Every time I use my local tip and find a nice bike in the sale section that needs rescuing I find it pretty hard to leave it there, sometimes even if I've already got the exact same model of bike already. As a result I've ended up with two pretty much identical 1995 Saracen Forcetrax's. One I've had for a little while and has been out on a couple of Retrobike rides and looks like this.
Not really the best model in Saracens line up, in fact fairly near the bottom in terms of the spec sheet but I like it and I've definitely enjoyed riding it. The one I picked up recently has been stripped down and now looks like this.
My initial plan was to give it a quick rebuild and sell it on here but it's not really that valuable so seemed like a lot of work, especially as the seatpost is stuck and I don't really like selling bikes anyway! I wanted to build something out of it for myself but didn't want two bikes the same so I started looking for other Saracen frames that would be suitable to swap all the parts on to. That way I'd have two similar but still different bikes.
I couldn't really find anything that seemed suitable until a friend of mine offered me a a Saracen e stay that he'd had in his garage for a while. He was never going to get round to doing anything with it so said I could have it. Enter what I think is a 1991 Traverse Competition Hydrotech but without the hydrotech.
It's not in bad condition but the original white paint had been oversprayed with a different shade of white paint and was starting to peel off in places. I did try to polish it up a bit but it didn't really look great. If it was still original with stickers still on I probably would have tried to save it but it isn't so I've sent it off to the powder coaters to have a completely new look.
I'm a bit unsure if I'm doing the right thing in putting a load of slightly newer and cheaper components on a frame that I think would have initially worn something like Deore DX, but then I tell myself that I'm getting two bikes back on the road that otherwise would have either been dumped at the tip or sitting in a garage?
Not really the best model in Saracens line up, in fact fairly near the bottom in terms of the spec sheet but I like it and I've definitely enjoyed riding it. The one I picked up recently has been stripped down and now looks like this.
My initial plan was to give it a quick rebuild and sell it on here but it's not really that valuable so seemed like a lot of work, especially as the seatpost is stuck and I don't really like selling bikes anyway! I wanted to build something out of it for myself but didn't want two bikes the same so I started looking for other Saracen frames that would be suitable to swap all the parts on to. That way I'd have two similar but still different bikes.
I couldn't really find anything that seemed suitable until a friend of mine offered me a a Saracen e stay that he'd had in his garage for a while. He was never going to get round to doing anything with it so said I could have it. Enter what I think is a 1991 Traverse Competition Hydrotech but without the hydrotech.
It's not in bad condition but the original white paint had been oversprayed with a different shade of white paint and was starting to peel off in places. I did try to polish it up a bit but it didn't really look great. If it was still original with stickers still on I probably would have tried to save it but it isn't so I've sent it off to the powder coaters to have a completely new look.
I'm a bit unsure if I'm doing the right thing in putting a load of slightly newer and cheaper components on a frame that I think would have initially worn something like Deore DX, but then I tell myself that I'm getting two bikes back on the road that otherwise would have either been dumped at the tip or sitting in a garage?
