My New Bike… 1986 Fuji Sagres

Hello Internet,

So this is my bike that I got off of eBay! It is a 1986 Fuji Sagres. It was a middle of the line Fuji from back in the 80’s. A quick rundown of the stats.

27″ wheels (hard to find tires for, but doable)
Genesis Triple Crank (Came from my old bike)
Suntour LePree Rear Derailler, Front Derailler and Downtube Shifters
Shimano Tiagra Brake Levers (New but came with the bike)
Dia Compe Brakes
Nitto Quill Stem
Toba Fergie Fenders (Installed By Me)
Brooks Flyer Leather Saddle (From My Previous Bike)
Nitto Olympiad Handlebars (old version of the Nitto Noodle Handlebar)
Lizard Skins Handlebar Tape (new but came with the bike)
Avenir Tires (New With Bike)
Greenfield Kickstand(Off of my old bike)

I have to say that I really love the bike. It fit practically all of the things that I was looking for in a bike. A breakdown of why I chose this bike.

1. Steel Frame
I knew that I wanted a steel frame because as far as practicality goes, there is no other material that bikes are made out of that comes close to steel. For one, steel offers a price point that definitely beats out the competition. For one, steel bikes were the main material up until halfway through the 90’s. This affords us practical cyclists the luxury of abundant used bikes to choose from. It also provides a much smoother ride than newer materials, and for non race applications, comfort is usually somewhat important. Steel is resilient. I don’t know how much my readers know about metallurgy, but when it comes to metals, steel will always provide the most reliable metal when it comes to bike frames. Steel can be fixed my many people easily practically no matter where in the country you are. If you were to fall on your bike and snap a chainstay. It is reasonable to assume that you would be able to find at least a half a dozen people in the closest town who could weld that chainstay back together. Good luck with that if you ride aluminum or carbon fiber. Yes, aluminum can be welded, but most people do not have the ability to do it.

2. Fender and Rack Mounts
If you are looking for a practical bike. You NEED these. Period, no way around it whatsoever. You can get away with aluminum, but you NEED fender and rack mounts to be practical. Yes, there are work arounds to bikes without the mounts, and I will get into that someday, but they aren’t as strong, reliable or convenient as mounts that are part of the frame.

3. Tire Clearance for wider tires
If I am building a high performance bike, chances are I am not worried about getting in tires wider than 25mm. But on a practical bike, wider tires suit you better. Whether it be for comfort, reliability, load capacity, or whatever, wider tires are important. I know I can get about 35mm wide tires (27″x1-3/8″).

4.(ish) Threaded headset
If you don’t know, a threaded headset uses a quill stem that fits inside of the fork tube. A threadless headset uses a stem that clamps onto the outside of the fork tube. First picture is threaded, second is threadless.

Even though threaded headsets are not common in this day and age, they do offer advantages over the much more modern threadless headsets that you usually see on today’s race bike. For one, they allow you the ability of changing the handlebar height EASILY. This is a big deal, especially when buying a used bike. Thanks to groups like the velominati(I will tear into them in a future post), people believe that they have to hack off all of their fork’s tube except for about 40mm where the stem is installed. It is uncool to have handlebars that are any higher than as low as possible. This is great for professional racers, but really, how many of us need that? The problem that this makes for the practical cyclist, is that if we were to buy one of these bikes, there is very little that we can do in order to raise the handlebars and make the bike more useful. Yes there are work arounds, but they can be expensive, and they are definitely ugly. Plus, with these workarounds, you still can’t adjust it while away from home like you can with a threaded headset. The other advantage of a threaded headset is that it allows you to take your handlebars off, yet leave the headset adjusted perfectly. This is particularly useful if you are boxing up your bike to fly with it to go on a tour. With a modern headset, the fork is held onto the frame by the stem that attaches the handlebars.