By Scott
Like a lot of you, I have a box or two (perhaps three) of bike stuff in my garage. It's stuff that has been collected over the years, mostly taking it off bikes and putting it aside for "that" project that I hoped to do one day.
I was thinking about this the other day when Igor was working on a shop build- a Disc Pass Hunter for the show room. He had a vintage Sun Tour Sprint rear derailleur. Looked great, but it didn't have quite the range to work with the cogs we were going to use on the bike. So he said fine, I'm sure I have a slightly more modern derailleur I can use from my bike box. This got me thinking about a term called S.A.B.L.E - Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. You can use this term for a lot of things. I have probably more pens at home than I'll ever use. I justify them by the fact that each is slightly different then the other- thinner lines, thicker lines, pressurized ink for writing upside down in the rain (if I need to do that, I think I'll be writing a good bye letter). But surely, I have enough pens and yet, a couple of times a year, I buy another 5 or 6 pens at an art supply store or online. I figure it's a cheap hobby.
When it comes to bike stuff, it's interesting what I have a SABLE of at home. I have lots of chains. At one point I was leaving a job that gave me access to bike bits at wholesale and I didn't know what the future held. So I bought a bunch of chains. I figured those are an easily consumed item, that having on hand would not hurt me financially. I was heavy into randonneuring at the time and that side of cycling eats through chains.
But looking deeper into the boxes in the garage, I found stems, tubes, bars, and map cases that I had collected over the time since the last move/purge and I wondered - will I use all of this?
Is there one particular part/accessory that you have more then a life time supply of at home? Is there a reason for it or is it just dumb luck to end up with all of those 26 x 1.5" Schrader valve tubes?
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There is a vintage Campagnolo Super Record group set and a Cinelli quill stem from my Dad's old 1960 Schwinn Paramount in my garage waiting for a Polyvalient MK IV frame. We don't mind loosing the Mafac brakes for the discs and some nice, retro brake levers on flat bars.
Six years ago I dragged from my cellar two bikes and three boxes of parts from the 1968-88 era and sold them for enough cash to build up two new bikes with enough left over for a set of Michelins for my SUV. My Surly Cross-check is now equipped with an original 1974 Blackburn rack, as well as 180mm Specialized cranks and short-reach Dia-Compe brake levers that I bought in 1985.
Stronglight 49d cranks,
I have 2 in use, and 3 spares.
And lots of bags.
Sturmey hubs, people just give me AWs.
Plus an AF and AM, built into wheels,
they're just fun to take apart.
Thanks for the posting. A good reminder to go thru the garage, basement, bike bedroom, and 4-season porch to see what I have collect/saved over the last 47 years.
Suntour Cyclone derailleurs , Campag Nuovo Record, & Huret Jubilee derailleurs,
Suntour Superbe & Campag Record brake sets, odds & ends of threaded headsets in ISO, Italian, & French threadings, a pile of Cinelli bars & stems, Specialized, Suzue, & Campag hubs, several AW hubs all in boxes under my workbench, along with a stack of 36 hole rims... All for spares and a future project bike or three. And all that AFTER a major selloff. Whew!
I bought a 1978 Motobecane grand touring and since I like Mafac Racers more than weinmann center pulls I have a set of them put aside as well as a nice VO fluted 46/30 crank, just waiting for me to finally get around to doing an overhaul.
I did just use a brand new, now out production, Shimano Deore LX 581 rd with the cool machined logo on a rebuild of a 1986 Schwinn Passage touring bike that came to me with a non-stock old Shimano light action so I do sometimes get around to using collected parts but I could definitely use a clear out.
Thinking offhand, without checking: Brooks and Berthoud leather saddles; Acorn, Saddleback, Carradice, and Berthoud canvas saddlebags; Velocity Dyad touring wheelsets; VO and Nitto handlebars (although I still sometimes don't have the Right One); Dinotte and Exposure headlights and tail lights; and Look and Shimano clipless pedals. Oh, and bikes! I'm slowly thinning these things out, but the operative word there is "slowly."
Four Huret Duopars (one titanium), Simplex LJ front derailleur, Retrofriction shifters, 1 3/4 sets of TA tandem cranks, about four Weinmann center pull brakesets, one well hated set of Mafac Racers and a Mafac cantilever set. Vive la France, and perhaps Belgium. Oh wait, two sets Phil Wood pedals in use. Universal side and center pull brakes. About fifteen Suntour freewheels. Several Suntour XC derailleurs, front and rear, with a multitude of shifters and sealed hubs. It's going to be a great estate sale when the time comes.
Fountain pens. If I was a crackhead, they could wean me off with fountain pens......
Adjusting barrels, cable binders and ball bearings, oh my. A few years ago I went through my SABLE putting the smalls into a couple 'Stanley' organizers and finding totes for the bigs. Now I know where to find that cable binder bolt my son's girl friend's bike needs to keep rolling.
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