Vintage Lemond Buenos Aires Reynolds 853

We got a chance to take an old (but beautiful) Lemond frame and give it a deep clean, including facing the dropouts and cleaning up the unfinished production pieces that never got finished from the factory.

These frame were handbuilt by Trek and were made beautifully, but never quite had the touches of being finished well or assembled with care. They were wonderful production bikes from a bygone era, but many of them fell into disrepair and often go unappreciated in most bike shops because they aren’t terribly flashy or interesting when held next to the modern marvels made out of carbon fiber and other tech-heavy bits.

The models after these Reynolds 853 frames were often made from American True Temper OX Platinum tubesets, but I will always favor these Reynolds frames. The now-defunct True Temper may be more of a collectors item in the long run, but to each their own.