My 12 yo son asked for a beater road bike to repair for his birthday. Since we don't exactly live in the cycling Mecca of the world, we're having trouble even finding bikes at all in pawn shops, flea markets, etc., let alone bike cadavers.

But today we did run across a vintage 1970s John Deere bike, all original. It has a steel lugged frame, good bars and the rest of the components are crap. It's actually still in rideable condition with a little air in the tires. It does have rust on the frame, but just cosmetic. He plans on painting any bike he gets, anyway. It's a 23" frame with 27" wheels--a little big for him, but he should grow into it pretty quick. It was $135, which I was willing to pay knowing what he was looking at in frames in the bikenashbar catalog.

I looked it up online and found these:

http://www.mindspring.com/~dagmara/deere.html (ours is just like the one prominent in his "stable.")
http://www.rungreen.com/files/bicycl...%20bicycles%22
http://bluecollarmtb.com/2006/07/31/...#comment-44076 (it is not the bike in this thread, but the thread discusses JD bikes)

I think it will be a good bike for him to mess with. My question for you bike divas is, do you think he will have trouble getting parts that fit, specifically a headset and/or bottom bracket, if needed? (He may not need to replace those parts, but he may want to just to do it for the "cool factor".) Would there be issues with fitting new cranks or chainrings to the old bottom bracket?

Any other things I should tell him to watch for? I checked all the welds on the frame, etc, and aside from the minor rust, it seemed fine.

Also, is there a good book about bike repair, with lots of pictures? I'll turn him on to Sheldon Brown, too.

Thanks!
Karen