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£45 for this Trailstar Mk1.
Dumped the knackered XCMs, gears, mech disc brakes.
Threw some Holy Rollers on, few bits n bobs here and there and there you go.
The best bike I should never have got rid of...
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Saracen Zen about ten years ago. Looked round my spares and realised I just needed a frame for a spare hardtail. Only criteria was steel. Got it for £60 delivered, built it up and it instantly became my go to bike which I started upgrading pretty quickly! Only issue on delivery was someone had fitted the cranks at 12 o'clock and 5 o'clock, took a while to realise why it pedalled weirdly and longer to cut them off with a wee metal saw.
Still gets a run out every now and then or did until a Cotic Soul bargain winter bike arrived a few months ago.
My Genesis i0 singlespeed frame, cheap and cheerful but rides like a dream and has given hours of fun.
I bought a Thorn Audax frame and fork (one of the original 531 ones) off Ebay for £75. That was about 12 years ago and I've racked up many thousands of miles since, including LEJOG and the Med to the Channel. I'd say I've had my money's worth ;).
Double figures (£70ish IIRC) for a brand new Dirty Jo F-Creme frame. Loved it. Another one I shouldn't have sold (although the current Solaris is even better there was a big gap between the two where I wished I still had the DJ)
Actually, the Solaris probably counts, £180 for frame, seatpost, Hope headset, XT BB, brilliant bike. (Rest of it wasn't cheap mind so can't count the whole thing for this thread, 80% second hand stuff but still bizarely hit £2k, dogs danglies spec though so good VFM)
Ok not a pittance but compared to full bike prices now it was.
£400 pinnacle Iroko 4 full xt and pike fork. Ran it 2 years. Really got me onto longer lower slacker thing and I love it. Only swapped frame recently as I wanted longer lower and slacker 🙂
Pinnacle name hasn’t much kudos(god knows why) as the Iroko is a very well made frame
Not the cheapest but a £500 2016 boardman cx comp..changed the brakes to spyre tpr rd/hd semi hydaurlics, whacked on a surface 11-40 in 9 speed on the sora long cage and a tailfin rack and trunkbag(the new one) and swcabe marathon plus's in 35mm had it a year and ride when I can(3and a half thousand miles so far mainly used for getting around locally- as I font have a driving liscense) very little maintenance needed and can be utterly a abused without breaking..plus I can outride £1k+ bikes a good chunk of the time..even ride it off after a nasty off that nearly snapped the mech hanger of..still using said hanger..
Bike related, but not bike:
A free Daewoo Nexia from my cousin. Parked outside a dodgy pub in Moston and every panel dented by yoot walking over it on the way home.
Took me, the Mrs, bikes and camping gear all over the UK and bits of Europe, before finally expiring terminally outside my favourite pub.
Uglier and more reliable than a Doblo.
Cheaper and more reliable than an Omega.
RIP Shedric.
We will always remember you....
Genesis Vagabond F+F. Then a root through the spares box in the garage and I have a bike that does pretty much everything I want it to do. Yeah it is a frankenbike, but I like to think of it as the best of all worlds.
Absolute blast, I commute on it, bikepacking and even had it on the turbo with a 700c wheel and tyre.
A great way to recycle loads of old kit.
£450 on a saracen myst 2015 frame, and I still love it.
amazing price for a bloody good dh frame
Not exactly a pittance, but £250 for a handbuilt steel frame, one of only two ever made: my Inbred 567, a true hooligan hardtail, bare steel, just a thin clear matt lacquer over the bare metal. It was built up with all the parts from a titanium Cove Hummer, apart from the forks, which are a pair of 6” travel Nixon Platinums.
Such a nice bike to ride, although heavy, around 30lbs.
I just put this together as a commuter/spare XC bike. Frame came from a bike a co-worker literally rode it until it fell apart. The headset seized up so he tried taking it apart to "put some grease in", but it all fell apart in a pile of rust and he couldn't figure out how to put it back together. Everything else was equally rusted and knackered so he realized it was cheaper to just buy a new bike. I rebuilt it with old bits from the spare parts bin figuring I could use it to commute and sneak out of work for some afternoon rides on the hill behind work. Took it out on Saturday and it was surprisingly nice to ride. Only thing it really gives much away to my good bike is 80 mm forks versus 130 mm.
About 15 years ago I paid £5 for a beater bike because it had some parts I wanted for a build I was doing. It was filthy, rusty, and stickered as a Diamondback, ie looked like shit, crusty bearings etc.
The lugs looked interesting but crude and welded instead of brazed. I simply assumed it was some cheap gas-pipe Japanese production from the 70s. Bike got stripped, frame dumped at the back of the attic.
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Last year I had a cull of old frames, and took a car load to a swap meet to give away. No one wanted the Diamondback, not even free in a group of rabid bike hoarders. So a trip to the tip was its destiny.
As I was putting in the car for its final journey I bumped it against one of the struts for the boot, and the bike went 'ting'.
'Ting'? Gas-pipe doesn't go 'ting' like a bell, so for the first time I took a really close look. What I thought was crude welding blobs was actually hard (very) paint runs.
The Stallard style dropouts suggested UK origins, and the lugs suggested mid 50s Dawes. Unusually for that era it didn't have the special pump pegs cum cable stops on the underside of the top-tube, instead they were on the seat tube. Plus it had mounts for a special small rack (bag-rest) and that made it a Windrush, a bike Dawes made for the RSF crowd.
The irony was I was actively looking for a 1950s RSF bike, but had been concentrating on looking for a Rudge Pathfinder.
Anyhow after a bit of attention with cutting polish the rust just proved to be stains, then a rake through my attic and it ended up a nice handling 1950s gravel bike.
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It handles the Loch Einich run nicely, could do with better brakes though. 🙂
I haven't finished with it, it's going to get properly refinished. Probably my favourite 700c wheel bike.
Definitely a pittance, and yes I love it.