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Plenty of tire clearance. |
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Plastic ring has got to go. |
The idea was to find an inexpensive, yet serviceable, bike that I could use for hour-or-so rides on the roads of north-central Illinois (read: no major hills of any kind) when making the twice-or-so visits a year out there. I'm a morning person, and it's not unusual that I'm up well before most of the rest of the family. Getting an hour on the bike will go a long ways to keeping my sanity. (NOT meant to be a comment on my wife's family.)
I looked at several single-speeds, had a cart all ready at Nashbar just in case, had a Chicago local willing to help me out with facilitating a Craigslist buy so I didn't have to ship the bike... I perused Craigslist in both the Chicago and Seattle/Tacoma areas for decent bikes at awesome prices. There must be a whole lot of very tall people out in the general population that I just don't see on a daily basis -- I was shocked at the number of bikes with the seat slammed all the way to the top tube... "fits riders 5'4" to 6'6"... I missed out on a number of really good deals... Called/emailed a few sellers who just didn't respond...
But Monday night I picked up a bike from a local Craigslist ad. A Specialized Sirrus Triple, circa 1991-ish. I talked with the seller for a while, and the story was one I'd heard many times before: bought the bike to do Seattle to Portland way back when, basically stored the bike after and never rode it again.
Suntour Edge components, with single-pivot brakes, Wolber box-section rims, indexed 7-speed back end with a thread-on freewheel (hm... this could convert to a single speed easily) and down-tube-mounted shift levers, one-inch threaded steerer with quill stem, all steel. With a nice coating of dust. But the rear indexing is still dialed in... Makes me feel a little like a Velo-version of Bob Villa.
It's in good shape, but needs a little work. The task list (for now) is:
* Swap the gel monstrosity saddle to something more to the liking of my tush. (check -- already have this)
* Pull the plastic platform pedals and replace with some SPDs. (check again)
* New bar tape. (check times three)
* Swap the tires for something more suited to the potential of running on gravel roads. (half check -- I'll need a second one).
* Clean the drive train. 20 year old lube plus a healthy sprinkling of dust makes awesome grinding compound.
* Repack the hubs. They're running the original grease, which is probably dried to a hard patina now.
* True up the wheels. They're really close, but a little tweaking of the spokes will dial them in nicely.
* File off the fork ends. Lawyer tabs? Uh, the quick release is supposed to be QUICK, eh?
* Maybe swap out the cranks/bottom bracket. This would lose some significant weight, and ditch the very-unnecessary third chainring. (have them, just need to decide if I want to do this)
* Get a box to ship the bike to Illinois and pack it up.
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Torture device. Outta here. |
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Nice shifters, still dialed in. And no extra charge for the coating of dust. |
While not a high-end bike, and likely not the perfect geometry for my liking, it'll do nicely for the week-at-a-time trips across the country when I don't want to hang up my cleats and get all stir-crazy.
Edit to add: Upon beginning the disassembly, as in all projects, there's a thing called "scope creep". Meaning that the project grows as you dive in. Nothing catastrophic, but the threads on the right crank arm stripped when I tried to take it off, I found that the chain was one good hard shift away from exploding, and the plastic under-bottom-bracket cable guide disintegrated as soon as I took the cable tension off. So far, though, that little plastic piece is the only one I don't have in the parts bin.
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