Fascinating! A Trek 520 was the bike *I* bought, thirty years ago, in grad school! Back then they were about $500 (a lot of money back then for a grad student) but heck, I've gotten my money out of the bike!
It was one of the first couple of years of Trek as a factory bike (rather than a "mail us your measurements and a thousand dollars and we'll mail you back a custom made bicycle in a month or so"). So I bought one.
Mine was made in the old cheese factory in Wisconsin; I see that they still have the building (I thought for a while they did manufacturing in China; maybe that's a failed economics experiment).
I still have my 30-year-old Trek 520, if you want to compare on it. (N.B.: I did build it a set of new wheels, with Campy hubs (because every bike needs _something_ from Campignola), and I think I also changed the crank when the crankshaft bearings died.)
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momijizukamori
Trek 520! Great bike 30 years ago, probably still pretty good.
Date: 2011-08-21 02:32 pm (UTC)years ago, in grad school! Back then they were about $500
(a lot of money back then for a grad student) but heck,
I've gotten my money out of the bike!
It was one of the first couple of years of Trek as a
factory bike (rather than a "mail us your measurements and
a thousand dollars and we'll mail you back a custom
made bicycle in a month or so"). So I bought one.
Mine was made in the old cheese factory in Wisconsin; I see
that they still have the building (I thought for a while
they did manufacturing in China; maybe that's a failed
economics experiment).
I still have my 30-year-old Trek 520, if you want to compare
on it. (N.B.: I did build it a set of new wheels, with
Campy hubs (because every bike needs _something_ from
Campignola), and I think I also changed the crank when
the crankshaft bearings died.)
Do you want to compare them sometime? :)
- Crash