Ride into work for Friday, 31 March
Rode the Nishiki in today; hospital appointments for the sprog mean I'm taking the day off, so I figured it would be a good day to take it in. No bike computer on there yet so I guessed the distance was the usual 12.7km or so. The bike was surprisingly fast, although the brakes were nothing too stellar - I had to hold back a bit so I wasn't going too fast. The lack of a small front ring wasn't any great problem, although the steep hills are on the way back - I'll find out for sure what it's really like next week.
Roger and Dave at IdealBikes were very admiring of it when I took it in, and were amazed that someone would throw it in the garbage - although they didn't see it before I cleaned it up! Roger reckoned it probably cost around $600-$700 new back in the mid 70's, and it was a pretty high-end bike for the time. He was also musing on all the things that could be done with it - convert it to a single speed or fixed gear (which was his choice), put in mountain bike gearing, put in hub gearing, replace the steel rims with 700c aluminium rims or possibly 26" rims, etc. I decided to try and keep it as original as possible, though. I'm having the neoprene taken off the handlebars and replaced with cork, all the cables replaced, a full tuneup done, and the freewheel is being checked out (it was a bit loud - probably it just needs flushing out and cleaning up, but I'd rather it was properly checked out). The wheels need tuning, and possibly a few of the spokes need replacing. It looks like around $100 or so and I should have a really nice bike - and I still have the $50 certificate for my DFL in the alleycat!
Riding home in the car after the hospital appointments, I found crumbs of black neoprene everywhere - somehow it even got in my hair. Nasty stuff...
Distance logged: 12.7km
Temperature: 5C, breezy
Cumulative distance: 1838.147km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.41
Monthly distance: 27.394km
Monthly cost per km: $0
Roger and Dave at IdealBikes were very admiring of it when I took it in, and were amazed that someone would throw it in the garbage - although they didn't see it before I cleaned it up! Roger reckoned it probably cost around $600-$700 new back in the mid 70's, and it was a pretty high-end bike for the time. He was also musing on all the things that could be done with it - convert it to a single speed or fixed gear (which was his choice), put in mountain bike gearing, put in hub gearing, replace the steel rims with 700c aluminium rims or possibly 26" rims, etc. I decided to try and keep it as original as possible, though. I'm having the neoprene taken off the handlebars and replaced with cork, all the cables replaced, a full tuneup done, and the freewheel is being checked out (it was a bit loud - probably it just needs flushing out and cleaning up, but I'd rather it was properly checked out). The wheels need tuning, and possibly a few of the spokes need replacing. It looks like around $100 or so and I should have a really nice bike - and I still have the $50 certificate for my DFL in the alleycat!
Riding home in the car after the hospital appointments, I found crumbs of black neoprene everywhere - somehow it even got in my hair. Nasty stuff...
Distance logged: 12.7km
Temperature: 5C, breezy
Cumulative distance: 1838.147km
Cumulative cost per km: $0.41
Monthly distance: 27.394km
Monthly cost per km: $0
posted by steve at 4/02/2006 02:30:00 pm
2 Comments:
ooohhh.... A single speed! A fixie....
Steve...you should. (Though I've lost track of which bike this is...)
It's the Nishiki I rescued from the garbage. You were all about converting it to fixie/SS last time I talked about it, too ;-)
I think I'm going to save my knees and keep it as is - with the hills in Halifax I'd either blow my knees out going uphill, or I'd have to gear it so low I'd be spinning madly just to get up to 20km/hr!
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