Or like my wife, you could get a new, lugged steel, 6 speed Raleigh with metal headbadge, fenders, basket, kickstand, chainguard and skirtguard, and even a passenger seat w/foot-pegs in lieu of a rear rack for $120 (if you live in Thailand). Pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25150...@n08/4811164801/ I was dead-set against buying it, because it seemed too cheap, but it has held up very well for 1.5 years of almost daily commuting and the occasional ride to dinner with me as the captain and my wife on the back seat. The lugs are the crudest you'll ever see, the fork is a unicrown and an ugly one at that, the rear drum brake is a joke, especially combined with the plastic brake levers (but the stamped metal front sidepull works well), and the indexed shifting requires overshifting to get into certain gears (but at least it's easy to do with the thumbshifter). The nipples are plated steel and have started to rust (I just WD40 them on occasion), and the cranks, seat post, hubs, and bars are steel as well. The tire sidewalls cracked all around the first year because the tubes kept loosing air and my wife would ride it with 15-20 psi or so rather than dealing with the stock Woods valves or asking me to pump up her tires, but the tires are still going anyway. The paint started out as a metallic turquoise but has faded to a much nicer bluish silver from 1.5 years of tropical sun exposure at her work. Triple or quadruple the price, spend a little more on frame finishing and paint, and throw on slightly better components (like the $10 Dia Compe brake levers from VO) and maybe some aluminum parts to save a little weight, and you'd have a great bike! Cheers, Gernot On Jul 20, 12:11 pm, RoadieRyan <rya...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Or you could get one of these Sub $500 beauties, not lugged of course > but cromo, I would, however, be suspicious of the assembly quality > > http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/mercier/galaxy.htm > > On Jul 19, 10:02 pm, RoadieRyan <rya...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > > > The HD is a good example. If I had not "Riv'd" out my Handsome Devil > > I think I could have come in for a sub $1000 price but Dammit between > > this group and CycloFiend (Damn You Jim!) I wanted a cool steel > > bike ;-) > > > On Jul 18, 11:32 am, andrew hill <neurod...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > what about the Handsome Devil? that could prob be built up for sub-$1K > > > pretty easily. > > > > On Jul 18, 2010, at 2:17 PM, Johnny Alien wrote: > > > > > Those are both hi-tensile very low quality steel. I can't imagine > > > > Rivendell doing anything like that even for a budget bike. The > > > > Rivendell name still needs to go on it. Neither is anywhere near what > > > > Surly or VO has. Even the lower level Bridgestones back in the day > > > > were CrMo. I was looking for steel that might be somethingGrantwould > > > > possibly use. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
