jiggernaut

I'm looking for a budget road bike and a motorcycle shop has a stock of old road bikes. He's selling them for 200$ a piece. The first bike I have pictures of is a Masa15, it's really tall and fits me the best, the blue one is a raleigh super gran prix, and the last one is a raleigh gran prix. The raleighs aren't as tall but I can ride them comfortably. Judging from the sticker on the blue one they're 1980ish.

The Masa15 has Dia Compe front brakes and a Shimano rear disc, SunTour derailers, and the seat post and handlebars are ingraved with SR Melt forging. Also, ingraved on the handlebars is Sake Randnner Road Champion (he apparently used these bike in races ??)

The raleighs are fittied with ralieigh derailers and brakes.

The bikes have never been ridden and everything is in working order. They just look like they've been in a warehouse for sometime, the rubber around the brake levers has melted/fallen off.

So, Good deal? or run and never look back?


SANY0408.JPGSANY0409.JPGSANY0397.JPGSANY0400.JPGSANY0406.JPGSANY0405.JPGSANY0399.JPGSANY0401.JPGSANY0403.JPGSANY0407.JPGSANY0398.JPGSANY0404.JPG

Road Fan

Never heard of Masa. Where was it made?

jiggernaut

Japan is engraved on just about everything.

EjustE

That Masa is the pick of that litter. Suntour Cyclone and barbons, you cannot go wrong, esp if it fits. They were Japanese bikes from the 70s. $200 might be a fair price for that depending on the tubing. What does the sticker say? The Raleighs are fine, too and priced pretty close to market for 70s NOS, but that 20-10 tubing is heavy and I suspect that they have steel rims.

Chris_in_Miami

Not a screaming great deal at $200, but not a ripoff either. I think a lot of people will say the Raleighs are a better bike and they may be correct, but I'd get the Masa despite the fact that I've never heard of it. It looks to be a bit better than the entry-level blue Raliegh and may even have a chromoly frame (what does it say on the decal above the bottom bracket?

It looks like it has the best components apart from the disc brake (I've heard that those old ones were noisy and ineffective, but I've never ridden with them...) You can easily replace the disc with a caliper if that turns out to be true, and a standard caliper is probably lighter.

awc380

What's the deal with those disc brakes????

Chris_in_Miami

E beat me to the punch...

EjustE

they were called spoke protectors (aka dork disks) and have absolutely nothing to do with breaking.

tugrul

Not that disk. This disc.

Primitive Don

whoa.

Maddox

Wondering the same thing. Looks clunky and possibly heavy, but you'd probably have to redo the wheel if you took it off to save weight (GROAN).

Maddox

Let it be noted that the Masa15's rear brake is some sort of janky disc contraption. You might want to buy a caliper brake for the rear wheel instead of messing with it...

Maddox

Also, I really don't like that cable routing. At ALL.

EjustE

Holy cow! And someone got that thing to work with those diacombe levers? hmmmm

Zaphod Beeblebrox 

Its probably made for a standard pull so It will play nicely with regular Brake levers.

I agree that its probably heavy and wont perform the best seeing how its a pretty early disc system but It has a major cool factor and everything else about that Masa screams BUY NOW to me if it fits.

I mean look at the Pristineness of the Cyclone Derailleurs! Those are some of the best pieces of hardware around.

Hell, if it bites just pull the caliper and disc off and replace it with a standard rim brake

Chris_in_Miami

Oh, I just noticed the huge mount tab for the disc caliper, that's going to be ugly when the caliper comes off...

GrayJay

Run, dont ride away from these 3. Despite not having been previously used, those all look more like bikes worth more like $20 than $200. Despite a few interesting parts, none of them are racing bikes or are particularly desireable/valuable.They probably all need new tires at minimum and appear to have other mechanical issues (such as the cables) that would likely need to be addressed by a skilled bike mechanic. Plan on spending even more money on them after you buy them if you dont know bike maintanence. THere is probably a good reason that no one has bought them for 30 years.

clubman 

In addition to the Suntour drivetrain, if that's a Tange Levin headset (JIS), Araya rims, Sunshine/Suntour hubs, SR stem/bars you've got $200 of nice "take-off" components and a bizarro frame to sell to some fixed fiend. Decent forged dropouts too.

