1990 Marin Pine Mountain Restoration

Foulplay

Devout Dirtbag
Hi all,

Last month I took the plunge and spent a whole load of money on a new carbon frame Cube Reaction GTC Race in a bid to rejuvinate my cycling and get me back out on the trails, which I had forsaken quite some time ago.

While I was waiting for the new bike to arrive I dusted down my old 1990 Marin Pine Mountain and rediscovered what a great bike it was and still is. Over the last 22 years, it has carried me coast to coast across Scotland, throughout the West Highlands, through parts of Snowdonia, The Brecons and The Black Mountains, along stretches of the Southwest Coast Path, The Ridgeway and parts of the South Downs Way, along with countless Sundays in the North Downs around Leith/Holmbury/Pitch Hills.

But that was years ago, and for too long the bike has been sitting at the back of the garage going rusty and being generally neglected, whilst I piled on the pounds. :oops:

In many ways thanks to Sherlylock's Pine Mountain Rescue thread, here on RetroBike, I am now inspired to commence my own restoration and attempt to return my Pine Mountain to its original beauty. And this weekend I got down to it.

First step, take some pictures of how she looked before the work commenced:

letsgetstarted.jpg


seattubeandstays.jpg


headtube.jpg


frontmechandchainrings.jpg


rearmechandcassette.jpg



In the space of around 45mins, I reduced her to this:
inbits.jpg



A good friend, who is a professional paint sprayer and competative road cyclist wil be handling the respray and is tasked with the dubious job of trying to recreate the light grey Zolatone 2000 finish and the fluorescant orange for the forks. He called me this morning to say he's making progress.

This weekend I set to cleaning up some of the old components, with a lot of MucOff degreaser, and increasingly fine grades of wet-n-dry (600 - 2500)

The rear cassette was first on my list, and generous use of the wire brush made a huge difference. I may still keep working on this, but I'm on the lookout for a NOS replacement if one comes up anywhere.

cassette.jpg


The chainrings were a bigger challenge, as they break down into 30 separate individual components, and when I missed five slender washers glued to one of the rings, only to hear one go flying when I started wirebrushing, there was 10 mins of dread, as I scoured the floor of my shed to find it!!!

chainringbefore2.jpg


chainringbefore1.jpg


chainringswirebrushed.jpg


chainringsbackassembled.jpg


chainringsfrontassembled.jpg


chainringspolishedandassembled.jpg



Quick release skewers are pretty easy to get on eBay, and I will be watching for good condition ones to come up, but I thought it would be interesting to see what I could do with my old rusty ones with a needle file and some wet-n-dry...
quickreleasebefore.jpg


quickreleaseafter.jpg



That's as far I got this weekend, although I also did a bit of shopping on eBay, too. So apologies to anyone who I may have outbid, but these new parts are now on their way to me...

Original Marin saddle circa 1990 from an Eldridge Grade.
saddle.jpg


NOS 1 1/8" Deore DX oversize headset. Expensive outlay, especially as my original headset is still in fine working order, but I figured this would be a nice touch.
headset.jpg


Replacement front mech, as somewhere in the last 22 years, I replaced the original with an Exage 400!
deoredxfrontmech.jpg


Also picked up a new pair of handlebar grips a couple of weeks ago to match the originals and also a pair of Deore XT brakes/shifters from Cooie here on RetroBike. Plus I have a set of decals on their way from gil_m.

Next update should be by the weekend.

Cheers!

Lee.
 
Good to see the seatpost came out fine. That's going to be a pretty bike again.

Looks like you really need to get a new middle chainring...it appears to barely have any teeth left... :shock:

A nice highly-polished TA ring would look good! :cool:
 
Yes, the seatpost wasn't a problem at all, but then it's been adjusted from time to time and taken out frequently over the years.

The middle chainring is seriously worn and I'd very much like to get it replaced, but unless I can pick up an entire replacement chainset, including the chain, I can reasonably expect to have big problems in getting old and replacement parts to all work together.

For the time being, I know that the worn rings still hold the chain pretty well and the bike will only now ever be used for very light cycling, so a new set is low down on the priority list, as long as I can scrub up the old chain and get it looking silver again. That's going to take a lot of time!!!

I wouldn't like to even think how much an entire chainset in good nick would cost me! :roll:
 
Good work so far!
Be interested to see what your friend does with the zolatone paint, as I'm sure will countless others on here
 
mt60 chainsets are not expensive, i think i might have a middle ring thats better than yours from one you can have. i will have a look later
 
Hmmm... I'm very interested myself to see what he achieves, but he rang me today and said something about a paint that Citroen use on some of their bumpers. Not sure if that's commercial vehicles or not, but he said it was a textured paint that was a very close match in colour and that he'd be putting a matt lacquer on it also.

I'll get more details and report back here.

For the forks, I pointed him in the direction of the Plasti-kote Fluorescant paint that Sherlylock used, but he was quite clear about using a spray gun instead of aerosol, and unfortunately, a quick phone call to Plasti-kote established that they only do aerosol.

At this point it looks like he's going with the Repsol motorbike team orange, with a bit of red added to give it the necessary tint towards the red end of the spectrum. I'm assured it will be very bright!
 
no worries, I've even got the matching marin laptop bag :shock:
but obviously it wasnt a laptop bag then (laptops wern't around for you younguns back then)
 
Ha ha.. I bought the Marin lycra cycle shorts with the chamois padding, but that's as far as I went with Marin paraphernalia. :cool:
 
i had the fleece, 3 polo shirts, all the lycra and the jacket. the rep used to give us something for free every visit and seeing as i was the one with the quake ;)
 
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