silverclaws
Senior Retro Guru
drystonepaul":12uk2yv8 said:August 2010:
I picked up this lovely frame set from Mr K last week with the intention of getting it built up in time for the OWMTBC in September.
As you can see it's a 1992 Saracen Traverse frame built from True Temper AVR tubing. It sat one model below the Traverse Elite, which was top of the non e-stay 'Sport' range in the 1992 Saracen line up. The catalogue shows that they shared the same high quality tubing, but the Traverse had a DX groupset whereas the 'Elite' had XT throughout and was black.
This Traverse still wears it's original and nearly immaculate deep purple powder coat with a fantastic but subtle metallic fleck. The original wafer thin transfer decals are still all present, but their relative fragility has meant that they aren't all as perfect as the tough and durable powder coat.
I intend to build this up with a mixture of XT M732/5 and DX M650, and keep the other components as close to the original spec as possible.
And now for some pictures:
Traverse page from the 1992 Saracen Catalogue
Now that is interesting, looking at the rear dropout of your Traverse, I never noticed that before, not on yours or my old lost Traverse Elite. What I am refering to is the Saracen name stamped into the dropout. I don't remember this on mine, but it is there on my current '93 Tufftrax Elite. But I now understand why it is I have not noticed it before on the '92 frames, the reason is the powder coating is thicker.
This came with a memory of when I was closely inspecting my current Saracen, myself noticing the powder coating being a little bit sparse up behind the seat stays at the top above the brake bridge.
With this, for me personally, the 1992 frames were the best, as it seems with later machines the attention to detail was starting to slip.
