1973 Motobecane Mirage

Mirage

I got some good news at the end of this week, I got offered a new contract gig that should set me up for the next 8 months or so, which after months of looking was a relief.  Before I found that out I was looking for deals on bikes in need of some TLC that I could make some money on. I found this MB on Craigslist for about $30 which IMHO is a good starting point for a profitable turn around.

I placed this bike in the early 70s due to the simplex drive train and cottered crank.  I chuckled seeing the front derailleur was SunTour and mounted over a strip of bar tape.  Likely the original simplex plastic front derailleur failed as they are wont to do and since the French tubes are too skinny for a Japanese component the bar tape allows enough thickness to mount it to the MB frame.

not original equipment

The bike is complete, paint is in decent shape and it even has fenders and a rack and a non-working sidewall generator and lights.  I will probably strip all the lighting stuff off but I will save the generator and see if I can make it work, I've always wanted to try one.

sidewall generator

The bike also has some vestigial front speedometer wiring as well and since there is no speedo attached I don't see much point in keeping all that either.

somethings missing

lots of useless plastic

The plan for now is to clean this bike up replace the consumable that need to be replaced and turn it around quickly, but I have a few other projects in the queue to finish up first.

As always Ride.Smile.Repeat.

Edit after further research my best guess is 1973 based on components 

Bike sale score 1980 Raleigh Rapide Ladies (Mixte)

I don't know about you but I have a tough time walking away from a used bike sale and bike works is a cool non profit I love to support, many of the bikes that grace these pages originated there, so of course I had to go.  I failed to get a picture of the selection but there were probably about 100 bikes out for sale, mostly old 10 speeds but some mountain bikes and maybe 30 frame only options.  I immediately gravitated to the 10 speed rack and I looked over a couple Peugeots but surface rust or lack or parts turned me away, I almost picked up a Peugeot just for the non standard but very nice Sun Tour power ratchet bar end shifters it sported but decided to move on.  I had also noticed that many of the bikes had 25-50% off tags on them and they were already fairly reasonably priced -a least by Craigslist standards.

my prize the Raleigh Rapide Mixte

After making a few rounds I zero'd on on a Raleigh Rapide Mixte as my top prospect.  Why among lots of bikes did I pick this one you ask?  Well let my take you through my thought process;

• Sporting a 50% off tag Check - so this $65 bike was $32.50
• Paint and decals in very good condition Check- the paint actually sparkled
• No obvious issues Check - frame and fork appeared straight, it had all its parts, no surface rust
• Extras? Fenders, Rack and Kickstand Check - nice for a city bike
• Classic split tube mixte and not a single down-tube? Check

In addition to checking all the boxes above all the things I did not like about the bike are easy to change.  The bell is trashed - pretty sure I have a brass bell in the parts bin.

how do bells get this trashed!?

Saddle is faded and torn no worries I have a new WTB saddle in my parts bin I have been meaning to use on a project.

straight to the garbage with you

The foam grips are all dried out and I have never like that style, problem solved by the faux leather grips they were selling at check out for $1

out with the old

In with the new

The thing that bothered me most about this bike, and perhaps why no one else snatched it up, are the high rise bars.  I am sure they were much more functional than the original drops for the previous owner but to me they just don't look right, maybe its the deer antler quality but I know the bars are going.

that ain't right 

Fortunately I have done two previous mixte road drop bar to city bar conversions and I know exactly the bar I want.  It's cheap, made in the USA and is more in the "north road" style of the Raleigh 3-speed.

Wald 2.5 inch rise bar

I am not sure what it is about me and used bike swaps and semi-obscure Raleigh's.  When I went to the University of Washington's year end clear out two years ago I came away with a Raleigh Reliant for $5.  And todays it's a Raleigh Rapide, I did a little digging and found out it was the entry level 10 speed in their line up in 1980, nothing special but solids parts.

1980 Rapide Mixte Catalog shot

As I looked closer after deciding this bike was the one I noticed the nice mix  of Sun Tour drive train parts.

Power ratchet Stem shifters

Raleigh Branded rear derailleur

And even the fenders and rack were a cut above, the rack was Pletchser and even though the frame is made in Taiwan the fenders come from England.

This project won't be a frame up rehab and it also won't be a pump up the tires and wipe down the frame flip but something in-between.  I have been posting like a crazy man of late, hopefully my next post will actually be some bike work getting done.  

Until next time, Ride.Smile and repeat.

Co-Opting a Trailer Park Cyclist long reply as a Post

I miss the regular, or irregular, posts on the Trailer Park Cyclist blog, which is now on long term Sabbatical, so when Tim Joe was nice enough to stop by I decided to promote his comments to a post. His eloquent words my photos.

Ryan, I spent two years moping around this damn trailer park with no job other than fixing trailers for chump change. Were it not for the long nights spent shopping and dreaming on the interwebs I may have lost my mind. That and writing my blog not only helped me stay more-or-less sane but gave me a window into another world, poor but always riding and living a true bike-life. 

photo altered to protect identity

As you know I bought a nashbar 29er for a bangaround bike but have yet to get the damn thing running. There are several new bike paths opening up in our area and I may put the nash rambler (just thought that one up) on the back burner and go back to getting little miss dialed in. I was building her specifically for those paths; in another year or so one should be able to pedal all over florida on dedicated bike trails.

NB 29er SS

The reason I mention the nashbar is that Bikes Direct has a Motobecane with a nexus 8 on the same platform as that bike I put together for Cromwell awhile back.

