when and how did your retro obsession start

[AT00]

I was given a well-loved MKM frame for my birthday! (by girlfriends dad) This was about 4 years ago.

I'd been more of a serial-looker up until then, but had bought an awful (and huge) vintage frame off ebay for £100 - I think he felt sorry for me!

And then he introduced me to retrobike, and the obsession with 'building it up' began.


Went to ellis briggs, got a respray
Scoured eBay all day for weeks - got into Dura Ace AX stuff
Started going to Jumbles
etc

Still obsessed - at the precipice of getting my second vintage frame.. oh dear!

 

[daugs]

Re:

nothing "retro" ever started, I just never threw anything away (unless broken) and still got a lot of stuff from the 1980s

 

[non-fixie]

I bought my first racing bike at a flea market in '09 for €20. I'd never owned one, and for €20 it seemed like a good deal.

When searching for parts and instructions Google kept bringing me to places like Retrobike, Bikeforums and Velobase. That's where I found rather likeable people and useful tips, like buying a second bike for parts ... I think that's where it went wrong.

 

[mikeyboyo]

When I was 10 years old in the summer of 2004, we had an old 1974 Raleigh Shopper gathering cobwebs in the garden shed, after watching chitty chitty bang bang one too many times I decided I wanted to get the Shopper running It's a sort of purple colour, so all the other kids gave me hell for riding what they thought was a girls bike :/ But I liked the bike too much to care

2004:


2014:


When I was 13 I started buying my own classic bikes, and people started giving me their unwanted bikes, when I was 14, someone gave me a 1990 Raleigh Team Banana, this was my first road bike I was never really sporty, but got into cycling after taking my bikes for test rides after tinkering. Now I have a fair few classic road bikes, 1950s Rudge Ulster Sports, 1963 Raleigh Trent Tourist, 1970s (I think) Falcon, 1981 Raleigh Record, as well as a whole host of shoppers, mtbs, bmxs and a Raleigh Grifter it's been fun

 

[kingbling]

I always was fixing/building bikes as a kid and eventually found myself with a road bike and doing TTs and Crits as a schoolboy then I had a sabbatical for 20years and got into MTB then back in 2013 I swapped a laptop with my brother for some 600 tri colour parts now I have 8 road bikes and 3 MTB's plus 2 other projects on the go and have amassed loads of parts (is it any wonder I'm skint) but its fun you meet like minded folk on forums and bike jumbles.

 

[Pionir]

Re: Re:

If it wasn't for these two characters, I doubt if I would have still been into the bike, as I creep towards 50 now. For me, Hinault and LeMond made "the bike" a spell-binding obsession which has lasted since the early 80s...

I never really started a retro obsession, I just never moved on from the era of these chaps:

 

[rusty bodie]

Re: Re:

If it wasn't for these two characters, I doubt if I would have still been into the bike, as I creep towards 50 now. For me, Hinault and LeMond made "the bike" a spell-binding obsession which has lasted since the early 80s...

I never really started a retro obsession, I just never moved on from the era of these chaps:

I couldn't have put it better myself!

 

[mattsccm]

Never really started. What many people call old bikes are, to me, just bikes that I haven't thrown away. Like my newer bikes, nothing special just another bike that does the job.

 

[paul8valve]

Raced (and crashed!) a lot in my teens during the 80s. Gave it up when I went through the windscreen of a van!!!

Fast forward twenty years and I buy a modern alu framed bike in 2010...never really fell in love with it, but it was a a fine machine.

Started a bike recycling charity initiative in late 2014 here in Southern Ireland which got me working on old bikes again.

Suddenly started noticing the bikes/frames I dreamed of in my teens could be bought for a few hundred quid, so I said i'll have me some of that.

Suddenly I've got a half dozen old racing bikes either restored or in the process...how the bejaysus did that happen??

 

[k-rod]

Re:

Hey kid ... over here ...


... just try a little bit of this stuff once ... you'll prolly like it, and you can quit at any time ...