RCMoeur 

(looks at head tube, decides not to challenge poster to a basketball game)

RCMoeur 

Yesterday was the big Tucson bike swap, and we took my truck and trailer down there with a bunch of bikes for the Rusty Spoke bike co-op. I also brought my Nishiki Pueblo "Uglybike Mk 2" to the swap as a getaround bike (I had to park the truck & trailer several blocks away), but since it was there we put a $125 price tag on it along with the caption "A bike that only its mother could love - and we're not too sure about her either." But right before closing time, a young lady took it for a spin, fell in love with its charming quirkiness (and the price), and is now the happy owner. Proceeds were donated to the Rusty Spoke. Photo beheaded in case she didn't want to be publicly associated with us.



The Rusty Spoke also sold 7 bikes and some parts & accessories, so it was a good day overall.

Now there's an empty hook in the auxiliary bike shed. I will have to strongly resist filling it again. But there's an emerald-colored Raleigh in the "to be fixed" pile that's calling to me...

Kabuki12

yea , I know . I’m only 6’ tall but long legs. I have built this to ride instead! The Competition is 59cm

1978 Raleigh Pro, 64cm

RCMoeur 

Egads. Was there any steel left in Great Britain after building that frame?

smontanaro 

Just stumbled on a reference to this thread and subscribed. I have something like 10-14 bikes and frames, depending on how you count (fewer in French, more in English? 🤷‍♂️). I have been good about not purchasing anything for a while. The Monti Special (link in sig) was my last, and by far most expensive acquisition.

Still, every now and then I see something and think, "Hmmm..." I realized if I ever wanted to buy another bike without getting at least arched eyebrows by the person sitting to my right at the moment I'd have to get rid of two or three current bikes and/or frames. To that end, I sold the Frejus Tour de France a month or so ago. I got my Automoto Champion du Monde rolling recently. I'm happy with the result, but it's not likely to be a keeper. I'll probably move it along to someone more into that era of French bikes.

I also got my Fuji The Finest going a week or two ago. It will likely be a keeper, but will be kept at my son's place in Portland (gugie calls these "n+0" bikes I think).

After that, the decisions get a bit more difficult. At the moment, I'm trying to get everything off hooks and on the road. Being able to have everything in something like a rideable rotation should help decide on keepers.

RichSPK

That reminds me of the Volkswagen Harlequin Golf, which, in turn, reminds me of the Mondrian LOOKs.

RCMoeur 

It just kind of... came together.

The frame was a Nishiki Pueblo that was kicked out of the Recycle Your Bicycle program, because they want those bikes to look "like new" for the deserving foster kids, and the paint and patina on the Pueblo was far too gone to meet that standard. But otherwise fully functional. The cranks were Deore XTs that were severely oxidized, so I decided to paint them.

Everything else just accumulated - degunked Suntor Xpress shifter, mismatched wheels & city tires, a rack that once was Bianchi celeste-green, and so on. It actually rides great, and saw duty as a shop and neighborhood bike for a while. I'll miss it, but happy the new owner loves it so much.

merziac

Not surprised by this, it exudes quirkiness in a great way, those seat covers are genius, they add a perfect amount of whimsy, especially on a bike like this.

Great work.

RCMoeur 

10-Q.

At this moment, I am actually recovering a bin full of sun-crunchy saddles in preparation for a foster kids bike event on Sunday the 28th. And I picked up three more eye-straining patterns of spandex at the fabric store today for future production runs by my long-suffering sister.

And "quirky" is a much more polite term than I've heard used for some of my past builds. But their owners attest they ride smoothly and hold up well.

merziac

Well the less polite terms come from those who have no business weighing in, they should quickly and succinctly be summarily dismissed in short order.

Murray Missile 

Yeah, as some of you have probably noticed I'm not doing so good at this reduction thing right now. N+3 in less than 10 days. #1 was for parts and has been stripped. #2 was also for parts, unfortunately it's my size. It's fate has yet TBD. #3 was also supposed to be just for parts. However, while a little bent (fork only) and rough it's Italian with Columbus tubing, Campy dropouts and it's exactly my size. I never stood a chance.

AdventureManCO 

What I have found is if you have something that becomes a priority moreso than the bikes or said acquisition of bikes, it becomes easy to shed the accumulation. For example, one of my favorite pastimes is vintage dirt bikes. I didn't grow up in the 60s/70s, but we had those old bikes when I was a kid, as my dad was into them back then. Well, I have an opportunity to bring in a couple of my favorite motorcycles to the garage (coming soon). I'm finding that the bicycles are definitely taking a back seat to the room to be made for the motorcycles, as I've been looking forward to these motorcycles for almost 20 years. I've been on a tear recently in the garage, and if you would have told me a year ago that I would be able to park a vehicle in the garage, still have a decent woodshop (tablesaw, jointer, bandsaw, planer, etc), a bike collection AND some dirt bikes, I'd have though you'd gone mad.

Now, I just need to start refining. I'm ready to get rid of some of the redundancy I'm finding, as well as some of the bikes that are not the correct size. The one exception to that is the Gitane, as I'm really wanting to test out that ride. But so far, the Guac, the Trek 930, The Sport Racer, the Huffente - these all fit. Even the Allez fits, but I still think I'm going to move it on. Ideally, it would be nice to have 1 bike from the main eras of vintage road bikes that appeal to me - the classy bike boom years (late 60s - early 70s), the refinement years (late 70s to early 80s), and then the 'vintage modern' era (late 80s - 90s).

