What would you do? NOS Yo Eddy content.. Pics up..
- Thread starter northerndave
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Paul Eggleton
Retro Guru
Very, very nice chap :shock: 
northerndave
Retrobike Rider
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So here’s the story… Pull up a chair…
The Find…
So props have to go out to theredchili for spotting this thing first http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=177771 you really are the Fat Outing Suprememo. It’s was over at Metro Bicycles in New York (http://www.metrobicyclestores.com). It must have sat in their warehouse for maybe 12-14 years and was available to buy straight off their ECommerce site... How long it had been there I don’t know, I tried Google caching search and couldn’t work it out. Could have been days, could have been months or years but I doubt it. It did rank quite highly for a Google of “Fat Chance” though.
The Tease…
I was initially only demi interested in it as you have to ask how many Fats you can really justify, I’d just got hold of Kaisers old Wicked too. Then as time passed I got increasingly interested. I glanced over to the IF Deluxe I had that needed a respray and did some quick numbers is my head (How much was the IF worth, how much was the repray going to cost etc etc). I thought sod it I’m going to look into that Yo. I then really begun to think, how often is a NOS Yo going to come up? I’ve not seen one float to the surface for the 3 years I’ve been on here and only recently noticed a guy on Fat Cogs who’s picked up a Metalica Harlequin Yo that was NOS. That pretty much sealed it for me, let’s work out how to get it..
The Deal…
So first call was to one of the Metro Bicycles stores to find out what the score was with the frame, where was it, what was it’s back story, what was the true size was, would they ship it to the UK etc. It turned out that I needed to speak to the Guy who runs Metro, Andrew. One thing that did come up in the conversations though was that they had more than one NOS Fat… Mine was he last that was available but when you phone up and say “I’m calling about the Fat Chance” and the reply is “which one” you have to take a deep breath. Turns out they had 2 Wicked that had been snapped up very quickly. I managed to find them in Google – they were $500 each. It took me a few blows of the old phone to finally speak to Andrew. He turned out to be a super nice guy but wasn’t too keen to send the frame to the UK, he was basically worried about the deal going bad out of the country and him having problems with credit cards etc. He said someone else was chasing it from Europe too and that he’d call me back when he’d worked some ideas out on shipping. All along I knew someone else might snap it up or someone in the US might just buy it straight from the website. Then, the moment of brilliance happened. I reached out to a fellow US RetroBiker an asked for one of the biggest favours I’ve ever asked for - will he help out with the deal?… Amazingly he was totally positive and offered to help out… He knows who he is and he can chime in if he wants but this guy is a legend. It’s funny when you think how utterly amazing this little community is. You can reach out to someone you’ve never met, don’t know from Adam but through some shared love of bikes you can make awesome stuff happen. So the stage was set. I’ve got someone who can collect the Yo and ship it off to me, I’ve got Andrew from Metro who’s bored of hearing my voice – I was eventually known as ‘The English Guy’ whenever they picked the phone up – holding me on tenter hooks with some final deal details and I had sole my IF Deluxe… I finally get a call from Andrew half way through my work xmas party to close the sale. Semi sober I fire up the site and have to walk through the ecommerce site with Andrew on the other end of the phone changing settings just for this sale and with plenty of colleagues partying in the background. SOLD. Boom! My buddy then heads off to Metro in the following few days and promptly ships the frame off too me… All through Xmas I’ve been tracking it’s location, seeing it edge closer every few days. It whizzed through customs thanks to some experienced customs form filling. Then FFWD to today and it’s here. A very early drive over the Charlton in SE London to collect and there we are. The rest is history.
The Frame
So it’s a M/L Yo finished in Chameleon Green. It has a few marks from storage and a few scratches, as you might expect from the years it’s been hanging around, but really the finish is very good. It’s obviously a NY bike and has a 1 1/8 head tube. Looks like a 98 Model from the frame number and by the sequences of frame numbers over on MOMBAT. Oh, did I mention it’s NOS?
The Plans
No plans as yet, it’s going to be a 2012 project and I imagine quite an expensive one…
The Find…
So props have to go out to theredchili for spotting this thing first http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=177771 you really are the Fat Outing Suprememo. It’s was over at Metro Bicycles in New York (http://www.metrobicyclestores.com). It must have sat in their warehouse for maybe 12-14 years and was available to buy straight off their ECommerce site... How long it had been there I don’t know, I tried Google caching search and couldn’t work it out. Could have been days, could have been months or years but I doubt it. It did rank quite highly for a Google of “Fat Chance” though.
The Tease…
I was initially only demi interested in it as you have to ask how many Fats you can really justify, I’d just got hold of Kaisers old Wicked too. Then as time passed I got increasingly interested. I glanced over to the IF Deluxe I had that needed a respray and did some quick numbers is my head (How much was the IF worth, how much was the repray going to cost etc etc). I thought sod it I’m going to look into that Yo. I then really begun to think, how often is a NOS Yo going to come up? I’ve not seen one float to the surface for the 3 years I’ve been on here and only recently noticed a guy on Fat Cogs who’s picked up a Metalica Harlequin Yo that was NOS. That pretty much sealed it for me, let’s work out how to get it..
