Hey all, I’ve been wanting to soup up an old 80s or 90s road bike frame with my old 105 5600 series groupset and some new parts just as a fun side project. I had this Trek 1000 frame that I thought would work. After reading some of the discussions on this thread it seems like an old aluminum frame isn’t a good idea though. Two questions: Would it really be a bad idea to use this aluminum frame and if so then what old steel frames would be good to use for this project?
by stellarscheme
1 Comment
There’s nothing wrong with upgrading old aluminium bikes – you just need to be cognitive of the fact aluminium behaves differently to steel.
Firstly, you need to make sure the frame has the same hub spacing as the wheel you want to use. With steel bikes this isn’t really an issue because you can bend steel frames to adjust the hub spacing. You can’t do that with aluminium frames.
Secondly, aluminium frames have a finite number of rides they can withstand before something will break, even if they’ve never been crashed. If you know this bike was ridden hard for 20 years… well its probably not worth spending much money on. If you think this bike probably got ridden a bit before being left in a garage for 20 years, then its likely to have plenty of life yet.
With steel frames – as long as they’re not crashed and rust doesn’t kill them – they can in theory last forever. Furthermore, steel is more easily and more cost effectively repaired. That said, there’s plenty of steel frames that end up as scrap metal because most will also become ‘not worth fixing’ when a tube cracks or a weld fails.
It seems you already have this bike in your possession, so I say check the rear hub, make sure there are no cracks and as long as those things check out – go for it.