The Gitane and Crapamount cover the early 70s well, as does the PX-10, but as you can see there is more there than I need. I'd really like to get maybe a nicer old Italian for that category, like a Pogliaghi, Pinzani, or Galmozzi. For the mid-era, the Trek fills in nicely, but eventually I'd love to get a small-make American bike, something like a McLean. For the later era (index shifting), the Ironman does great, but maybe a Tesch? The Guac fills this role nicely, although I gotta get a better BB wrench for that darned Italian BB that keeps coming loose.

All this is waxing poetic...needless to say, I'm ready to let a few more go, because something a little higher up on the priority has taken their place. Good news is that every single (and I do mean every single) bike is now off of the floor, which is a huge feat.

The biggest takeaway with all this is actually w/ the wife, who has seen me going through all this madness and has very kindly put up with me and my eccentricities.

jdawginsc 

While relaxing yesterday after an unusually robust day for me at the gym I did a little math.

I have only bought the Blasphemous Raleigh in anticipation of the Clunker/On the Road challenge in 2024.

In the same time I have
1. Given two bikes away to students
2. Sold the Cannondale
3. Built and/or Held onto until pickup (please soon) 3 bikes for my principal friend, wife and daughter.
4. Moved the AD and Fiorelli on to great BFers

So I am a net N-7 for 2024.

I am going to build up the mint Cannondale, then hopefully move on the mini Schwinn Voyager, 57cm Ross Centaur and 54cm Nishiki Tri A and perhaps a 52cm Giant OCR and a Giant Sedona X to unsuspecting buyers.

Have NOT had much luck in moving parts unfortunately but other than the wheels, they don’t take up much space.

Then about 10 more frames and bikes that I wish to paint and give away/sell as built up fixies and such. Once that happens, the utility trailer goes bye bye.

Mr. Spadoni 

On the plus side, the build of the Colnago from MadHonk has started. On the minus side, digging through the parts boxes gave me a sense of just how much I have in excess parts and how it slows down the process. Yesterday I sorted front derailleurs to pick something suitable. After an hour, I got it down to four that are possibilities. So another hour to chose the finalist, and who know how long to get rid of the ones I know I won’t ever use, but can’t seem to part with.
Here’s the build so far….

Mad Honk 

jdawginsc 

Both of you are making progress on those builds and both look great!

Aubergine 

Made some progress today. I plan to take two bikes (a 1962 Peugeot AO-8 and a early 70s Gitane mixte) to Bike Works, the main Seattle bike charity. I hauled out the Pigeot and took off a few parts that are not really appropriate for Bike Works's clients (the original white Delrin derailleurs and a lovely Idéale saddle). I also pulled out all the wheels I plan to give away, mostly but not all with steel rims. They at least have decent hubs.

Next up will be going through my excessive boxes of parts to cull them mercilessly.

Murray Missile 

That's partially how I got into bikes, they were my "new priority" to ween myself off of cars LOL.

smontanaro 

Me too. I only ever had one at a time (never enough time, money or space for a "stable"), but my last sports car was a 1970 914-6.



I realized it was a lot of parked money which I couldn't drive most of the year. I decided to move it along, then got into vintage bikes. I could have many bikes for the same amount of money, and I could devote some bikes to winter riding.

Aubergine 

Aaaannd that's done. I also took 9 wheels with the bikes. Only two bikes remain in the floor of my shed.

Trav1s

Update: The 20" Specialized Hotrock is cleaned up and ready to rehome. Added new grips and tires in the cleanup. I have more time in it than sense but it was a fun one. Battle scars are already in place for the next owner...

Post - cleanup pic



This week I found an amazingly nice 20" Trek Mystic girls bike for $20 around the corner. It was dirty from garage storage but paint is glossy, has minimal light scratches, and has good tires/tubes. This one has more potential so I'll swap the tires from it to the Specialized and put the new Trek tires on the Mystic - the tread pattern will match the handgrips on the Mystic.

Right after I picked it up.

Kabuki12

Boxing up the Raleigh I sold . No regrets , just great memories of many rides . I actually sold it for more than I paid for it in 2015-2016 , that ain’t bad considering how the market is. The guy who bought it had one many years ago but it got stolen in 1980.

So long old friend!
Now I need to decide what is next to move along, hmmm

Kabuki12

Way cool!! My mechanics/friend had one back in the seventies . I was driving a 1957 356 A T1 coupe . The six cylinder 914 is a bit of an anomaly , my brother had a 1.7 4 cylinder that he bought new in 1972 or so and that car was a blast to drive. Now , back to our regularly scheduled program.....

Murray Missile 

Stopped at my LBS to drop off the replacement fork for the Rossi I just acquired, I took the old one so they could measure the steerer length. It raised an eyebrow or two LOL. "Unfortunately" I left with a Motobecane Grand Jubile I had first spotted in the back room 2 or 3 years ago...... He told me he was cleaning out too and that he'd make me a hell of a deal on it and he did, there was no way I was leaving without it. Paint wasn't as good as I remembered but it's all there.

In talking with them I found out they have a program to teach kids how to work on bikes and they will take any old parts or bikes and what they can't/don't use they pass on to a couple other kids that come in on a regular basis looking for parts/project bikes. PERFECT! So as soon as I got home the Jubile got off loaded and #1 and #2 of my recent acquisitions got loaded in the car minus the pieces I bought them for along with a 3rd bike and some forks. I'll drop them off tomorrow and get the next load lined up. That puts me back in N-1 status for the year and raised the average quality of the herd. I already have 3 picked out for the next load.

AdventureManCO 

Good man! I use that same logic - 'let me get rid of two or three of the beaters, then bring home one I really want and I'll still be down one' but hey it works!

I have to decide what will be next to go. More will be on the chopping block.