1994 Marin Team F.R.S.

Bought this recently from a friendly Retrobiker over in Finland.. I was late to the party and it had 4 other interested buyers in front of me! Had my fingers crossed, did a strange sort of ritual dance and sacrificed a few cuddly toys and waited patiently and behold they dropped out and i snapped it up. I don't often see frames in my size up for sale and usually buy the more common next size down, knowing full well that they're too small and uncomfortable to ride so just languish in the garage to be only admired.

I knew before buying that this had faults and needed rescuing, but that's the fun of this great hobby of ours.

Nice, those Mani's at the front and the back !

What are your plans with it?

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Looking forward to see this build,
I have my own frs team to build.

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My plan is to get it to as near catalogue spec as possible..



But i notice on the spec sheet it came with Mavic M230 TIB rims. I think the bronze titanium colour doesn't suit the silver frame so i have sourced some M230 SBP wheels instead as they have a silver finish.

The first thing i had to do after receiving it was overhaul the suspension. I got the forks apart and the elastomers were just a red pile of mush and in one leg the elastomer rod had snapped!! But luckily the rebound elastomers were in good condition. Fortunately i have a spare pair of Manitou 3's doing nothing albeit built with springs. So using the rebound elastomers i rebuilt the forks with Pace MXCD elastomers which are very similar and seem to be ok. The rear suspension is in much better condition, only one medium elastomer in each leg had disintegrated the firm yellow ones are as good as new so that was a quick fix.

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The Titanium FRS is one of my unicorns. Ever since seeing this one....




A frame went for £40 on ebay a couple years ago but elastomers were shot and truth be told I don't have the foggiest how to fix them. For now I'll just continue dreaming.

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I like the look of those '93 Ti FRS's too.. i was outbid a couple of years ago when one popped up on ebay. The forks aren't too difficult to service as long as you have a humungously long 5mm allen key.

Very much looking forward to seeing this restored.

I remember seeing it for sale and wondering about shipping costs from Finland.

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Not much progress to report as i am waiting for the postman to deliver the last couple of things.

But while it is hanging in the garage next to a 95 Indian Fire Trail i noticed how much better the welding was in 1994.

nice post Wishing to see progress

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Bit of an update..

As i now have all bits to start building it, i thought i'd quickly mock it up to see what it's like.