I have been working on an old bike I got when I was a college student about ten years ago. I started to work on it more seriously about a year ago. The bicycle is called The Tourist, it’s an old russian bike, back in the days 80s and 90s it was a very highly respected bike. There is a little story to how I got it. When I was a jazz saxophone student on junior year I really wanted a cool looking hipster bike like the cool kids had you know. I told about it to a group at a party and one guitar player told that when she was out at night in another town she got a bike from a drunk. The drunk only wanted one beer money in return. She didn’t start to drive with it herself and the bike stayed in a garage under blanks of wood, so I pulled the bike out and was very happy to give it a new life. When I got it I just gave it a kick here and there to just drive around, but now I have the means to take it a little more seriously.
I have bought a new saddle, new wheels, chain, pedals, cranks, crankset, western central lock, padding for handlebars, new break (front only) and single speed cassette. So pretty much the only thing original right now is frame and handlebar. Of course ‘new’ in this context means retro bicycle parts.
I also took the frame to be repainted in an oven. I don’t know exactly what they did, but the frame looks amazing and the paint looks very good and strongly applied, in my terms.
I plan to take it to shop sometime, because when I took off the handlebar once, I forgot the bolt and demolished the handlebar stem a little. Mostly my working progress has been that I try to do as much as possible on my own, but when I get frustrated or break something I take it to the shop. There is a very good shop in little town Viljandi, 30 km from where I live. I am a regular customer there by now :D. Its cool that the whole thing hasn’t really cost me much. The wheels were the most, 100 EUR a piece, painting was 25 EUR. Cranks, crankset and pedals wasn’t more than 50 EUR I think. With everything else plus the mechanics work hours I think it hasn’t cost me no way more than 500 EUR.
Looking into the future I am thinking a bit making it a fixie, because I want to try that out. I need to do a little online shopping on my own, possibly from outside Estonia, because there aren’t fixie mechanisms to be found here. I haven’t looked very much into it so far because the new single speed mechanism works so good :).
So right now I am a really happy bike owner going out for rides almost every day. Here are some pictures I took today, they are made at the lake called Võrtsjärv, the shores are 2-3 km from where I live.
Btw sorry If I can’t say the exact names of the bicycle parts, I still am quite an amateur at all of it, but a happy one.