More Bikes for Parts

Day before yesterday while helping a friend move stuff, I scored a couple of nice but very beat up bikes that happen to have square taper cranks with several things I have wished I had for a while: bolt-on spider/chainrings for the triples, trigger shifters, and some good derailers/shifters for 6-speed cassettes.


One is a larger triple than the other, and I think it is aluminum or some alloy for the rings (as well as the spider/crank. I can actually wiggle it side to side between spider legs.

The other triple is much harder, does not wiggle, and has that darker brownish tinge of titanium, although I am sure it is just plated or anodized to that color rather than actually being made of titanium. I sure wish it was, as I doubt I could break it if it was. ;) The crank/spider is still aluminum/alloy, which is fine. It's a lot smaller rings though, so I'll need to use the smaller ring on the motor, maybe even cut it off and replace with an even smaller one.

The crank rings on the Trek do appear to be very hard metal on the largest ring--it does not even have it's tooth count stamped in it as the two smaller rings (of a different color metal) do. It is stickered as a Shimano Hyperdrive C. It's a 42T, and the others are 34 and 24. There is minor damage (chipping?) on certain teeth and tips, but it is in better shape than most of the rings I already have around here.

Being a Hyperdrive C tells me more certainly that the original wheel/cassette isn't on the back, because AFAIK these were meant for an 11T rear smallest sprocket.

The rings on the Schwinn are larger, at 48T, 38T, 28T, but are definitely weaker than the Hyperdrive rings.

I am going to see if I can work out a new driveline on CB2 for the motor/pedals using the Hyperglide as the receiver. Kind of a waste, as it won't be used for any shifting. :)

I will probably just put the old strong single-ring cranks back on CB2's pedals.


There are a number of other nifty parts on the bikes, too, including even the frames, which appear to be nice cromoly, and are light enough I can pick them up onehanded even with the whole bike together, though I can't carry them far (I'm a wimp and my knees and joints hurt a lot).



One has Shimano trigger shifters, but they weren't working. The trigger shifters are part of the brake lever mounts, too. The cap on one is missing; hopefully it is only a cover and not a functional part.


These may end up being perfect shifters for the trike, since I will not have my hands in my field of vision with the tank style underseat steering, so I also can't see what gear things are in or what position the shifter lever is in. A trigger shifter always returns back to "home" after each shift, so it would be easier to shift with "blind". In theory. I've never used one.

I did a little bit of cleaning of the trigger shifters, and now they work fine. Just had dirt in there keeping the mechanism from moving the ratchet. I'll have to make a cover for the right (rear) shifter, or that will continue to be a bad problem.

The other has Deore lever shifters for a 6-speed rear cassette and a front triple, which is what I have on the CrazyBike2 right now. The Deore shifter I have on CB2 is for an 8-speed and thus doesn't shift properly due to differnet ring spacing (I dont' have anything with an 8-speed cassette).

Both shifter cable housings were disintegrated at the shifters, as you can see.

One uses vbrakes, one uses side-pull linears with the noodle. The vbrakes appear to be almost new pads, the others have some medium wear on them.

There is only one good tire on there, a Kenda something-or-other. The others are typical knobby stuff, though one of them is much less so than the others.

The Schwinn is a non-suspension bike, and the Trek is a hardtail with front shock forks that don't appear to work. They are labeled Skareb, though parts of the lettering are worn off so I can't read everything on it.

They appeared to be hydraulic rather than spring, but turned out once I found the manual online to be pneumatic shock and hydraulic damping. There is a lever on the top of one of them that I originally thought was supposed to adjust the ride/travel and thought was missing on the other one, but it turns out to be the damping adjust, and is only supposed to have one.

The other is a schrader valve, which I aired up to about 100PSI based on the manual and some posts found on an MTB forum, and it now operates as a shock. :) I haven't opened it up to check the oil, but I suspect it's empty or near so (or the valves are bad) as there is no damping at all, regardless of the red knob setting.

It appears based on the manual to be easy to disassemble to check it out and/or fix, once I have time to clear off a table to lay out all the (presumably oily) parts. :)


One bike has wide-flanged hubs, which could come in handy for bolting diskc brakes to via adapters, but neither has any disk brake mounting holes on the hubs. The shock fork above has the mounting for the brake calipers, though. They're all 26" wheels with aluminum rims and hubs. Don't know if the spokes are good ones or not. I'd bet they are better than the cheap junk on most of the wheels I have.

Turns out the rear hubs on both are regular freewheels, and I suspect they are not the original cassettes, either, as neither one even has much in the way of the little shifting-helper-ridges and contours on any of the sprockets--they're pretty much flat on the Trek, and just have the twisted tips on the Schwinn.

The rear hub of the Schwinn:

The hubs/rims on the Schwinn could be original, they appear to be at least decent quality ones and both match. Spokes seem a lot better steel than the Trek, as they don't just bend (even the loose ones) with finger pressure. There is a spot on the rear rim that is dented/bowed out a little from what was probably running over a rock (there's no matching one on the other side, so not likely a pothole or curb jump). They're even reasonably true.

I'm pretty sure they're not the original rims on the Trek, as the rear is a VERY cheap steel rim that has a horrible welded seam, with cheap steel spokes on it. The front wheel isn't that much better but is at least intact. Neither is true at all.

The Trek is really a mishmash of different bikes, and some of them were very badly put together, including it's rear hub. I thought maybe it was just loose, and jokingly thought it might be missing the bearings, as it was so wobbly. Actually it was missing the cone nut, and a regular washer had been put against the bearings, with NO LUBRICATION AT ALL, with a single spacer-style nut tightly up against it. Regular nuts just threaded there as spacers up to the dropouts, but not threaded up to the washer very hard. This was the result:

Yes, that is a flat-sided bearing, and it's not the only one.

All the bearings are actually stuck to the race so hard I can't pry them out; I suspect they're partly welded in place by friction heating. It even looks like the bearing cup itself is separated from the hub's outer edge, and pushed into the wheel some.

This is all on the drive side, so the stress broke the spoke you see above, and damaged others.