molleraj

Hey all, I just had a question about identifying my dad's old road bike. I took it out for a 9.2 mile ride today and was very impressed. I averaged 15.6 miles per hour and hit 30 mph on a downhill stretch, which is about as good as my surprising speed king recumbent (BikeE CT RoadE edition with narrow tires).

My dad had found this in the trash and replaced the drop bars with hybrid-style flat bars. It has stem shifters, caliper brakes, and Suntour Spirt (front) and Honor (rear) derailleurs. I think the wheels are 700C. The saddle, whatever it is, is absolutely awful, and you definitely feel bumps rattling up to your rear. The bike fits me just right (I can stand just over the top tube) and feels light, but not that light. I doubt it is chromoly, but I am not sure. Other web searches suggest this was a no-name brand bike built in Taiwan (ROC), but unfortunately very little information about it is available online. Any further information would be greatly appreciated. In any case, this beast should help me cruise past the corn fields of southwestern Ohio in style.

sd5782 

Looks like your dad knew what he was doing. I set up one of my old Super Sports with similar bars and it is a pleasant ride. Those brake levers play very nicely with the center pull brakes. I think I see aluminum wheels too, which sure take the bike up above lower grade. Basic Suntour is just fine too. Is that cottered crank aluminum? Finding a comfortable seat may take some trial and error. Riding in the farm country is wonderful. Have fun.

Narhay

You may want to overhaul the hubs, bottom bracket and headset and replace tires, cables, housings and brake pads for reliability before getting too far from home. The old grease solidifies and needs refreshing after a few decades and the rubber bits tend to rot from the ages. A lot of these old tires will inflate right up and hold air...until many of them go pop. This usually happens right at the furthest point from home.

The bike itself has lower end running gear but the suntour stuff works well and should serve your purposes nicely with a bit of maintenance. Some polish and a coat of wax should clean it up nicely.

The saddle should be about horizontal and parallel to the ground. Otherwise it does look a bit like a hatchet from here.

molleraj

Oh nice! The derailleurs do seem pretty reliable. Everything definitely needs lubing though. I will need to check if the crank and wheels are aluminum. I guess I could start by putting a magnet up to each part. I think I definitely need to replace the seat. I may swap out the saddle on my dad's other old bike, a Schwinn New World he rode at MIT.

It is fun! Thanks. I will be sure to get photos from my rides.

molleraj

Good point! I am going to re-lube everything today and check on the tubes and tires. I am lucky I don't ride in a place with a ton of glass on the street (*cough* NE DC *cough*).

Glad to hear the derailleurs are decent! I agree, I want to perhaps take off that annoying coat of gold paint.

About the saddle, the two rails suddenly bend 90 degrees near the back, so it seems it is designed to be so strange (ha). I may swap out the saddle on my dad's other bike, which seemed a lot more normal.

molleraj

I noticed lots of shifting problems today so I first tightened the rear derailleur cable, then loosened it, and then adjusted the "hi" gear screw with the shifter set to the highest gear so that the derailleur finally reached the bottom gear. Alas, the shifter cable doesn't go back in the housing all the way when I release tension to go into the highest gear (3-5 mm of the cable end cap sticks out of the shifter). I suppose the rusty cable or the housing are probably causing issues shifting by adding friction and need replacement.

Also, it appears we have a serial number - I think it's SOD5083 based on the blurry photo of the bottom of the bottom bracket below. Any clues from this, T-Mar ?


Serial number SOD5083?

molleraj

I just made a short video about the bike here:
It's serving nicely in the Clunker 100 contest.

T-Mar

I suspect the 2nd character of the serial number is actually a zero, as oppsed to an O (oh). If so, it would appear to be a 1980 model, though I don't know who manufactured it. BTW, if you want someone to receive a notification of a mention, you have to place the @ symbol in front their user name.

molleraj

Oh interesting! Oh sorry, I thought I did that. I will see which manufacturers had a SnXnnnn serial format.

Andy_K 

Yeah, it's actually worse than that. If you type the '@' symbol and someone's name, the forum software will pop up what looks like a helpful auto-complete list, but if you let it auto-complete it will replace your 'mention' like @molleraj (which notifies the person) with a 'tag' like molleraj (which does not notify the person). For a successful mention, you need to keep typing as if the software hadn't tried to help you.

molleraj

Yes! That's exactly what I did wrong. Thanks for explaining.

molleraj

Upon further reading @T-Mar's Asian Serial Number Guide, I am pretty sure I am looking at a serial number of the format S(2): SyFxxxx. My serial number must be S0D5083. This would be most likely made in February (fortnight D, so weeks 7-8) 1980 (year ends with a 0). It is apparently Taiwanese made per other posts, but S(2) suspiciously was also used by Shogun.

Anyway, I've pretty much run this thing into the ground as is haha. I am about to replace the tires, which are peeling apart on the sidewalls (yuck). Surprisingly no pops or flats on the road but I keep it at 70 psi instead of 90. Today was my last ride for a while as I managed to crack the plastic saddle. I do have new Kenda gumwalls and tubes coming in the mail.

Lots of pictures highlighting SW Ohio rides coming soon.

molleraj

Great great advice @Narhay. After noticing multiple bits scraping off the tires, plus tire cracking (dry rot), I decided to replace them with new Kenda K35 27 x 1 1/4 gumwalls. I also replaced the seat which not only lost its covering but also cracked after about 200 miles. I was able to repack the bearings on the front hub with new grease but I lacked a Suntour freewheel spanner tool for the rear wheel and I didn't want to mess with cotter pins on the cranks, so I will probably come back to those at some point. I think I will be able to overhaul the headset with an appropriately large wrench (30.2 mm?).

Anyhow, the bike felt distinctly safer with these repairs plus some further brake adjustment. In addition, it happened to be much faster too! I averaged 17.1 mph over 11.1 miles where I would typically average 14.5 or 15.5 mph. Pictures soon!

molleraj

As promised, some photos of the repairs.



Old vs. new (Kenda) 27 x 1 1/4" tire

Caged bearings weren't hard to service and all looked good enough

Front hub bearings before and after cleaning with paint thinner

Bike with new seat and gumwalls

Seat transferred from another trash to treasure bike (Specialized Globe Sport). I replaced this seat with a padded one on that bike.