One of my favorite things to do is buy vintage bikes on Marketplace or at yard sales for “get this thing out of my garage” prices and then fix them up so they’re rideable and, if not restored, at least as clean and sharp as they’re going to get.
My latest project was a Raleigh Grand Prix mixte from the late 70s. I have the “men’s version “ of this bike as my daily rider and have been looking for a matching step-through for my wife. Not because she’s a woman, just because she’s not an avid cyclist and isn’t comfortable with a lot of standover.
I dragged this bike home earlier this week, put a bunch of parts on that I had in the bins, spent 6 or 8 hours on some cleanup and regreasing of the BB and headset, installed new cables and bartape, and now I’m pretty happy with it! It’s very pleasant to ride and should do well for her.
Heck yeah! Old bikes getting a new life is the best, and I’ve got a real soft spot for revitalised 26” MTBs in particular.
A few of my projects…
An old Cannondale hardtail I did a gravel bike conversion on (outrageously fun, not very quick but I wanted a Cannondale Slate and this got me some of the way there):
Another cheap classifieds find that I’ve gradually replaced the broken and defective bits on with stuff I’ve had lying around the garage (not as vintage, but a 20ish year old frameset now). This one lives at my in-laws so I’ve got something to ride when we visit:
Another Apollo built up single speed. It’s grossly heavy and the narrow flat bars are weird (they’re from the Shogun above), but it’s still a fun cruise and handy to have to leave in dodgier places if I’m running errands.
I also have a Trek Multitrack 7600 ready for tear down, and a bright yellow Cannondale CAAD 2 rigid 26” MTB frame… I kind of want to make both of them drop bar gravel-ish bikes, but I could be convinced to make the Trek a burlier 1x hybrid type thing. We’ll see…
Great thread topic. Those Raleighs are nice. I’d really like to find a reasonable steel road frame to tidy up.
And same for those Cannondales! Living outside of a major city there aren’t gems like these around for me to pick up. One day an appropriately-sized and local CAAD 8-11 will appear…
I built it up in a retro mod style with Rivendell shifters, innicycle headset, and campy parts. I got velocolour to do the paint as well. Pretty happy with it and I’ve gotten a lot of oohs and ahhs from my friends and coworkers
I love the durability and mechanical simplicity (and thus rehabability) of bikes, and definitely appreciate getting older bikes back up and running. I wish this were more common and that the pursuit-of-performance (at least the marginal gains-y aspect) was more limited to racers.
Most of my (and my wife’s) bikes are older frames, and oldish (but usually newer than the frames) components. I also appreciate getting bikes in working order for friends.
1977 Miyata that I keep in a friend’s garage in Seattle. Odd geo with stupidly short top tube (hence the stem) but front-center not as bad as might be due to the longish fork offset. 2x8 with Shimano bar-end shifters.
Our “Miami Vice” collection of 1987 Centurion Ironman bikes. I painted the Skuut wooden balance bike to match, but my kid preferred his Strider, likely because it weighed less. This was right before I sent my Ironman bike to my brother in Massachusetts, hence the brifters (I’d had it set up with downtube shifters and 2x8).
My Raleigh is a bit of a restomod. It has compact drop bars, TRP ergo levers, and I cold set the rear triangle to 135mm (stock was 120) so I can run an HG freehub wheel.
The mixte I got for my wife had some Suntour Power Ratchet downtube shifters on it which are too nice to be on a bike that only gets ridden once a month, so I swapped them on to my bike and set hers up with the perfectly usable ones that I had on previously.
