Frame of Mystery... Its a Nishiki Meridian !!!

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jimo746":1yo0zcz4 said:

What's the best way of removing the paint that's been added to the frame without also removing the original paint underneath?

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I've used some eco paint stripper and a stainless steel scourer and it worked quite well. That was how I indentified my Peugeot, though I could get the paint off to a standard to keep what was below.

Re: Frame of Mystery...

My bet is quite early, 90 or 91.

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retrobikeguy":1q3yfc39 said:

Fork looks nishiki, are they the remnants of suntour cantilevers on the studs?

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I thought Dia-compe, but could be Suntour??

I'll have a look at Nishiki on Google...

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retrobikeguy":3bj5sb7a said:

Fork looks nishiki, are they the remnants of suntour cantilevers on the studs?

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10/10!!

I was impatient so decided to scrape off some paint on the head tube, maybe the best chance of finding a remaining decal, and this emerged...



I'll have a look and see if I can narrow down the year(s) with that particular headbadge.

Looks to be an 1"1/8 headset (same bronze colour as the headset on my '91 Proflex... coincidence?).
And seat tube is 30mm-ish I think.
Aluminium frame.

I took the forks out, black paint on the steerer suggests black fork.

I also found the serial number: 9100355 under the bottom bracket cable guide (not sure if this helps identify it at all? But I'm guessing the 91 at the start = 1991?).



It'll be next weekend now before I get time to go to work removing the (brushed on!!!) paint, but in the meantime I might have enough clues to try and identify the frame...

Re: Frame of Mystery... Its a Nishiki!!!

I've just spent awhile searching for images. Not found it yet, but I reminded myself about the lovely 1987 pre-estay Pinnacle:

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Yeah I saw that '87 catalogue. It looks like the straight blade forks came in around '89.

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Spent a while trawling Google images yesterday, seen a few bikes from '91 that have the same headtube decal design, they were Nishiki Alien or Ariel.
I can't seem to find any other alu frames from that period that aren't e-stay.
Some of the steel frames like the Colorado do have a similar monostay arrangement at the rear, but thats the only similarity.

Hmmm.... I need to see what else is under that paint...

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jimo746":2xv0fyf9 said:

Spent a while trawling Google images yesterday, seen a few bikes from '91 that have the same headtube decal design, they were Nishiki Alien or Ariel.
I can't seem to find any other alu frames from that period that aren't e-stay.
Some of the steel frames like the Colorado do have a similar monostay arrangement at the rear, but thats the only similarity.

Hmmm.... I need to see what else is under that paint...

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That's similar to what I found. The straight forks only seem to appear on the higher frames, which is hopefully a good sign.

Hopefully there will be a model name under that paint somewhere.

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Hmmm.... I wasn't expecting this...

Re: Frame of Mystery... Its a Nishiki!!!

Makes you wonder why it was over painted