Abandoned bikes

personally i think that if its been there long enough for the tyes to go flat and rust starting to set in, ie the owner dont care. its up for liberating but its a dodgy one as its still technically theft. and Mr plod aint gonna want to here that you love bikes and just want to give it new life, but if you can get someone to look out and your feeling up for it.....

ok. it was in the street. it's now outside my house. definitely abandoned.

ah, one of those hypothetical Q's ;)

ha! have you already got it pj??
i was going to say stealing is stealing.....

i went up there earlier. i swear to god, i have been watching this bike for months, and then when cycling home last night i noticed someone had taken the wheel, and i know that's the first sign of disaster. so i got tooled up and went over and luckily it was locked through the wheel, not the frame, so i just unbolted it.

i've stripped the frame already.

it's a pretty sturdy piece of shit, but it will make a great single speed.

i am a socialist at heart, so i'm redistributing.

pj i am a socialist theif at heart, so i'm redistributing.

Anything interesting coming off of the bike?

My train stopped at cambridge last night for a while so i had a look outside the station, loads of bikes attached to themselves with a little laminated tag asking if they can be removed by the owner. I guess the students just leave them locked up at the end of term. Mostly old stuff and all in various states of dis-repair.

If you can give it a good home and it's been there for ages rusting, i don't see why not.

chris

Just take down a bunch of well-heeled friends and saw away. No one will say owt as long as you don't act/look dodgy, and probably not even then.

high vis, hard hat. noone will do anything. i've used that for many a thing in the past (not liberating bikes though).

i do think that you should put a card where it was with an email address. it is still someone's bike even if they don't deserve it for neglecting it like that.

yeah - i think you should wait minimum 2 months tho
(they might be in hospital or perhaps they were called away abroad on short notice)

Then take it.

But leave a little laminated/ heavily taped note with contact details.

I have my eye on a geared bike that's slowly being knocked about. The thing is they obviously
intended to leave it for a while because it's locked with a decent chain and
they've taken off the front wheel and put the chain through both wheels & the frame.

I say go for it. Ive lived in Cambridge most of my life and the Station is a graveyard of discarded bikes. Years ago they would just stay there and rust and people would lock their bikes on top of them and so on and so on until there were mighty piles of rusted bikes. Largely its crap, but once there was a Steel Breezer MTB frame that had been there for months my mate attached a note to it saying that if no one claimed it he would take it. He waited a month and we tooled up one morning to liberate it only to get there as the police started clearing all the left bikes. Bugger!

I am not sure, but I seem to remember something about registering your interest with your local police station if the bike is abandoned - then if it is still there after a set amount of time (again, I can't remember how long) - you can (legally) take it for yourself.

I should really look into this as London is full of dead and dying bikes.

tommid Years ago they would just stay there and rust and people would lock their bikes on top of them and so on and so on until there were mighty piles of rusted bikes.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/231/501791705_db4c19d58d_b.jpg

i have taken it.

no-one batted an eyelid. as long as you look like you know what you are doing, no-one cares.

it's alarming. this bike was DYING. i saved it.

after a busy day it's now fixed wheel.

i flipped and chopped the bars. never done that before, but saves me buying new bars.

needs brake though....

should i go and put it back now?

pics?
and wow, that was fast. surely you should be teaching kids something.

Ha. I quite like th eidea of 'retrieveing' an old frame only to pimp-it and put it back in the same place.

Pay it forward.

The Fairy Bike Monger?

Mongerenger.

I don't think it was wrong that you took it.

There's loads of dumped bikes in the secure storage in my uni. International students move to London, buy a bike, go home and just abandon them in the racks, leaving them locked up.

Really annoying: a) I wouldn't have minded a cheap bike at the start of term. I'd have donated a reasonable sum of money for a good bike that had been abandoned to a charity. b) They fill up all the spaces for the racks leaving no room for me to lock up. Grrrr.

I like to consider myself a sort of "robin-hood" when it comes to these things (although I have an ancestor who was a bishop of nottingham, likely a thief), I recently acquired a cannondale with dura ace 10spd that was in a friend's yard for a month, we think his father's girfriend's son nicked it, he is a teen bmx punk, the sti's and wheels were gone. So I took it home, stripped it, sold the deraieullers, kept the slr saddle, and gave the rest to my buddy to build his first fixed, it would have sat in the yard then ended up in the dump otherwise.

eeehhh cut em free.

Just tonight I liberated a Colnago C50.. some disrespecting fool had covered it with a mass of steel.
A few minutes with the "liberation pliers" and the bike was glowing in its new found freedom.
Job well done.
Anyone know if Campagnolo 'Record' parts are any good? They're the ones with the brake levers made of black plastic stuff..

i love the liberation pliers. i may post pics tomorrow, it is a grand, noble, socialist act of rehabilitation.

and good god, the recipient is amazed.

good days work i reckon. i see a niche.

record is top groupo! the black plastic stuff if probably carbon composite, a C50 is amazing. good find.