Whelp, I've made an offer, he made a counter offer, I'm getting a trek 830 frame for $50 CAD and picking up tomorrow, probably.A nice thing about those old Trek frames is that they fall into a large swath of years when components were relatively standardized, and a lot of replacement parts such as bottom brackets are still available. I've got a 1982 Trek 311 frame that's unfortunately too big for me (60 cm, I'm 5'10") but would be lovely to build up. And they have the classic aesthetics too. They make great single-speeds.
I'm hoping that with sound choices in used parts and some good patience, I might be able to make something relatively slick for maybe another $400 in parts, depending on what I want to get. I might just call a couple dumps or scrap Yards and see if they've got bike stuff... But that's a "later" thing.
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