Opening the Pandora's Box of Parts

1992 Bridgestone RB-1

The interest in durable, classically-styled steel road racing frames have never really died. You can walk into a bike store today with seven big ones (that's thousands, not hundreds) and ride away on a carbon fiber 15-pound wonder, but the appeal of the old school lugged steel bicycle is still with us today, as can be attested by all those enthusiastic blogs on the internet.

So why is it that at your average charity ride or a century, you see virtually no bicycle that is more that five or eight years old?

Sure, these old steel bicycles, which reached the pinacle of its artform in the late 80s, weigh a healthy 22 to 23 pounds, but back then, the pros were riding bikes weighing the same amount. Go back to the 1950s, and the pro bicycles were tipping the scale at 26 pounds. Is it that nobody today wants to ride anything weighing more than 16 or 17 pounds?

Restoring a 20-year-old bicycle takes the kind of heroic (or bone-headed) dedication formerly known only to Ferrari afficionados. The parts are just not there in abundant quality. Talk to your local bike store about getting a replacement freehub body on your 7-speed Shimano 600 from 1989, and they will give you a funny look. The OEM's have long ago moved on.

The reality is, locating new old stock or lightly used parts would be well-nigh impossible in many cases without internet sources such as eBay. Like the feel of Michelin Hi-Lite Comp tires from the late 80s, which give away nothing to today's latest tires? Have fun locating that rare pair in Holland and paying thirty dollars just for shipping. The white gum rubber hoods on your Shimano 105 brake levers are coming apart? You might have to just make do with compatible black Shimano replacements and count your blessings.

The usual wear-and-tear items, like the rear cogs, chains, and chainrings are all no longer in production. And how compatible are the latest Shimano or Campagnolo gear with your classic steed from the 80s? Forget about just buying a new pair of wheels, because that rear spacing on the steel frame went from 120mm in the early 80s to 125mm in the mid-80s to 130mm in the early 90s. In theory, your bike shop can spread the rear triangle to fit the wider new hubs, but you have to remember that a lot of bike mechanics have little "feel" for the way steel behaves, having grown up on aluminum and carbon fiber, and may be skittish about bending metal with gusto.

Which parts on a bicycle can you expect to have problems with in the near future? Name a part. About the two parts that I have never seen break are the stem and the seat post. Everything else is game for needing replacement or repair with any fair amount of riding: Bent handlebar, bent axle on a freewheel hub, downtube shifter that loses its tension, brake calipers that seize from shot thrust bearings. Not to mention the big-dollar items, like a crankshaft that starts clicking because the square hole is distorted, in which case you need not only a new crankset, but also a new matching bottom bracket. You can get by with a used set in good condition, but you are taking a chance that the previous owner didn't have the same problem.

The biggest problem with restoration is that even well-known bicycle models are just not worth that much in purely monetary terms. Sticking with purely period-correct components are rarely worth the bother on anything but the most esoteric models, because the bike company that put the bike together most likely selected the components based on cost. That's why you see a Greg Lemond TSX bike with a steel frame that was hand-made in Italy come with Matrix-brand rims and hubs that have a freewheel, not a freehub. And this was at a time when the TSX set you back over 3000 dollars, and virtually every bike over 300 dollars came with the more robust freehub.

Repainting or repairing a steel frame is even bigger waste of money. You can still come across 20-year-old steel bikes in excellent condition that was squirrelled away in someone's garage all these years for the cost of getting a frame re-painted by Joe Bell.

Like many industrial designs, the road bicycle technology reached a pinacle of sorts in the late 80s. This was the time when the Japanese confidence was at its peak, and Shimano was just blowing everyone else away with its innovations of SLR brake system, index shifting with resulting precision in the drive train, and smooth, modern asthetic design.

What happened in the early 90s was that the road bicycle industry nearly died a painful death from a shift in the interest to mountain bikes, very few of which from that era are now considered "collectable," since their technology was so clearly eclipsed by the continuing improvement of full-suspension mountain bike innovations. Road bikes became disposable aluminum and carbon fiber constructs, with complex parts like the integrated shifter/brake levers that were throw-away affairs.

Every so often, I come across on the internet stories of someone restoring an old school steel-framed road bicycle, lovingly polishing old aluminum components and repacking bearings and going through the incredible trouble of locating serviceable replacement parts. From a personal point of view, I have some idea of the length which someone has to go to get a 20-year-old bicycle perform like a 2-year-old bicycle, and the dedication that these folks go through to maintain their trusted steed continues to amaze me.