>>1682644This
I ride my dads old all terrain bike, used it for school and now I commute on it. It's light, comfy, fun, durable and all the things anyone could need from a bike. my old man looked after it, kept it clean, serviced it regularly and I do the same, those old Shimano components were built to last and they have lasted, I'm fairly sure he said he bought it in 1988, so that would make it 33 years old and everything is still running as good as new. I think the only major change was the centre chain ring which I switched out about 5 years ago, cables too of course have been changed once along with brake blocks and tryes, but everything else is original.
I tried a couple of new bikes last year but they just felt plasticy and cheap in comparison, and I'm not talking about the weight as much as the overall feeling I got from the components, something about those old thumb shifters feels so solid and reliable, new ones even mid to top stuff feels so fucking cheap and fragile. My bike weighs just under 12kg and it's fucking steel, yeah you can keep your aluminuim/carbon trash designed to break.
I know it's a cliche but they really do make shit to fail these days, and some of those older bikes do seem to have much better build quality overall.
