To prevent article pages from being miles long, but preserve all the useful questions and answers provided over time, I've decided to copy/paste the website comments to the forum - and "move" further discussions here.
If you can't find the answer to your question in this thread, please open a separate thread with your question/problem, in an appropriate forum section (this is the Frames, forks & seat-posts section).
mike 04/04/2021 at 06:36
i ride a cromemoly steel bicycle made in 1992,trek racer .this bike never lets me down and i like the fact its very easy to customise and repair when things do wear out,another reason i like the older bikes is they look nicer when rebuilt,they are also made for taller or shorter riders.these bikes are basically fail proof.they are abit heavier than a modern racer but not by alot if you rebuild them with some modern parts and wheels.i wish they still made these bikes brand new as i would buy six more.they are getting harder to find now,especially one that has been looked after.
mike 30/04/2021 at 03:36
its sad to see the way the bicycle industry is now going,very expensive bicycles that are just too hard too expensive to fix,carbon fibre bikes are fine for race day but for the average rider they are a poor choice,bicycles were allways meant to be a cheap form of transport and they were allways built so the average person could fix them thats why we bought bikes in the first place,modern bikes dont even fit taller riders,some companies are now making retro style bikes with chromemoly frames but they are rare,i think the bike industry is going down the wrong path,they made chromemoly frames for many years as that system worked very well and it was a fail proof system and you could buy any size bicycle.
CyclicThinking 07/11/2021 at 22:55
Exactly my thoughts, Mike! I’ve gathered near ten old bikes from mostly 80’s and 90’s, some of them later too, but quite basic and simple in their category, nothing too fancy or fragile. They’re are quite maintainable still, some issues here and there, but very little critical ones. I’ve talked with some bike repair people, or more likely fantasized about a “standard bike”, instead of these modern increasingly disposable ones. Frames could be of many shapes and sizes but the critical components would be of old and proven standards that every “standard bike” would share, be it headset, bottom bracket spindle, drop outs, wheels, hubs, axles, brake mounts on the frames, seat post diameter, etc, etc, so that there wouldn’t be any problems in getting those parts and mixing and matching them to your like and make the bike go as great as new for years and years to come. But is there business in it is another question. Bicycle industry is more and more and honestly has for decades been one “the latest hype” driven industry that is in constant vicious cycle (pun intended) of re-inventing the wheel to make the sales soar each year over and over again. I wish there were courageous entrepreneurs that would defy the bicycle industry trends and settle to making a truly “honest” bike, no tricks in order to build proprietary and exclusive non-standard components and other solutions to undermine any competition and consumers rights (think about the derailleur hanger mess for one example, this day and age will leave behind a trail of bicycle frames good only for single speed or internal gear hubs if even that, because of the constant flow of hub width/axle standards). Bicycles should be made for long lifespans, even decades long, if not even century, because the frame, if properly made won’t wear that bad, but the moving parts will and they only need replacement in most cases. That’s my two cents on the topic anyway.
All hope lost? 07/11/2021 at 23:36
If the worst should happen and the BB-shell threads are stripped from a vintage steel frame, is there any known cure that would actually work in this case? Our LBS’s don’t do metal work so much, they can do light tapping for the threads to clean them, but can’t reverse any damage by much serious means. I got a repair BB from one of the shops, but it lasted less than 50km before the left side cup would cut into two pieces, just like that.
The frame is a mid 80’s Peugeot of 103 Carbolite tubes (comfortably with French metric 35x1mm thread and a noob didn’t know how to detect such an old oddity, even got some helping hand from a strong young man who would ram a steel bottom bracket of ISO standard 34,8×1,06mm thread into that BB-shell. The JIS BB would seem ok there for quite a while, thousands of kilometers even, until the crossed thread would start giving up making tightening the BB not very reliable.
To summarize the question, is there any possible way that doesn’t involve major metal works, like replacing the BB-shell altogether or boring the existing one and sleeving it for all new threads, something that would actually work to get the BB-shell fixed and BB stay? Or am I watching a nice piece of scrap metal in that beautiful frame? Any know cases where stripped BB-shell threads frame has resurrected into its new glory without rebuilding the whole frame?
I know chances are slim by what information I’ve found in internet, but if anybody could even confirm that all repair bottom brackets are waste of time and money or if chemical metal (aka metal particles enhanced epoxy) could be threaded with some odds to make it work for at least sometime in order to have time to find a replacement frame.
Fortunately it’s not my only bike, but very dear to me, like said and would deserve plenty of more fun and enjoyable kilometers.
All hope lost? 07/11/2021 at 23:41
It should say (comfortably flexing) about the frame, editing got interrupted there. OP
mike 27/04/2022 at 11:04
Hi Relja,whats your opinion on fixing up an older 27 inch wheel bike,are they worth messing around with as 27 inch wheels are getting rare these days,I do know that you could possibly run new 700c wheels but how do you find such long brakes,what is the best solution to get an older 27 inch bike running again,i just found a custom built 27 inch bike in the dumpster all original including original rust but this old bike is a hand built lugged frame custom bike and i dont want to see it sitting doing nothing,it is a signature rare bike.cheers
Relja 27/04/2022 at 12:20
Hi Mike,
It’s still possible to find decent quality longer reach brakes on the used (2nd hand) market.
Modern ones, with a long reach, are still being manufactured by Shimano and others, though I’m not a fan of those
(why I don’t like modern brakes).
So my choice is usually to go with a currently very common 622 mm (28″) wheel size. This makes it easy to source rims and tyres.
mike 27/04/2022 at 11:18
back in the good old days Relja when you only rode about 500 miles and you had to replace those cotterpins on a very heavy old steel bike,you simply punched out the cotter pins,hammered new ones in and rode again,none of those cotterpins lasted very long,neither did those caliper brakes,many folk used to convert those old 5 speed bikes and throw in a sturmey archer 3 speed wheel with the steel brake attatched to the frame,then they ran trouble free,you only had to change the sturmey archer gear pull every now and then as those allways broke off.or they would convert them to a fixie.
If you can't find the answer to your question in this thread, please open a separate thread with your question/problem, in an appropriate forum section (this is the Frames, forks & seat-posts section).
