USAZorro

Dang. Have been walking right past it for ages due to thinking it was a Britain only product.

bikemig 

I finished my SekineSHR cheapo build. After doing some sleuthing, this bike is from 1972 and completely original other than the consumables I replaced (cables, cable housing, and saddle). I like this bike a lot. It reminds me of the bike I rode to high school (a Nishiki) with "safety" levers, "rattrap" pedals," steel rims, and suntour derailleurs. The SekineSHR is nicer than the bike I had in high school with lots of chrome, a double butted chrome moly frame, and better quality shifters. This bike was in good shape when I bought it at $20. The bearing surfaces are all smooth and in good shape. All the parts were functional and worked nicely. Even the tires were in good shape and very rideable. The original handlebar tape was fine. The bike had more rust than miles.

I'll bet when I ride the bike for 100km that will be more miles than it's had since it was sold in 1972. I'll use it to go to the farmer's market which opens May 6. It's 14 miles round trip on the bike path along the Des Moines river. There's nothing quite like pastry and a cup of coffee on a nice sunny day to motivate you to go bike riding, .

Total costs are at $38 to get this bike road worthy.
(1) Bike $20
(2) Cables and housing at $12.99 (Amazon sells a decent looking set of brake and derailleur cables with white housing at $12.99)
(3) Used green saddle, $5 (it's a parts bin saddle). The old saddle was trash and I couldn't resist installing a saddle with green etching to complete the look.

bikemig 

I picked up what I believe to be a 1972 Sekine SHR for $20. The bike was completely original. After rebuilding it, the only things I replaced were the saddle and the cables and housing. The bike was in remarkably good shape (it even came with good tires). I figure it had more rust than miles.

So it was time to take it on a ride to see how it handled. It is a good riding bike with a nice set of components. It has been a very, very long time since I've ridden steel clinchers though (the bike has a double butted chrome moly main triangle, nice parts, and came stock with steel wheels).

I did a 24 mile ride. There was one more or less serious climb up the damn hill (that is the name of the hill because it climbs to the dam on Saylorville lake) that has a few 10% spots. I climbed that using a 40/24; the suntour v luxe is an excellent derailleur but it tops out at 24 teeth.

Here are the pics. I rode on a trail that I pick up near my house that follows the Des Moines River up to Saylorville Lake. This is an area with considerable wild prairie restoration and it is very pretty especially in the fall. The views from Saylorville Lake are nice. The bridge at the end of the path was near the end of the ride; it is a converted railroad/light railway bridge. So I'm 1/3 of the way to my 60 miles/100 km. I'll get the rest of the miles in by pedaling to the DM farmer's market once it opens up.


Central Iowa Trailmap and trailhead

Overlook of Red Feather Prairie

Overlooking Saylorville Lake

The bridge at the end of the ride

USAZorro

Anyone want to place a wager on the first entry to be 100% complete?

bikemig 

Hah, maybe. I doubt I'll ride that bike again until the farmer's market opens in May. Now if you said that getting this 100% complete first would sway your vote on the valuable prizes that will be rewarded in this "contest," I'll ride 40 miles this weekend!

USAZorro

One never knows, do they?

Pompiere

24 more miles on the FW Evans. I am really liking it, even with the rat-rod appearance. The frame fits like it was custom made for me. The Campy two-bolt seat post was a pain to adjust, but once dialed in, the B17 is perfect.

cyccommute 

Claiming first place. 93.2 miles. Picture at about 90 miles. The bike will melt back into the spare parts inventory.



This has been a problem child. Got 4 flats and destroyed 3 tubes in a ride around the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. On this ride, I didn’t see a limb and destroyed a helmet.

Fredo76

Bella at Black Mesa

I was out riding today, and when I got home, I was right at 100 miles on the odometer.



100 miles on Bella

I am really enjoying my rides on her. Some refinements are planned, but I'm getting used to riding clipless. Nice day today.

zookster 

My 1972 Mighty Montgomery Ward 10 speed is finished, at least a finished as I plan to do with it. I will start getting some miles on it next week, only been on one <1 mile test ride so far.

bikemig 

Those shifters rock in a 70s kind of way. What are they?

zookster 

Shimano 333 shifters. I too dig the 70's hotrod look. Picture from before cleaning.

darnet

Thank you, USAZorro, for forming this challenge. I'll be in, but unlike those who have already completed the mileage, I have yet to choose my ride.

Question, though...in the el cheapo category you encourage digging into your parts stash to find parts. Are said parts exempt from the budget limit (I would assume they would be well-used, and were in their time not top-of-the-line), or would they be expensed at some justifiable estimated value?

Thanks again.

USAZorro

If you paid for, or traded an item acquired since 1/1/23 for the part in 2023, consider it as part of the $108.00 limit. Items on-hand as of 1/1/23 count as $0. Items traded for items that were on hand as of 1/1/23 also count as $0. I will add this clarification to the initial page.

rustystrings61 

After initially presenting the frame I wanted to use, I was stuck. I have a seat post and not much else. Then I pondered raiding some of the clunkers I still have from previous challenges.

All of that is moot now. Yesterday I fixed and sold a dumpster find townie ($0 involved in replacing tubes and rim strips!), turned around and immediately bought a donor bike.




