1st owner 1995 Trek 8700 restoration

In 1995, after several years of leisurely MTBiking, I was ready to give XC racing a go. For my 16th birthday, my parents bought me a brand new Trek 8700. It was lightweight, fast, and it turns out incredibly reliable, in spite of horror stories about the carbon fibre detaching from the aluminium lugs. Here I am racing it in 1996 in Engis, in the Belgian Ardennes:



After several years of racing (junior and U23), it got retired to the status of travel bike. I rode it through Ireland, Slovakia, Sweden, Norway,...:



For the past few years, it was collecting dust in the basement, looking rather sorry with rusted parts and very poor paint. A few weeks ago, I decided this trusty stead deserved a proper restoration. I stripped it down and had it repainted, including new decals:



It's not perfect: the colour match is not perfect and there are some details on the decals that are not entirely correct, but for 200 GBP I'm pretty pleased with the result.

I'm now in the stage of collecting parts and polishing the parts that are still good enough to be re-used. I'll go for a more or less catalogue build, slightly uprated to full 737 XT instead of LX/XT.

More to follow soon.

Excellent, great to see a well-loved bike getting the full rebuild it deserves.

Re:

Nice to see the old girls getting a make over just before her 21st birthday.

don't be surprised if you get very little comments, for some reason or another Trek don't seem to
have much of a following on here (but I guess you already know that) despite making in my mind some very nice frames.

keep the updates coming, would be nice to see this back together

Thanks to both for the words of encouragement!

Yes, I've noticed the lack of interest for Treks on here. Must be because of their role in the demise of Klein

I just received a nice Vetta SL from racer x, and a VGC 737 groupset from thesneaker. The frame is at the LBS now to have the threads cleaned and the headtube reamed. I should be able to continue this build the week after next.

Good work - and great to hear the history you have with the bike. I look forward to seeing it completed.

I have a '92 model that I need to get around to restoring.

What a beauty! I just started looking for one myself as I really like them. How is the bonding on these Treks? I have a somewhat similar Koga Tirunner (bonded titanium tubes on alu joints), but there one of the tubes came loose. Which is too bad as it was used similarly as your Trek.
But keep the updates coming! And I have no idea why these are not so popular here, but maybe because Trek killed Klein. ;-)

thanks!

suravida":c1slbez2 said:

How is the bonding on these Treks?

Click to expand...

I don't know what exactly they used for the bonding, but it's been bullet proof on my bike (touching wood), and in fact I've never heard of one failing. What I have seen though is damage to the down tube due to rocks hitting just above the bottom bracket.

I'll post some decent pics soon, the one in the opening post doesn't really do the paintjob justice.

Nice bike! I also owned one it was superlight! Can't imagine that it came from 1991! Bonding is super only a slight chainsuck problem.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lxpvhojyts5zr ... 7.jpg?dl=0

suravida":468ja2vq said:

I have no idea why these are not so popular here, but maybe because Trek killed Klein. ;-)

Click to expand...

Ahh the Klein theme

The group of peolpe who sold Klein in the first place cast the first stone on that score.. And Trek who bailed them out, simularly to what GM did for SAAB get blamed for ruining an Iconic brand by making changes to the whole business model in an attempt to make it at least (Financially) breakeven to start with.

GM will be foreven known within the SAAB community for lowering the brands status and filling the car with Vauxhall/GM branded parts. I owned and drove 2011 plate 9-3 for four years and loved it but even I had to admit the brand and the two models within it had had their day.
Vauxhalls, cheaper and less prestigious are still selling in big numbers because thats what the paying public want, and SAAB's are no longer with us.

If SAAB, Klein or even M.G Rover were selling products that people wanted to buy in big numbers they'd all still be trading today. Or in the case of Klein someone would have bought them back and rescued them from the evil clutches of (TREK) the unwitting bogie man! and returned them back to being the ultimate niche brand they once were.

Anyway back on topic, cool bike and cool use of carbon bonding, that's still going strong and bears testament to the build quality of the frame.

Some progress to report, which I'll split into a few posts.

First up: fitted new brake bosses, which took some searching, but I found the correct size in stainless steel at brake-stuff.de in Germany.



I also decided to polish the seatpost, stem, handlebars, and cable hangers, which were anodized clear but scratched heavily after 20 years of use, and replaced the bolts with new stainless steel ones. The most difficult one to source being the shallow-headed bolt for the stem.

Old bolts versus new bolts:



Polished parts:



Coming up: overview of the entire parts package.