Fresh Meat...er, Metal

I got another organ donor bike yesterday. Walked into a thrift store, and it's marked $25, and except for a rusty chain, is in good shape. Needs adjusting here and there, but it has a wider seat than mine, and has the Shimano SIS Gripshifters mine has, which I wanted another set of for the electric motor controls (but they're expensive to buy separately). I got to the register and it was rung up as $15; apparently I got there in time for the daily random special. :P

It's kind of strange. The welding, body style, and all the parts except the shifters/derailers are all the same as the two Murray's I have, but the body has Huffy *deeply* stamped into the metal down at the kickstand mount. All the stickers say "Kensington", and "made in China". The Shimano stuff all seems to be aftermarket, as they don't match the paint-crimp marks underneath them, so perhaps whoever owned it before me changed them out. I'm glad they did, though, because I sure wanted this kind.

I bought it to cut the rear frame section off and use for my Electricle™, but it's in such nice shape, and is actually a bit shorter in the seat tube than my other bikes, it fits me better than any of the others I have. So I will probably save it's frame and use *this* for the test bike, and sacrifice the other (yellow) Murray as organ donor for the rear frame part.

I'd already tried using the frame off my old white Murray Biotech, but the metal is soft and had already been bent at the rear wheel mount points long ago, which is why I had eventually given up on it--I couldn't straighten it and *keep* it straight, and the wheel would end up so out-of-true by the middle of a ride that it would rub on the brake pads, or even the frame! I thought that I could at least use it for testing, but even that is proving impractical due to the soft bent metal, thus the acquisition of the new bike for organ donor purposes.

Now I have some thinking to do before I start cutting, because I'm not sure exactly what I want to do now. :-(