Recently, I purchased a Randor Triathlon, almost new bike, found out it was a low end brand, was heavy for a road bike, had cottered cranks and steel rims. Sold it to a guy who happily rode off on it to the train station.
Before that, I could not walk away from a Columbia Men's road bike. It was in bad shape. The guy selling it cleverly arranged the meeting at 9pm. Front tire rotten, and I would have walked away from it had I noticed that it had 26" wheels, steel rims, one piece crank, etc. But I have made it a project bike. I was even advised on a forum to abandon the project but now stripped completely, repained a flat black, from metallic blue, it looks much better and promising. New tires and tubes are on the way, due to arrive next week. I have cut the curved parts of the drop handle bars and reversed it make to look cooler, like one of the fastboy bikes. Don't know fastboy? Well search for it. It will be worth your while.
Here is a picture of what the Columbia looked like.
I forgot to take pics of the Columbia before and during the transformation. The pic above is of a bike very similar to mine. Mine even had blue plastic tubular grip and bar covering - or whatever that is called. It also has a blue seat which I need to recover.
Went on a ride last evening. Had to get the lottery tickets to see if I can get a piece of the $146 million. I rode the MGX, now equipped with a harvested rear wheel from an already vandalized and abandoned bike I spotted in the area and got the wheels off. The reason for the rear wheel transplant was that I went crazy with my spoke wrench and badly mangled the rear wheel out of the tru, while trying to tighten the creaking loose spokes. I was successful on the front wheel, but the rear wheel just did not cooperate. Now I will need to spend an hour or two some day to fix it.
BTW, the Huffy is sold last week. My wife is comfortable on the Schwinn MTB now and we no longer need the Huffy with its 6 speeds. That was the Huffy Main Street we got for my wife from Amazon. It was a dog of a bike. Uncomfortable and tiresome. Something wrong with the frame geometry, as you felt very uncomfortable riding it.
I saw an ad on CL by a guy who wanted his bike fixed cheaply. Responded and offered but the guy did not care to describe the issues and the cause and did not provide contact info. Typical Asian. He thought he was obliging me by letting me work on his bike. Good bye to him!
