Recent content by Freeman

I have put a lot of miles on a Schwinn road bike of this vintage, but mine is a 1985 SuperSport model with a Columbus frame. I have a LeTour of the same vintage with the TrueTemper frame but have not built it up yet. These are great road bikes and I think they were brazed up in the USA, some of...

Well, a few weeks ago I laced up a set of 700c rims so I could run more modern tires that are also easier to find, also went from an 18t to a 16t rear sprocket on the coaster brake hub. Bike works well and is on the average faster now. On a flat 20km stretch I averaged 19.2mph even though I was...

Today I am interested in my history, the history of the average Joe, and have collected some of the artifacts of it's past, not the artifacts of elite history which only 1% or less of the population lived, and I have put thousands of miles recently on a Huffy bicycle from the 1970s, the decade...

I had a lot of fun with this in the last 12 hours. Last night I found it on the curb where someone had put it out for trash. Normally I would not get too excited about finding an old Huffy in the trash, I have seen lots of them, but this one stunned me as it looked as if it was just wheeled off...

Thanks guys, for your time and trouble.

I pulled this 26" rear MTB wheel out of a dumpster locally, I have never seen a hub like this, anyone know what it is, and what it is from?

I recommend being into bikes because you love riding them and want the exercise, and to never own one or any parts that are worth selling, just giving away to others who may need them. If I meet a cycliist and they can not talk about bicycles without also talking about money, then I don't...

Neat bike. I am pretty sure I had a '95 or '94 Stumpjumper once. I found it laying in a shopping complex parking lot where someone had swung it by it's rear wheel against a lamp-post and broke part of it's front Rock Shox front fork, a Mag-21. It also had been hastily spray-bombed gold at some...

I never cared for fashion, I always thought it was shallow, I went by how the bikes worked off-road. Personally I think the bikes with the 8-speed rear cassettes were the high-point of MTB technology. The Shimano rapid-fire shifters worked great, 24-speeds was enough for anyone, the v-brakes...

My father, who died last year at 88 years, was gifted a Schwinn like this from his parent's when he was a child in the 1940s, and when I was a kid in the 60s I had a similar bike as a hand-me down as my first bicycle which I learned to ride on. This was what most of us in the USA rode back in...

No matter what, I will always be first a fan of the steel bicycle frame, whether it is lugged or just tubes butt welded together. No matter what the construction method, steel has proven itself as the best frame material in more than one way. Also I must say I prefer the 1" head set models that...

I am very sure that fancy looking steel bicycle lugs could easily be cut out with CNC lasers today in seconds each. I worked in a metal fab shop in the 1980s when the first CNC laser machine came into the shop, revolutionizing what they could make out of sheet and plate steel and drastically...

Carbon fiber is a cheap manufacturing process compared to turning things out in metal by casting or machining. Some pimply-faced kid "engineer" who never did anything but watch YouTube and sit at a computer makes something with Autocad or a similar program, the computer controlled machinery can...

Nobody knew that aerodynamics were so important to cycling before was it LeMond who won the TDF because of his aero bars? And TDF cyclists did not have to wear helmets until 2005!!! It has been researched that cyclists wearing helmets take more risks, they get an invulnerability syndrome. If we...

Interesting theory. More frame sizes were offered back in the day of level top tubes. Starting in the late 90s the slanted top tube came in with long seat tubes, and I am sure it was to cut costs for manufacturers who now had to make fewer frame sizes, just long seat posts. I always hated the...