Beatermania

Jim Ayyy got his rain bike this far before dragging it home for final touches. His hilly route discourages him from building a fixed-gear. Perhaps crunchy derailleurs and wet rim brakes will change his mind. He did look into various internally-geared hubs, but wanted to keep costs near nil. The snazzy yellow fenders represent the largest expenditure on this project so far. I believe everything else was salvaged. The frame was Arf's first fixed gear. He moved on, first to a Surly Steamroller, then to his own web design business.

Jim Ayyy says the setup is very uncomfortable. A Technomic stem and wider bars will push the investment higher, but it needs to be finished so we can go into a drought.

This thing has been frustrating me for months. Pulled from a trash pile in Arlington, VA, the basic carcass looked like a good starting point on which to build a trashmo commuter for my nephew. He doesn't have protected bike storage where he spends his summers, so a really nice bike would suffer needless exposure.

My older brother (Orang Basikal) salvaged the wreck and brought it to me with some parts. But then, one little hitch at a time, it got worse instead of better. The rear wheel is too bent for bash-and-tweak. The BB is corroded too solidly into the frame to come out. The Shimano Crank of Death replacement parts kit requires a new BB to fit the crank they send. Meanwhile, I haven't been able to find a crank that fits the spindle length in the current BB.

Used bike bandits conned my boss into selling a pile of junkers in the shop basement for cheap money at the end of winter, before I was back from our seasonal second location. A lot of raw material got away when that happened.

I just need to talk the nephew into riding a single speed, which I could knock together for him in jig time. Just not on this frame, because it has VD.