does anyone else have components that, when you see em, you always think of a little story? i got a few.
-my stem and multi-tool and the saddlebag l i sometimes use came from a “bag of bike parts” i got from a woman downtown off a craigslist ad. it came with a broken light, bell, two women’s saddles, and a 26" mtb tube. i always chuckle at that combination of crap.
-my wheelset is also off CL. i rode out to gresham, singlespeed style since i had killed the fixed side of the stock kilo rear, to pick it up. and it was from a guy who rode an ALPHA, a philly-made bike that was my first fixed gear. the guy was interesting… he had replaced the wheels he was selling with some black deepv’s, but was complaining because they were nonmachined and he wanted to switch to SS because the commute from gresham into portland state was like 12 miles each way and he wasn’t up for riding it fixed. also he had pc’d his frame a pretty tarck sweet neon orange. i shoulda kept his contact info, i imagine that alpha is just sitting around now. and i could put it to good use, especially if i got a sweet deal like i did on the wheels ($60 for a bontrager select front, sunrims cr-18 to formula rear, with tires). yep. also, a day later, i got drunk in a park with my new wheels and did hockey stops on wet grass and fucked around and watched spider man 3 and woke up the next morning with a flat tire in the front… and when i inspected, it turned out the rim was not taped with rimtape but electrical tape. dammit!
-my arione has red spraypaint on the underside for some reason. weird?
-my stem came from me going into the lbs and asking if they had a shorter stem
-most of the rest of my bike came from me pressing the “confirm order” button on bikes direct
My uncle, who’s a bike sales rep in Minnesota, gave me my fixed gear bike for christmas a few years ago.
I got the cranks and chainring from CL. The dude who was selling them ended up being a friend of a friend.
I got the rest from different LBS.
I was on a walk with my dad when I found the frame I’m currently riding. We walked past a garage sale and I saw this cobwebbed, dirty old Miyata with no seatpost and a bent fork. $10 bucks. I straightened the fork, cleaned all the spiders, ants, leaves and dirt out of the bb shell and swapped all the parts from my broken conversion over to the Miyata. I’m still riding it today. I wish I had the original golden arrow group that came with it, but I gave it to a friend that I never see anymore.
Found cinelli LA84 bars and a shimano 600 aero seatpost in my friends garage. (He got a shit ton of random free parts off craigslist) The cranks on my alien I got for free because of all the delays. My other friend got a free alien because Joseph lost his order.
IRO group buy
Perfect Brooks Professional from a very nice bike I found in a thrift store dumpster
Won the wheels (Godspeed hub laced to Alex r-500s) at a goldsprints style race.
Sugino 75 road double (167.5, score!) from a mountaineering gear swap
Mystery Chainring. Randomly appeared in my garage. It looks cheap/crappy but it’s perfectly round and holding up nicely. Did not require single speed stack bolts cause it’s a little thicker.
Seat post came in a box of junk I bought cheap from the other “bike guy” in the neighborhood.
Stem from the LBS parts bin
Headset, front brake and chain from damaged/lost goods warehouse place.
Bars are just flop and chops
Tires from LBS dumpster
Bottom bracket and brake lever from bike co-op
Bar tape from the Perl Izumi factory outlet store, 99 cents y’all!
Coming soon: Carbon Fiber fork and different stem from a gear swap.
Do I get a price for the most randomist stuff? It took a while to get it all together, but most of it was already in the parts bin or on another bike by the time the frame showed up.
Originally tried to convert a crappy mtb with a one piece crank.
Failed and wasted money.
Got a fuji track as a gift.
Thomson seatpost off velospace
Thats all I can think of.
My first bike, a pretty teal and white Univega mixte, cost $15 at Salvos.
My first fixie was a Panasonic I got for free off craigslist, I sold it for $80.
I got an amazing deal on my Leader which I don’t want to disclose (they are awesome).
The $10 Fuji I keep going on about.
I’ve picked up dozens of parts over the years over craigslist, I can’t even count really. I do a lot of craigslisting for bike stuff. I jump when I see anything of value go for cheap, because I can always flip when I need to.
i just went into the box of stuff that came with my current stem, i forgot about a random QR skewer. funny.
and i’ve been meaning to go nine blocks up the hill to my LBS at night and look in the dumpster. i dont expect anything more than tires, and even a tire or two would make me happy. we shall see.
i just went into the box of stuff that came with my current stem, i forgot about a random QR skewer. funny.
and i’ve been meaning to go nine blocks up the hill to my LBS at night and look in the dumpster. i dont expect anything more than tires, and even a tire or two would make me happy. we shall see.[/quote]
Bike shops trash a lot of servicable stuff. I’ve scored several bikes and frames over the years, among other things. If nothing else you can always grab anything aluminum, stick it in a big box till there’s 20 lbs of it and recycle it for beer/bike money.
Samson frame story:
Tomity, I believe, sold it to a guy on Serotta forum. I emailed him asking if he would sell it and said he had sold it.
2 months later I was searching CL for a Samson and found one for sale in LA. I emailed the guy and he said he had sold it a couple days before.
I was visiting SF for July 4th and searched CL and found a Samson frame in my size. The price was right so I picked it up. After getting it home I realized it was the same frame through every step. I touched base with the original Serotta forum owner and he got a kick out of how I followed the bike around.
my rear wheel (suntour superbe pro to araya super aero) is built from stuff that i got on ebay five or so years ago when the deals were still to be had. they pretty much gathered dust for the next three years afterwards til my last bike got stolen. i could probably sell it now for about three times what i paid for the rim and hub originally.
I was driving through Richmond one Saturday night, and somewhere near Belvedere and Leigh I saw a wheel laying in the middle of a bank parking lot. I drove by, picked it up, and hot damn! It was a Formula fixed/free hub laced to a Weinmann rim, with Dura-ace cog and lockring installed. In near perfect shape, too. Who knows how it got there. It now resides on the beater bike in my sig.
A few minutes later I found a BMX helmet laying in the middle of the road, but it wasn’t really something I wanted so I just threw it into someone’s yard.
Soon I will be running a suzue/araya world champ rear and campy/ma-4 front that I got for free. Also the tandem should be built relatively soon, and thats a badass story. all my bikes have pretty cool stories now that I think about it, I sort of have a knack for acquiring shit in strange manners, especially bike stuff.
