In article <
[email protected]>,
"Brian" <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> What types of older bikes make good commuter bikes for daily city
> travel? I was looking around on craigslist and come across many older
> Schwinn and Sears bikes.
The short answer, in my opinion, is that almost all older (before 1985,
say) road bikes you are likely to find make good, reliable commuters as
long as they have one features: aluminum rims, as opposed to steel rims.
Here's why: all but the raciest bikes of the late 70s and early 80s had
pretty good frame clearances, which means fender mounting is possible.
Many of them will even have proper fender and rack mounts, though this
can be worked around with P-clamps or other bits of hardware.
The defining thing about aluminum ("alloy") rims is that they have a
huge functional advantage over steel rims (they work in the rain), and
they were a benchmark feature that really crappy bicycles of the era
simply did not have. So any bike you find with alloy rims will probably
be a reasonable bike in other ways.
> I'm looking for one with:
>
> 1. fenders
> 2. chainguard
> 3. at least 3 gears
> 4. upright seat/handlebars
> 5. rear rack for pannier
> 6. possibly a light (otherwise I'll add these on)
Chainguards are not easy to mount to bikes with front derailers, but
classic English 3-speeds usually don't have aluminum rims, and around
here they're less common than bike-boom 10-speeds. However, that also
satisfies your desire for an "upright" handlebar.
I do have one other evil suggestion, these:
http://sheldonbrown.com/harris/brake-levers-drop.html#cross
http://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?category=104&subcategory=1194&brand=&s
ku=10888&storetype=&estoreid=&pagename=
Those little babies are bar-top brake levers. Install them on a drop
handlebar, and you get brakes that work properly from the top of the
bars, making them just like flat bars. Neat, huh? Since this conversion
costs less than getting a flat bar and brake levers, it's pretty fun.
> Any suggestions for cheap ways to do this?
The cheapest way is always garage sales, but it takes patience. If I was
still fully committed to the garage-sale lifestyle, I could probably
pick up a good 70s vintage commuter-grade bike every month, and the
going rate is $10 around here. The expensive, fast way is a used bike
specialist, where you might get charged $100 for the same bike, but it
will be in known working condition, and might even come with the fenders
and rack already.
In my experience, thrift stores and Value Villages are a perfect storm
of excessive prices and terrible machinery: the land of steel-wheeled
bicycles with $25 price tags. There must be rare exceptions to this, but
I don't seem to see them.
--
Ryan Cousineau
[email protected] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos