I KNOW!

There is another bike in our already-somewhat-small apartment. It’s a free bike that a lady nearby was giving away. It’s a 12-speed Velo Sport average-joe-grade road bike. The size is very nice for me and/or Brad, and everything works. I’m glad I didn’t take Brad’s bet last night, because I pumped up the tires and they’ve held 80 or so psi for several hours, now (I thought they would be punctured, but no). The frame has small bits of rust on it, not visible on casual inspection. There are nice little details, too, like Shimano quick releases on both wheels, lots of aluminum parts, those brake-release-thingies on the brakes, the gum hoods on the levers still intact. More details after the cut:

• Frame: Reynolds 453. I looked it up, and this was a low-end 1980s Reynolds frameset that was used on various upper-low-end (or lower-high-end) bikes. It’s not heavy, but not feather-light, either.
• Brakes: Shimano BR-Z64 calipers
• Hubs: something crappy but so far perfectly functional
• Wheels: aluminum (I think) 27″ wheels. Schrader valves
• 52/42 front chainrings (riveted together; the 52 is dying to be cut off)
• 6-speed freewheel
• Pedals: tiny and aluminum
• Cranks: 170mm forged-aluminum-looking, with “custom” and “Japan” stamped on them. Non-integrated
• BB: I dunno. Looks and works fine, tho
• I was wrong about the bars and brake levers; they look like the Shimano/SR Suntour set that was on La Pulga (down in TX), but they’re not. Bar: Aluminum Kusuki Winpista? choppy/floppy?
• Brake levers: Weinman aluminum with nifty-looking holes
• Stem: SR (suntour?) forged (?) aluminum
• Rear derailleur: Shimano something-cheap
• Front derailleur: See Rear Derailleur
• Cables & housings: look fine, except rusty exposed section of derailleur cables
• Seat: big squishy one, but not as heavy as it looks
• Seatpost: old-style clunky bracket, short, light aluminum post, apparently NEVER moved from its original ridiculous position

Looking online I find that Velo Sport was a Canadian brand, apparently straddling the department-store/quality-bike divide. This one seems like one of their more upscale models (“Courrier 12″), as evidenced by the fairly high quality tubing and components (well, higher quality than department store bikes, anyway).

If I had any doubts about this bike needing to go the single-speed conversion route, this morning cleared those up for me. The gears are convenient, true, but I got spoiled with the smoothness of the higher-end Shimano components on my Texas bike, I guess. This rear derailleur/freewheel/shifter combo on this bike kind of sucks. It’s extremely easy to drop the chain in a spot that leaves it between sprockets, spinning freely. This seems very likely to happen when downshifting to go up a hill, and the slip-off happens right when you throw all your weight on the pedals. Grrr.

This bike will probably go live with Brad (which was my original intention in horking it). But if for some bizarre reason it doesn’t, I’ll be dumping the shifters, sprockets and derailleurs, cutting off the large chainring, throwing a BMX sprocket on the rear, and making a single-speed with an embarrassingly low gear ratio.

Now for some actual work. You know, like my job. My career.

Now some more pictures: