thanks for all the responses. We are starting this at 8am tomorrow!
In response:
The cops/city/province very stupidly removed the wheels from the bikes in order to store them (more efficiently???) so this mucks things up for us a bit. Yes, the idea of sorting by wheel-size is based on the fact that the wheel size essentially dictates the type/age of the bike.
We are dealing mostly with bikes that were put in storage in riding condition - these were being saved for the apocolypse by the world's most prolific bike thief! (B!ike you know who I mean) - so *triage* is not really what we are doing. we know that almost all of the bikes will be good to go with small repairs. Since the bikes will be used for several different purposes and
eventually distributed amongst 4 of 5 community groups, we need for
folks to be able to find the types of bikes they can use.
There are very few junk bikes for stripping. there are a lot of very old bikes and very expensive bikes. (one volunteer came out of there with a titanium road racing bike with full dura-ace componentry, having no clue what he had picked, which is one reason we need to get in there and sort things properly!).
Right now they are stored in a gymnasium as well as two shipping containers
We are indeed going with coloured tags. Our breakdown for tomorrow is thus:
white - youth bikes (24" wheels) and small mountain bikes
red - historical (old) and fancy (high end new/carbon/aluminum)
blue - road bikes (dept store/mid-range, 27"/700c wheels)
green - mountain bikes (dept store/mid-range, 26" wheels)
pink - cruisers (coaster brake, single-speed, internal 3-speed, 5-speed, 26x13/8 and 27" wheels)
yellow - junk to strip
I'll let you all know how it goes! There will be pictures too.
Ainsley.