2000 Marin Mount Vision Build

A while ago I had a '97 Shoreline Trail, but stupidly sold it as I was finding the lack of disc brake mounts a bit limiting - always regretted it!

So when I saw this going for a song locally, I jumped for it:



It's not in particularly great condition - there's some ferocious cable rub on the seat tube, and a lot of oxidation on the aluminium frame working its way underneath the lacquer. But it looks like it should be structurally sound and I'm sure I can get it looking a bit smarter with a bit of elbow grease.

I'm not going for a particularly period correct or blingy build - it's intended to be a "working bike" to sling in the car for a blast around the local trails after work. But I've always hankered after a classic Marin FRS so I'm planning for a build and paint job that pays homage to this.

It might be a bit of a slow build, but if people are interested I'll post my progress here.

Had a proper go at the frame this afternoon. Other than the cable rub all seems perfectly sound. The rub is pretty deep (maybe 75% of the tube thickness!) but at least it's in a part of the frame that won't be under much stress, especially when standing on the pedals (i.e. descending, where it matters most).

I rubbed the frame down with 200 grit wet & dry followed by 600 grit, then gave it a good polish up with the silvo from the cutlery drawer. Took about three hours in total, and I'm quite pleased with the result



The rear swing arm is also in need of TLC. I've rubbed it down and prepped it for a coat of paint, but I'm still mulling over possible paint jobs and ways to build it up, so that'll have to wait a bit.

The rear pivot bearings seem in good nick, but the shock mount hardware is all over the place having been bodged together with the wrong size shock bushes, wrong length bolts without proper washers etc.

It looks like it might be quite difficult (and over priced!) to source a replacement official shock mount kit, so I'll probably improvise something suitable from a local hardware store. I'm sure fleabay will offer a cheap and cheerful suitable replacement shock bush.

The shock itself moves smoothly enough but has been de-pressurised and I don't own a shock pump, so not sure if that will need attention yet. If it's in working order, the £1.04 I paid for the shock and frame was a bit of a bargain!

Been pondering how to build the bike up today.

The old Shoreline Trail I had was built up in a more modern style, with a short stem / wide handelbars cockpit, and a 1x drivetrain. It handled pretty nicely like this, both on the ups and downs. My "modern" 2010 GT souped-up-avalanche is also set up like this.

My other MTB is a '97 Marin Hawk Hill (I like Marins!), is now built up as a rigid singlespeed with a proper retro cockpit - 100mm stem, 580mm low rise bars, and ski bar ends. This one also handles really nicely, and climbs like stink.

I'm not sure which way I want to go with this bike - wide bars & short stem or narrow bars & longer stem with bar ends. I do find the former a bit more capable on the downhills and rough stuff, but on a retro MTB I much prefer the aesthetic of the latter.

Any thoughts?

I bought a spares & repairs donor bike for parts the other day, a 2002ish series 6 Trek (piccie below). It's got a Deore drivetrain which I rather fancied (though they've paired 9 speed shifters with an 8 speed cassette, which apparently broke the chain and snapped a couple of teeth of the cassette sprockets when shifting under power, hence the sale).



The fork looks pretty decent - working compression and rebound adjustment, which is more than can be said for a lot that I've ridden.

Does anyone know what the axle - crown length for the old Mount Visions was? I'm guessing it would have been somewhere around the 465mm mark (the Manitous pictured above are 490mm so potentially a bit tall for the frame).

Nice little project you've got there. An old friend of mine had a Rift Zone bird. I liked the frame design.
Can't advise on forks I'm afraid. What model would the originals have been?
Look forward to progress

Mike

Cheers Mike - they are cool looking bikes

The code stamped on the BB shell is F229GAC131. I *think* this means it's:

Made in the Fairly factory (F)
A Mount Vision frame (2)
Possibly a 1999 rather than 2000 frame (29) - not sure about this as would usually be a single digit (9)
17" frame measured centre to centre (C)

If I'm right about the above, then it would have had an Answer Manitou SX Ti fork as stock, with a mighty 2.75" of travel. I can't find an authoritative axle to crown length for this fork, but I imagine it would be in the 445mm - 465mm bracket. IIRC the RST Mozo Pros that I was running on my old Shoreline Trail were about 460mm A2C.

