Full repair job OR NOS purchase?

[scant]

Which do people enjoy more & why?
Full repair job can entail, paint stripping, respray, parts cleaning, rebuilding & polishing.

NOS is searching for hard to find parts & building a bike up as new.

My preference is full repair. My builds can/ are/ do take over a year as I really enjoy taking what can be a heavily beat up frame/ parts & spending time on them bringing them back to near new condition. I actually enjoy this process so much that I deliberately slow the process down! Kinda like the build up to christmas as a kid being more enjoyable than the day itself.

Retro bikes are for me an enjoyable off bike pastime. generally full repair jobs are fairly cheap. I still prefer to spend the bulk of my cycling budget (or lack of!) on new parts that I get the most miles/ use/ fun out of

What do the rest of ya think/ prefer?

 

[SLIM]

REBUILD / REPAIR for me
love it , when you buy a bike its just a bike if you see what i mean ,
but when you`ve stripped it , polished it , resprayed it ,
its more satisfying . you can appreciate it more .
and for me i am allways looking and thinking " could i have done this a bit better or polished that a bit more "

But , then there is the looking for the parts
like with the RTS spent months looking for a black seat clamp ,
then found an original GT one in the US . nos and cheap
and its like " YES " (dancing around the room like fool) feeling
after hours of trawling the web , e bay , whatever
you dont get that when you just buy the whole bike
and the fact NOS is so bloody expensive

just think about it this way how many retro bikes have we saved from the scrap / tip

just my 2p

SLIM

 

[scant]

I found a M950 hub on mavic 217 rim at the tip once. no idea why it was there, nothing wrong with it! .. maybe thats anutha thread ;D

 

[SLIM]

its how it started is the funny thing ..
took my Pine to the shop i bought it from , the RHONDDA CYCLE CENTRE
to have a new headset put on , anyway the guy that owns the shop said he loved the bike , but that parts were obsolete on it .
OK fine i thought , on goes the headset and i think ..good for a few more years yet
so home i go and trawl e bay for a new stem ( shorter for my now retro /
obsolete spine )
and there they are...... hundreds of those lovely parts i allways wanted

so here i am a year or so later with a
MARIN PINE
GT RTS 1
MARIN TEAM FrS
PROFLEX 555
ALL BECAUSE I NEEDED A SHORTER STEM

 

[scant]

RHONDDA CYCLE CENTRE, brings back memories I havent been there for years! I sold my last tioga disk drive to some kid who worked there

nice story

 

[SLIM]

funny enough on the phone to them this morning
to try and get one of those super long allen keys to strip the rear suspention on the team frs
talking to Mathew and he says to fetch it up he`s got all the original tools for the forks / suspention and the pivot / bushing removal tools
as well as the original strip down mauals for the whole range back to 93
hoping he`ll let me photo copy the relevant ones

 

[cchris2lou]

I also enjoy repairing and rebuilding .

Working on my yeti Kokopelli at the moment . I spent 2 hours on sunay sanding it , ready for re spray .

Slim , i take it that you have managed to sort out the Marin rear suspension .

 

[rutteger]

Hmmmm. Most of my projects to date have fallen somewhere inbetween. I'm certainly not a NOS obsessive - I like to ride my bikes old or new school. I've also yet to take on a fell restore job a la scant's FRO.

 

[scant]

1 of the downsides to full restore. paint stripping a yeti AS earlier (a favour to Bri) & some paintstripper flicked up right into my eye. Fuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkk that stings!!!!

Full restores can be really cheap to purchase as a lot of people are put off by the amount of work. The scratched up klein attitude frameset that only made £130 on ebay.co.uk this arvo being a classic example

 

[rutteger]

Full restores can be really cheap to purchase as a lot of people are put off by the amount of work. The scratched up klein attitude frameset that only made £130 on ebay.co.uk this arvo being a classic example

Whhaaaaaattt. Was that a pre-Trek frame. did you buy it. Why do I always miss stuff like that.

Hope your eye is OK. Do you now wear a patch ?