A little while back, I came across this bike at Meijers:
It's a cheap Kent bike, at Meijers it is tagged Northwoods, but the same bike is at Wal-mart, called the Avalon. Around $120 new. What I thought was cool was the little shock between the frame and rear fork, and the fact that the frame was articulated. Plus it's an aluminum frame, adjustable stem, suspension fork, etc. The gears in my head started turning, thinking about how to make it into an air-ride bike, or at least some other way to adjust it to raise and lower it at will. But the shock isn't very big, so there's not much travel there. Still...
So I'm randomly searching Craigslist, and I see an ad with this picture:
and they're selling the bike for $20 bucks! Sweet, I'm there! Much better than $120 for something that may not work out at all. I shoot them an email, they say they have no phone, but they'll meet me somewhere. Back and forth emails for a couple days, set up a time, they cancel out of it, more emails, starting to think it just isn't going to work out and start looking for another one elsewhere. Finally they set up a meeting for today at the Wal-mart at 4PM. Great! 4PM comes and goes, stick around until almost 4:30 and I get an email from them that they're on their way. Lucky I get my emails on my phone, since I had no way to call them, and I was ready to blow the whole thing off.
Anyway, the woman shows up around 4:45, and she's actually pretty nice about the whole thing so I didn't make a big deal out of it.
Came home with the bike:
Immediatly dispatched the shock to bike part heaven. Here it is dropped all the way down:
Here it is at near maximum travel:
Seems like I should be able to do something cool with it. Time will tell. I've got a couple ideas already...
It's a cheap Kent bike, at Meijers it is tagged Northwoods, but the same bike is at Wal-mart, called the Avalon. Around $120 new. What I thought was cool was the little shock between the frame and rear fork, and the fact that the frame was articulated. Plus it's an aluminum frame, adjustable stem, suspension fork, etc. The gears in my head started turning, thinking about how to make it into an air-ride bike, or at least some other way to adjust it to raise and lower it at will. But the shock isn't very big, so there's not much travel there. Still...
So I'm randomly searching Craigslist, and I see an ad with this picture:
and they're selling the bike for $20 bucks! Sweet, I'm there! Much better than $120 for something that may not work out at all. I shoot them an email, they say they have no phone, but they'll meet me somewhere. Back and forth emails for a couple days, set up a time, they cancel out of it, more emails, starting to think it just isn't going to work out and start looking for another one elsewhere. Finally they set up a meeting for today at the Wal-mart at 4PM. Great! 4PM comes and goes, stick around until almost 4:30 and I get an email from them that they're on their way. Lucky I get my emails on my phone, since I had no way to call them, and I was ready to blow the whole thing off.
Anyway, the woman shows up around 4:45, and she's actually pretty nice about the whole thing so I didn't make a big deal out of it.
Came home with the bike:
Immediatly dispatched the shock to bike part heaven. Here it is dropped all the way down:
Here it is at near maximum travel:
Seems like I should be able to do something cool with it. Time will tell. I've got a couple ideas already...
