Thrift Store Bike Find

It is getting to be a pretty rare thing, around here, to come across a decent bike in a thrift store. Most old bikes (sorry ... vintage bikes) go on Craigslist, it seems, where people want outlandish prices for them. But, last Friday, on the way home from the doctor's office, I stopped by an ARC store, and hit paydirt.

First, I came cross this never-mounted XT crankset for $5.99.

Even if I never use the square-taper crank arms, the 4-bolt rings will fit my mountain bike or my Funk ti bike. I just checked Amazon, and that's close to $100.00 worth of chainrings, as of today. So, I was pretty happy with that.

Then, I spied this:

It is a stock Trek 950 from the early 1990s. I think it is actually a 1990 model, but I haven't checked the serial number against the online database, yet.

Lugged steel frame...

Wisconsin made...

With a full LX group, including the headset.

The anodized rims still have all of the color on the braking surface, which indicates that the bike has seen light usage. It was probably never ridden off-road, and doesn't appear to have many on-road miles on it, either. It needs a tube in the rear tire, but is otherwise ready to ride, as near as I can tell.

It will make a nice stablemate for my 1992 model 950, which has the over-sized tubing and lugs, in contrast to the smaller diameter lugged tube on the bike I just got. The only question is just how I want to build it up. It's nice having all of the stock parts, but I hate the LX Rapidfire shifters of that era, plus I am not a big flat-bar fan.

I am thinking it might get the bars, shifters and brake levers from my Bridgestone MB-1, and a 650b wheel conversion. Or, it might not. I need to ride it around a bit, as-is, before I start making changes.

Stay tuned.

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