What floats your boat??

[sfsr]

I just wanted the bike I couldn't have/afford when I was (a lot) younger.

that is now turning into quite an interesting project as I'm finding out what parts should be fitted and tracking them down. with what hopefully arriving today I can add to my project post.

 

[brocklanders023]

I'm in it for most of the reasons above. Retrobiking has become more about buggering about with snotty old bike and making them better rather the riding them as I probably prefer to ride my modern bike tbh

I've spent quite a bit on some builds/bikes but have also had as much fun restoring £30 ebay finds.

 

[skinnyboy]

So what is it about retrobiking that floats your boat?

Nostalgia.... It brings back that feeling of when I was an early teen, riding on what my parents could have afforded at the time or on whatever my paper round money could afford... hours spent caning trails in the woods, miles upon miles of training for local and national races... hot summer evenings, cold, dark, wet nights in winter, etc, etc.

The world was a much better place without bills, careers and mortgages!

+1 this and the thrill of the build, I just love to build stuff. I can just look at my bikes for hours and be lost in time. When I am out riding I am back in my teens, my guilty pleasure of not giving a **** for a few hours. I love the company as well, we all have the same story but with different chapters and thats what makes our shitty old bikes so awesome.

 

[merckx]

So what is it about retrobiking that floats your boat?

Nostalgia.... It brings back that feeling of when I was an early teen, riding on what my parents could have afforded at the time or on whatever my paper round money could afford... hours spent caning trails in the woods, miles upon miles of training for local and national races... hot summer evenings, cold, dark, wet nights in winter, etc, etc.

The world was a much better place without bills, careers and mortgages!

+1 this and the thrill of the build, I just love to build stuff. I can just look at my bikes for hours and be lost in time. When I am out riding I am back in my teens, my guilty pleasure of not giving a f**k for a few hours. I love the company as well, we all have the same story but with different chapters and thats what makes our shitty old bikes so awesome.

+ 2

 

[hamster]

Hmm, makes me sound completely different. I don't give a stuff about originality, don't collect or obsess whether aheads were period correct in 1993 etc.

Older bikes really suit my riding - which is more like high-speed hill walking. The idea of trail centres fills me with horror - so I am happy pottering along bridleways etc. or going out into the real outdoors not some artificial play park. I loathe the idea of driving to go riding, so always ride from home. Modern monster full sus rigs are way over-specified for what I want, plus they seem heavy and un-involving.

 

[dyna-ti]

Building bringing it back to period beauty.

And polishing old shimano high end groupsets back to their shiny shiny goodness

 

[dbmtb]

Probably all the wrong reasons for me. I've been in the trade for donkeys years and have associations with so much hardware for so many reasons. It's also so easy for me to make a high end modern bike that there's no fun in it. It's a trade illness - as the only shop visitors I have who truly appreciate my wall-hangings are just as damaged by their working history as I am.

But when it boils down to it I think that really it's the idea of riding around on bikes that nobody has seen before (yes folks - in Denmark, nobody has seen a Pace before) that floats my boat.

The idea of having bikes with a certain "historical" pedigree, which only the enthusiast is actually aware of is also advantageous as it means that the risk of theft is very low.

Then there's the inverted snob factor - the idea that you don't need to change your bike every year to keep up with your riding colleages, yet still retain an element of exclusivity.

And the ex-pat abroad thing too. A Yorkshireman riding around in Denmark on a Pace or a Dave Yates should equate at the same level of obvious tackiness as Dane riding around on a Principia in the UK would. But for some beyond-logic reason it doesn't.