I've seen a few Mount Vision builds of a similar vintage running longer A2C forks with no reported problems. However, they were clearly designed around a steep head angle race style geometry and I'd rather stick to that as John Whyte probably knew what he was doing more than I do mixing and matching forks. Plus the riding I do tends to involve a lot of short sharp very steep climbs, and a low front end really helps to get up these... on the way down I'm afraid my (lack of) skill is more of a limiting factor than the geometry of the bike!

I've actually just bought a roughly-period-correct 100mm travel RST Delta fork from a fellow retrobiker, which I'm planning on using for this build (I'm assuming it should have an A2C length in the right ball park). Will probably end up either selling the Manitou Slate fork or keeping it for a rainy day and another build.

Still pondering over the modern vs retro cockpit... I tried both out on my old Shoreline Trail.

Here it is in classic retro configuration:



And here with a more modern set-up:



I'm leaning towards the former - probably especially so if the RST Delta forks are on the shorter side, might as well go the whole XC-arse-up-head-down-like-it's-1999 hog.

Then there's colour scheme to consider... I'm thinking either:

A) Polished ally main frame, satin black swing arm, black forks, all black components

B) Polished ally main frame, fire engine red swing arm and forks, black components (the old 1999 lineup used to have a coloured stem that matched the swing arm / fork, which would be an option too, though I can't decide if I really like this or if it looks totally naff).

If anyone's got some pics of similar vintage Marin FRSs they want to share for inspiration, go ahead

Here's a pic of the 1999 Mount Vision Pro, which I think looks pretty sweet.



I'm currently leaning towards something rather like this, only with a polished main frame and black seatpost / bars (and tyres.... coloured tyres can look great on the right bike but they don't do it for me on this one).

Spent a bit of weekend fettling time stripping down the donor Trek for parts. Here's what I ended up with.



The Good:

Deore crankset & front mech, Deore XT rear mech - this is the first time I've progressed beyond STX in the Shimano hierarchy, most of my bikes are running Acera/Alivio kit!

Hydraulic disc brakes I was originally planning on running mechanical calipers, partly because I wouldn't have to modify the frame cable stops, and partly because I know how to maintain them, whereas I've never done a hydraulic disc brake bleed before. Still, they should perform better than the intended mechanical brakes, and they feel like I can get away without bleeding them for now.

Bontrager stem and bars look pretty smart after a bit of spit & polish.

The headset looks like it should fit in the frame, which I didn't necessarily expect.

The Bad & The Ugly:

The rear wheel clearly isn't original, and is looking a bit battered. The cassette went straight in the bin and I've stuck on a used one from my parts bin in its place. Instead of rim tape, some mouldering gaffa tape greeted me, so I got rid of this with some white spirit, and put on some insulation tape in its place (think I can get away without proper rim tape as it's a double walled rim). I then slapped some paint on the rim to smarten it up a bit. The spoke tension is incredibly low and a couple of spokes are a bit bent (and scraped where the chain had clearly overshifted off the largest cassette sprocket), but hopefully it will true up OK later on. The rear tyre is just about usable but fairly bald and a bit perished, so I may swap that out for a cheapy one I've got in the shed.

Although the Deore drivetrain would have been 3x9, I've decided to go 3x8 on this build, since parts are cheap as chips and that's what all my other bikes run so I won't have to stock two lots of spares. Fortunately I've got a spare set of STX-RC 8 speed trigger shifters to do this. It's always nice when you get to use parts you've been hanging on to for ages!

Next job is to get the shock mounting hardware sorted. I'm really struggling to find top-hat reducers of the correct size, so may have to get slightly smaller ones and add washers, or slightly larger ones and file them down.

I'm also so far unable to find a suitable mounting bolt for the swing arm end of the shock. I really need a 50mm-ish long 8mm diameter tube with an internal M5 head, but can't find one online for love nor money. Unfortunately there isn't room to get a socket over a nut on a length of M8 threaded bar, which would have been the other possibility.

Anyone have any ideas on a possible solution? Happy to do a hardware store bodge if possible!

Sounds like you're getting on well with this build!
The grey/red us eye catching, and if you're feeling bold, get some red walled Panaracer Fire XC Pro tyres. They're my favourite.Along with an arse up/ nose down riding position.
No prizes for guessing with bar set up I'd have then!

Mike