got my nicest bike ever. its a beautiful flourescent yellow makino with red chinese badging. would post flix but apparently i'm not smart enough to upload a photo onto velospace. anyway...needless to say i'm riding the sh*t out of it. i'm a pretty skilled, fast, hard rider and i live in nyc. nothing crazy happening, just semi-aggressive street riding, every day, with maybe a few more hops off curbs and air on the road than i should be taking. last bike i rode was an area 51, tig welded, and i basically rode it till it fell apart (a few crashes involved, plus 4 years of mashing about).

anyways, this goes out particularly to people with nice, lightweight lugged steel bikes (especially japanese keirin frames):

how hard do you ride em?

how long can you expect them to last?



-a

oh and here's some pre-emptive answers:

1. no, i dont' know what the tubing is.
2. i'm about 155 lbs
3. no, i don't wanna sell it.

andre nickatina

i know messengers that ride keirin bikes into the ground and they hold up. throw some bar tape over where the bars hit the top tube, don't get into a front end collission or serious crash and you should be good. i've ridden keirin bikes fast and hard but feel guilty about it because they're nice handmade bikes, whereas my KHS flite i could care less because it's a factory built taiwanese tank.

here's a veteran portland messenger's 3rensho...

Elderberry

I always say - "Ride it like you sourced it."

dervish

its a bike
its meant to be ridden and not just looked at
enjoi it

jgarcia186

Saw that at NAHBS08. must have been the most expensive bike rack ive ever seen.

andre nickatina

Haha well that's Sharky's bike and it gets ridden harder than most people would be comfortable with on this forum.

Aeroplane

You can only ride it as hard as your internet persona is.

dylandom

i had a head on crash and the top tube and down tube bubbled and i have been riding that frame hard for a year. than i got doored and had to change the fork but it's still doing its job. i work on my bike so i am constantly throwing it up against fences and what not.

pazzmore

the real question: IS THAT STRONG enough to skill & trick**********?

jdms mvp

makino with chinese lettering? uhh pix or ban

helloamerican

well it's strong enough to ride on the tarck.


they're strong but i wouldn't put it through curb abuse.. even high quality frames can get worn down riding on cobblestones over time.

teiaperigosa

oh and that's what I asked your girl, she was like, "saddle up, do your thing thing"

I's like, "bet"

don't hate the playa, hate the lugged steel

jussik

I was expecting someone to pick on the 'chinese lettering' issue sooner...

goldenskeletons

i've seen quite a few wrecked njs frames in new york. be prepared to find a bubble in yer top tube, a crack in yer fork crown or a bend in yer downtube well within a year if you ride like you say you do.

andre nickatina

^ ^ ^ It depends on the tubing used too, don't forget that. Those dudes train on NJS frames as well... and most people know that you don't train on as nice of a bike as you race on. My old Grand Velo had some Tange No. 2 tubing, e.g., and it was pretty rugged and took a beating fairly well. Nicer tubing like Kaisei 8630 is a lot thinner walled and rides very nice, but is easier to dent.

teiaperigosa

andre nickatina...I don't know if I can go for that. and if I would, that would only make sense for custom frames (I guess that applies to the USeD njs argument). steel bicycles, even racing ones, are pretty rugged period. especially for someone at 155lbs. I'm 180 and I feel like a featherweight, like I can do pretty whatever I want on my steelz. once you KNOW how to ride them, they should hold up pretty well

andre nickatina

Dude I said it was easier to dent, that's an objective fact because the walls of the steel are thinner. Steel is rugged, yes, but top-of-the-line current stuff gets such thin diameters that it's not going to take an unexpected crash quite the same way as some old school Reynolds 531 bike. You can still ride the **** out of NJS frames and I've done just that myself, on 3 different frames, I'm just saying it's not a static, easily generalized issue - it's pretty variable. And I'm talking about damage occuring from banging up a bike in crashes and accidents, not just hopping curbs or riding fast over crappy roads.

vee_dub

I like that handle bar....what are they???

andre nickatina

chopped mavic bullhorns. no longer available... only through NOS, used bins, ebay or craigslist.

a lot of messengers i see chop their bullhorns that way.

teiaperigosa

aight...imma go ahead and still say that if you don't have a custom frame, and you aren't overweight or overly weighty, it doesn't matter!

don't crash your steel, and if you do...let it not be a front end collision, but if you do...stop crashing

....'dude'

andre nickatina

I pretty much agree with you, broseph

peacer

okay i think there's a pic there. yeah i figured the writing was japanese for obvious reasons, then a chinese girl told me it was chinese. says something like "always with buddah, fast under trees." no joke. two different sources have told me that (i thought the first the person was f-ing with me).

and just to clarify, i only asked about frame-life out of curiosity. make no mistake - imma ride like i stole it - regardless of whether or not it's gonna last. just wanted to DISCUSS!

"eat fist toss salads and make rap ballads."

pax.

paulv

hey i saw your bike at the oslo coffee shop and saw you a few other times by the wburg bridge. i can attest he rides his bike, at least to coffee shops

j/k. nice ride, and what the others said, these bikes are not made to crash or ride hard into potholes, not that any tarck bikes are... you should be fine but common sense, be careful and check your tubes etc.
cheers

peacer

yeah, an average tuesday-type thought for me goes something like "woah, i'm not riding hard enough, i'll get more coffee at oslo, i need a job, i gotta pay for this bicycle, woah look at that white squirrel, omg, i'm blazed, etc..."

that said, amidst these mega/meta-deliberations i can be spotted, no hands, eyes closed in meditation, writing text messages while simultaneously RIDING REALLY HARD.

bradenCBC

I sold you that bike on ebay... and not that it gives me any right to tell you what to do with your life but...

For the love of god take those risers off.