This 1993 Bianchi Eros was a whopping $40 and provides a nice RX-100 parts group including indexing bar end shifters, long cage derailleur set, 170mm triple cranks, and wheels - though the rear is an Exage hubbed replacement. Now to find a stem and some 42cm non-anatomic bars … and a LOT of cleaning and polishing time!

bikemig 

The Eros was a great deal at $40 and those parts will work nicely with your Neenan Lighthouse frameset. I'm looking forward to seeing this bike.

rustystrings61 

Well, phooey. Everything came off the donor Bianchi Eros EXCEPT for the drive side crank! I took the precaution of squirting a decent amount of PB Powerblaster into the juncture of the crank arm and the BB spindle, and I made certain to thread the extractor all the way in and cinch it down with a wrench to engage ALL the threads - all ALL the threads were stripped right out. Holy galvanic weld, Batman! After I got done calling the crank weld what it is, I poked around the parts bin and found an orphan drive side Sugino 170mm 110/74 crank. We'll see - I may go crazy and use the T.A. after all, assuming I can scrounge up a 38T 130 bcd chainring. The plan now is to harvest the chainrings and hacksaw off the wrecked drive side crank and see if I can extract and re-use the sealed cartridge bottom bracket, which feels surprisingly smooth.

I'll need to figure out brakes as well. The Lighthouse is set up for nutted calipers with a decent amount of reach. I may do a multi-bike swaparoo, taking the Dia Compe Gs from my soon-to-be-disassembled and sold Cannondale ST400 and putting them on my son's Mercian, then taking the fancy Gran Compes from that bike and putting them on the Lighthouse. We'll see.

rgvg

So hypothetically if I had a used SON hub I bought in say July last year, which I've been sitting on because I hadn't decided what size wheel and which bike I wanted to put it on, that's fair game?

USAZorro

Yes.

Now what I would not allow is for the hypothetical part to be sold, and the sale price applied to the project cost as a negative amount to offset other costs.

For example, if you use or trade the part for one that is used on the project, that's Zero. If you sell the part for $50, it doesn't change your budget to $158. (which I will also add as a clarification)

dddd

Really enjoying seeing this thread, hadn't visited it this year until now.

For any future stuck-on cotterless crank arms, I suggest that if the tool seems to be getting "over-stressed", leave the tool tightened on there and jump on the pedals, reversing the crank position 180-degrees every few jumps.
Then, re-tighten the tool, and as they say, "rinse, repeat".

This has never failed me. I've had my own crank-puller tools broken and good threads pulled out in my presence before I developed my method.

In a similar application, when dealing with nutted-spindle bottom bracket, the coarse threads on the thicker (10mm vs. 8mm diameter) studs really challenge the ability to get the arms on tight enough before the (brittle compared to bolt metal) 10mm spindle studs start loosing threads.
So I tighten the bolts only to (guessing) 20-25 ft-lbs, jump on the cranks and re-torque again, repeating until the arms are good and settled. This prevents the all-too-common problems of nutted spindles losing their threads, or having their crankarms come loose while riding.

One more thing that jumping on the pedals can help greatly with is removing old Stronglight crankarms using a TA-sized (23m) puller. The jumping reduces the needed pulling force by a large percentage. I dare say that the TA puller is completely fine on Stronglight cranks if some jumping on the pedals intersperses a progressive tightening of the remover tool.

This is all similar to removing really stuck cotters, the all-too-common case of cotters (even Raleigh's fatter threaded studs) starting to yield/bend as a proper cotter press is (over-)tightened on them (and likely before any proper penetrant has had a good couple of days and rides to work in).
But with the cotter removal process, in addition to jumping on the cranks, a torch may need to be applied to the knuckle of the arm (with tool left tightened in place!) until smoke starts issuing from it, whereby the tool can almost always be tightened further without damage to the cotter if you haven't already bent it significantly.

Interrupting "static" brute force with some "working", in other words, patience (and willingness to step back from optimistic hoped-for progress) required!

rgvg

Some parts I might use if it comes to that...

The thumb shifters were from a swap meet last week. Not likely to use them but maybe.

The Silver shifters I found in the bin at the coop. Who would give away some perfectly usable ratcheting shifters, I don't know. A steal at $5 CAD. Missing parts though so if I were to use them I'd have to order the missing bits from Rivendell.

The shifter pods were free with a pair of shifter pods I bought from a guy on craigslist a few years ago.

The SON hub I bought used last year but I wasn't sure what size wheel I'd build around it. Still not sure, actually. It's possible this hub was meant for smaller wheels.

Fredo76

Feature spotlight:


La Creme de la Kludge!

Pompiere

I finally got to ride the Marukin 3-speed long enough to give it a good evaluation. Overall, it rides pretty good, but I need to make a couple tweaks. First, I might change the gearing a bit. It seemed that I always wanted a gear in-between the ones I had. Worst case, I'll go back to a derailleur. Also, the stem needs to be longer. I just lifted the handlebar assembly off my Kabuki and put it on this bike as a shortcut, but the frame geometry is slightly different. 32.5 miles, so far.

rgvg

I got this bike for free on friday. Would be perfect for this challenge but I can't see myself riding this as I'm not 6' anything. I took it mainly for the rack and fenders, which would be perfect on my rack and fender less Hosteller. The sad thing about mine though is the right rear dropout is damaged from the hub slipping too many times. It was already like that when I got it but it did slip on me a few times before I realized the knob at the end of the quick release was not knurled and in fact was smooth and was really only a small grip poor (more like grip less) ridge.

Now if there is anyone in Vancouver who is 6' something and wants to give this one a go, let me know... This is definitely larger than 23", so at least 24", possibly 25".

USAZorro

trade bait?