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Miyata Three Ten, I'm happy to fave found this one

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MarkKBike

Finally riding a big boys bike
I picked up this Miyata Three Ten about a month ago, but stashed it away in the garage until now.

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I used to own a new Miyata Cross Bike in the late 80's. After it was purchased I still had a late growth spurt left in me, but held on to that old Miyata until last year even though it was a little small for me.

When I found this one at a resale shop, there were already two other guys looking at it speaking some foreign language. The only words I could understand them saying is "No Schwinn". I new I wanted the bike the instant I saw it, and was hoping they would not purchase it. After they walked away, I checked it out and saw a 10$ price tag, I couldn't pass that up even if it was "No Schwinn".

I've mentioned this before, but my best fitting street bike I rode last summer was a Schwinn Letour.

This Miyata matches the Schwinn in frame size at 58cm, but has a shorter wheel base. The slanted back seatpost makes it fit almost identical to the way I had the Letour setup. On the Schwinn the tires are about 13 1/2" apart, on the Miyata they are a little closer at 12 1/2" apart. I also weighed the two bikes on my Grandfathers ("Vintage High Tech", but maybe Inaccurate Scale), and found the Miyata to be about a pound lighter coming in at 26 pounds as opposed to 27 pounds, the difference is most likely in the wheels.

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All the snow in the Chicago area melted last night for the first time since Christmas, I just pumped up the tires and took the Miyata for a quick and short wet ride. I think I'm going to like this one! It might just be enough to force me to sell my beloved Letour. It will need a little work to ride smoothly, but not too much. So far I replaced the seat, and put my time pedals on. The cables have a cracked housing and will need to be replaced, and the wheels will need a slight truing.

I'm surprised those other guys didn't pick it up, but am happy to replace my old Miyata.
 
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Miyata is the benchmark Japanese bike and they built the frames for almost every other Japanese brand.
Univega bikes are simply rebranded Miyata models.
Sheldon has a great historic article on Japanese bikes - https://www.sheldonbrown.com/japan.html
(While Sheldon's article ends in Taiwan, note that today the best steel bicycles short of a US-custom or Japanese custom frame come from Taiwan).
I used to be able to find a table that listed the tubing grades on all Miyata models - still looking.
Did find a good article on Japanese frame tubing - http://bikeretrogrouch.blogspot.com/2014/01/classic-tubes-tange-and-ishiwata.html
 
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