The Deal…
So first call was to one of the Metro Bicycles stores to find out what the score was with the frame, where was it, what was it’s back story, what was the true size was, would they ship it to the UK etc. It turned out that I needed to speak to the Guy who runs Metro, Andrew. One thing that did come up in the conversations though was that they had more than one NOS Fat… Mine was he last that was available but when you phone up and say “I’m calling about the Fat Chance” and the reply is “which one” you have to take a deep breath. Turns out they had 2 Wicked that had been snapped up very quickly. I managed to find them in Google – they were $500 each. It took me a few blows of the old phone to finally speak to Andrew. He turned out to be a super nice guy but wasn’t too keen to send the frame to the UK, he was basically worried about the deal going bad out of the country and him having problems with credit cards etc. He said someone else was chasing it from Europe too and that he’d call me back when he’d worked some ideas out on shipping. All along I knew someone else might snap it up or someone in the US might just buy it straight from the website. Then, the moment of brilliance happened. I reached out to a fellow US RetroBiker an asked for one of the biggest favours I’ve ever asked for - will he help out with the deal?… Amazingly he was totally positive and offered to help out… He knows who he is and he can chime in if he wants but this guy is a legend. It’s funny when you think how utterly amazing this little community is. You can reach out to someone you’ve never met, don’t know from Adam but through some shared love of bikes you can make awesome stuff happen. So the stage was set. I’ve got someone who can collect the Yo and ship it off to me, I’ve got Andrew from Metro who’s bored of hearing my voice – I was eventually known as ‘The English Guy’ whenever they picked the phone up – holding me on tenter hooks with some final deal details and I had sole my IF Deluxe… I finally get a call from Andrew half way through my work xmas party to close the sale. Semi sober I fire up the site and have to walk through the ecommerce site with Andrew on the other end of the phone changing settings just for this sale and with plenty of colleagues partying in the background. SOLD. Boom! My buddy then heads off to Metro in the following few days and promptly ships the frame off too me… All through Xmas I’ve been tracking it’s location, seeing it edge closer every few days. It whizzed through customs thanks to some experienced customs form filling. Then FFWD to today and it’s here. A very early drive over the Charlton in SE London to collect and there we are. The rest is history.
The Frame
So it’s a M/L Yo finished in Chameleon Green. It has a few marks from storage and a few scratches, as you might expect from the years it’s been hanging around, but really the finish is very good. It’s obviously a NY bike and has a 1 1/8 head tube. Looks like a 98 Model from the frame number and by the sequences of frame numbers over on MOMBAT. Oh, did I mention it’s NOS?
The Plans
No plans as yet, it’s going to be a 2012 project and I imagine quite an expensive one…
Very nice Dave
Gator fade? Chameleon fade was my initial thought
It is 99% NOS. It had wheels fitted at some point
It looks like the painter swapped the FAT and Saratoga decal on the seattube. Interesting. That is one of those things that makes a frame a non mass production frame apparently. Same as the one cut out they forget to enamel with a Presto frame.
Dave, does your Yo have a 1" or 1-1/8" headtube?
Gator fade? Chameleon fade was my initial thought
It is 99% NOS. It had wheels fitted at some point
It looks like the painter swapped the FAT and Saratoga decal on the seattube. Interesting. That is one of those things that makes a frame a non mass production frame apparently. Same as the one cut out they forget to enamel with a Presto frame.
Dave, does your Yo have a 1" or 1-1/8" headtube?
Nice! I nearly went for it myself. Andrew seemed like a really cool guy. Glad you got it and glad the build will happen here!!
I would totally put 80mm modern-ish forks on it. The fact that you have a 1 1/8th headset makes that a no-brainer to me. It has v-brake cable routing in back (left side stops) but a canti stop too just in case, no? V-brakes would be light and cool. Avid Arch Supremes are solid and beautiful, but even a disc front, v rear combo would be hot. The bike I parted out this time last year (the Bro Eddy) was basically the same deal. If it hadn't have been too small for me I would have kept it around since it was a such screamingly great hard tail.
I was imagining builds for this one a couple days while I was deliberating Black fork, lots of silver!
I would totally put 80mm modern-ish forks on it. The fact that you have a 1 1/8th headset makes that a no-brainer to me. It has v-brake cable routing in back (left side stops) but a canti stop too just in case, no? V-brakes would be light and cool. Avid Arch Supremes are solid and beautiful, but even a disc front, v rear combo would be hot. The bike I parted out this time last year (the Bro Eddy) was basically the same deal. If it hadn't have been too small for me I would have kept it around since it was a such screamingly great hard tail.
I was imagining builds for this one a couple days while I was deliberating
Black fork, lots of silver!
