Many years ago when I was a young lad (maybe 12-13), my father bought me a 10-speed Huffy mountain bike as a birthday gift. I rode the crap out of that thing throughout my teenage years. It is, you might say, well-loved. Today, the bike sits in my garage. A few times a year I dust it off, air up the tires, and go for a spin.
Cosmetically, and functionally, the thing is a piece of garbage. The brake levers are soft plastic that threaten to snap off at any moment, the shift levers require constant retightening, the stickers are peeling, the paint is scuffed, the wheel bearings are shot, both wheels are badly bent and missing spokes, the brakes barely work, the tires are literally crumbling away, the kickstand is non-functional, the hand grips are torn to shreds, and the rear gear selector only gives me three gears to choose from.
And yet, every time I hop on the thing and pedal down the street, I fall in love with it all over again. Crazy, right? There's something about this bike... it fits me like a glove. Every bicycle I've ridden since, no matter how expensive, is uncomfortable and difficult to control.
So now I'm at the stage of my Mustachianism where I want to make a more concerted effort to ride bicycle on a daily basis. Work is currently too far away, but I can get to the grocery store, post office, and a few other places by bicycle easily. I even recently purchased a good used bike trailer for $30 off craigslist the other day.
I considered buying a new bike for awhile, one that is lighter and made of better parts than Ye Olde Huffy. But I'm scared silly that whatever I buy will be uncomfortable or otherwise leave me with nothing but pangs of buyer's remorse.
So what about fixing it up, then? Really the only things salvageable on it are the handlebars, frame, crank, seat, gears, and maybe the chain. At first it took some doing to find parts online that weren't for multi-thousand-dollar athlete bikes but I finally managed to find a selection of wheels, tires, brakes, and shifters on Amazon that didn't cost a mint. Haven't done any detailed cost analysis yet, but I'm estimating that rehabbing the Huffy will probably cost around $200 in total. It will still be cheap parts on a heavy steel frame, but at least it will be, more or less, my old bike.
So my questions are:
1) Has anyone done this before?
2) Is this totally nutty? (I'm not afraid of the mechanical aspects, I'm fairly handy with this kind of stuff. Just wondering about the general parts compatibility and whatnot.)
3) I have a 2x5 gear arrangement, but the only good deals I see for shifters on Amazon are for 3x7 gear arrangements. Are those going to be usable on my bike?