Only if you love to collect and stash parts.

jiggernaut

I've searched on ebay for some used bikes. I'm 6'3" and it seems 60+cm frames are far and few between. The Ebay bikes seem to be worn out or incomplete and still asking 300-400$. Would the need for a large frame make the masa worth 200 bones?

@grayjay These bikes do need new tires, I can see cracks in the sidewalls.

I searched for the metal composition on the frame and only found a small 78 on the seat tube, nothing on any of the stickers.

Grim

Somebody has posted pictures from that shop before, I remember that floor. Might have been on a blog because I am not finding it.
As I recall the story was it was originaly a bike shop and then they started selling Mopeds in the 80's and then went full on to the Motorcycle sales early 90's when the Bike boom went bust when the Yen tanked. The bikes were left over stock. I also recall a LOT of mid line bikes were still there last time I saw pictures.

Maddox

It's tough to say, because you obviously haven't test ridden it since the tires are junked...I'd say do your thoroughly examine and spin the back tire, to make sure that disk-brake thing isn't inhibiting wheel movement or action.

I'm concerned about the disk brake for a couple reasons: (1) it's unfamiliar to some of the experts on BF and thus was not pervasive in the industry around the time, may not have been around for very long, (2) It will probably be impossible to find replacement parts if anything on the disk brake were to need replacing in the future. (3) if you ever wanted to remove the disk brake, you'll have trouble redoing the rear wheel.

But if the disk brake isn't going to give you any problems it's likely none of the other components will. The bike has some very reputable and durable parts - all already mentioned, which are still highly sought-after today. At some point you may want to swap out the rear wheel for one without a gigantic disk-brake, and install a Dia-Compe or similar brake on your rear wheel.

After that, you should be set to go. Bike has otherwise good components.

BUT, check the frame material. You won't get a green light from most of the people on C&V until we know what it's made from. The seat tube really has to have some indicator - a sticker or otherwise. The only internet search result that said anything about Masa bikes was from a neglected post on BF's and one other forum, where the owner indicated his bike was made from aluminum. Yours probably isn't (I don't know, maybe it is?), but you still need to know what it's made of before you buy.

BlankCrows

Never seen that disk brake before. Is there a brand name on it, or is New Age the brand? It looks different than Shimano's old disk brake effort from the 70's (one passed through my hands a few years ago on a JCPenney beast I was lucky to flip).

Here is the old Shimano disc brake over at Velobase.

Poguemahone

My friend, I am your size, and bought this on the bay for under 300$:



This was a 175$ swap meet find:



This was a 75$ thrift store find:



Believe me, you are the perfect size to find a good vintage bike. Dealers have trouble getting rid of the tall ones. It may take a bit of patience to find a real gem, but you can-- it's much easier for you than it is for someone searching for a small bike.

My advice is to offer 100$ for the Masa, cash in hand. If he won't take it, walk away. If he does, you have a rider with some decent equipage (I'm not sure I trust that back brake). Make sure the rear bridge is drilled to accept a brake. And if he does take the cash, you have rider you can use until you find something better. Then part out the Masa. Or keep it as a beater.

cudak888 

If that disk weighs anything like its Shimano counterpart, that thing is a good 3-4+ pounds on top of everything. The only benefit is that you could probably run SS if you wanted to, simply by flipping your wheel and running a SS cog. Chainline might stink, but it'd work.

Thing is, does that Masa have a drilled rear brake bridge?

-Kurt

jiggernaut

@pogue Nice bikes. I maybe giving up on the bay to soon.

The rear disc is a shimano, the disc is stainless and about 1/8" thick.

I'll put 100$ on the table and see what happens. Thanks for the replies.