Vintage bikes

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gary Gorman on March 10, 2010 at 8:44pm

Just stumbled across your question. First thing you have to ask yourself when you have a vintage bike is what do you want to do with it? Do you want to restore it to, or close to, original condition, or do you want to rebuild it with modern parts? I love to ride vintage bikes (I have several) but hate the old school parts like down tube shifters. Converting to STI shifters is easy - just convert the down tube shifter bracket to shifter guides. The biggest problems that you'll have is the reach of the brakes (Rivendale Bike has great long-reach brakes) and the width between the chainstays - the old bikes were made for 3 or 5 speed cassettes rather than 10 speed cassettes. Sheldon Brown explains how to spread the frame, or you can just muscle them apart to install the rear wheel and cogs. Also, when you get the bike broken down and cleaned up, spray the inside of the steel frame with a rust inhibitor.

One BIG word of advice - if you strip off the old parts so that you can replace them with modern components, keep the old parts, clean them up and sell them on ebay. Last vintage bike I bought I paid $85 for in a garage sale. Sold the parts on ebay for over $2,000!! (I almost threw them out).

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jack Bulkley on March 15, 2010 at 3:26am

I have been fixing up a 87 Canondale touring bike as my main road bike. The trickiest thing was getting a 126 mm rear hub. I found some new old stock (NOS) Shimano 105 hubs at Loose Screws and ordered some Velocity Dyad rims and built up some wheels.

I have also found that the Sugino crankset that has always been on the bike had holes for a third chain wheel. So I added one giving me a 50/40/30 setup. I had a LBS replace the bottom bracket to one give me something more modern and to move the chain line out a little for the triple. I rode that setup 70 miles Saturday and it is working pretty well.

▶ Reply to This