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    Found a bike on the side of the road with a free sign. Bridgestone 4130 CrMo

    Hey I’m here for some ID info. I found this bike on the side of the road with a Free sign and thought it’d be fun to fix it up. It’s a Bridgestone 4130 CrMo with a made in Japan sticker. The handle bars say Shimano 105 and don’t look very old. Can anyone weigh in on the ID info? I found a few mentions of this bike on forums but not much. Many thanks.

    by everythingsquare

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    9 Comments

    1. singlejeff on

      Wow, I’d be grabbing it for any of my shorter friends. I’m guessing a early middle 70s bike. I can’t make out the model name.

    2. cchaven1965 on

      Certainly can’t beat the price! It looks like a Suntour blueline deraileur on the front, and possibly the shifters as well, which would put it early to mid 80’s? I recall Bridgestone bikes being popular in the 80’s as well

    3. Seigvell on

      That’s a Bridgestone Spica. 1982, maybe. Pretty solid, Japan-made, probably Suntour drop-outs. Rides more comfortably than most during the period as with Nishiki’s Kawamura made frames. Congrats.

    6. filthycitrus on

      The model name is written on the top tube, looks like “Altair,” but you’ll be able to read it better in person. FWIW, if you poke around enough you’ll find out that Grant Peterson who runs Rivendell Bikes was in charge of Bridgrstone’s bikes for a while. This bike is from before that, probably early to mid 80s. At a glance it looks like a decent old Japanese bike with a mish-mash of replacement parts added over the years.
      “4130 CrMo” is what the frame is made of: a specific kind of steel; in this case good but unremarkable stuff. The “Shimano 105” markings aren’t on the handlebars, they’re on the brake levers. 105 is nice stuff, so it has good brake levers, but it’s pretty hard to have bad ones. The actual brakes are probably fine for what they are, but they are single-pivot side pull brakes. If you can replace them with dual-pivot side pulls (or even center pull brakes) you’ll be happier. The front derailleur is “Suntour BL” (or BlueLine), like the brake levers it’s a high-end part in a place where it dorsn’t make much difference. Rear derailleur is Shimano something-or-other, looks fine, google the model name (RX100? Or whatever it says). Cranks look reasonable too.

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