Motobecane city bike

I know what you are thinking, but you said schwinn so motobecane is just as valid. Aluminum frame (which I kinda like) and rim brakes. Perhaps the low price balances the lack of panache? I don't know. 

I am WAY over rehabing old bikes. Little Miss has enough $$$ in her right now to have put me on a Rivendell. Maybe. Almost. I think my Grail Bike is a Waterford, the sad tale of the Schwinn brand drives me crazy.

Waterford Lug

My first bike was a schwinn, of course, as is Little Miss. The bike shop where I purchased my first stingray back in '62 was called Gilles Schwinn Cyclery. At one time in America the word Schwinn was practically a generic term for bicycle, like Kleenex was for facial tissue. It breaks my heart, it does. So many venerable icons in this country/nation of ours have fallen prey to the Junk Man that we have, I think, lost part of our collective soul as a people.

Speaking of broken hearts, I had a heart attack last Friday and spent Labor Day weekend hooked up to all manner of hoses and electrodes and being x-rayed and EKG'd and I don't know how bad it was but they wouldn't let me get on the treadmill to prove I was OK. 

I'm OK now, sort of; I rode fifteen miles today and lived to tell the tale. But they have me taking medication that makes drinking alcohol a really bad idea so that is why I'm typing like a grown up. I'm sober. Good Lord...where does it all end?

15 miler

yer pal, 

tj

Throwback commuters

So what do you do when you have been job searching for months and you still have no offer in hand? well you could bang your head against the wall.

Or as I like to do you can detach yourself from reality and plan for the purchase of a cool commuter bike for that job you don't have yet.  Now the facts that A) I need another bike like I need another hole in my head and B) I have no idea if my eventual job will even be bike commutable are just details that I am choosing to ignore right now.

I have developed a love of the English 3 speed and I even had one in my size as a project bike for a time (here) but I sold it on in part because I needed the $$ and in part because I realized in my hilly world with my level of fitness a 3 speed wouldn't really work.  However, thanks to the developments of later day IGH (internally geared hub) technology I can get a 7, 8 or even 11 speed IGH that should allow me to climb my local hills.  And in my recent search for the commuter of my dreams for that job I don't have yet I found a number of possibilities.  So on to the contenders.

Schwinn Brighton

The Schwinn Brighton (here) has the right look and it has an Nexus 8 speed rear hub to go with fenders, rear rack, kickstand small Chain ring (38t) and a classic chain guard.  I would want to put a Brooks saddle on it, a larger rear cog 22t rather than 19t for a lower granny gear,  and probably new pedals - MKS Sneaker pedals perhaps- but its a good starting point and reasonably priced at around $650.  And they have a 58cm model which is nice as most of the vintage Raleigh's I see are in a much smaller frame size than would work for me.  However seeing some of the Schwinn branded stuff on sale at the local Target I am a bit concerned about their quality these days, and vague phrases like "Euro-Style steel frame" make me think pig iron rather than chromoly.  You can also have any color you want so long as its green, which, fortunately, I kind of like.

Linus Roadster 8

Another choice is the Linus Roadster 8 (here) that has much of the same look and features of the Schwinn; fenders, rack, kickstand, 8 speed Nexus IGH etc. although they go with a chainring guard rather than a full chain guard, perfectly workable just not quite the same vintage vibe.  As with any candidate I would want to go with a Brooks saddle and this bike already has a large rear cog (22t) but that is offset by the larger front chainring (48t) so I would probably want to downsize the chainring to 36t to get that nice low gear I need for the local hills.  I have ridden the similar Linus Gaston 5 and really enjoyed it, this bike is built with 4130 steel and comes in a variety of colors and at a higher price point of $830.  Oh and the bell comes standard.

Simcoe Roadster Classic

I stumbled onto the Simcoe in my own backyard, it was in the window of a local bike shop, first I had ever heard of this brand.  The Simcoe Roadster classic (here) is again in that English 3 speed style with fenders, rear rack and in this case a 7 speed Shimano IGH.  I was worried the chain guard might be plastic but the spec says alloy, they didn't give the chainring and rear cog sizes so I am not sure if I would need to make any changes there but of course it would need a Brooks Saddle.  This bike also has color options and it comes in at the most expensive of the lot with a $900 price tag for the 7 speed model.  Although expensive the idea of supporting a local bike shop is appealing.

Classic Raleigh 3 speed

One final option would be to find another classic Raleigh 3 speed in the 23 inch frame size and fit it with a modern 8 speed rear hub, and what the heck while I'm at it I might as well get a dynamo hub front wheel built.  I am not sure if A) sourcing an old bike and getting a new rear wheel built would cost any less than a new bike and B) I worry the rear frame spacing would have to be adjusted to accommodate the rear hub and that's an additional cost to have it "cold set" which has its own complications.  And the nice thing about the new bikes is they are all 700c wheel sizes rather than the one off 26x1 3/8 classic 3 speed size.  There is also the guilt of bastardizing a classic 3 speed, not quite on par with making a classic 10 speed into a fixie but nonetheless.....oh the dilemmas!

Of course until I actually land a job its all academic and just a good excuse to go virtual bike shopping on the interwebs.  Perhaps when I finally land a job an its in (hopefully) downtown I can use that as an excuse to test ride the 3 new bikes above and explore the feasibility of upgrading an old Raleigh 3 speed and do a real world report.

Until next time Ride. Smile and repeat.