1994 Marin Palisades Trail - change of direction page 3

Awesome job. You might want to consider bar ends as a choice of hand positions stops numb fingers.

I rode Portland Oregon to San Francisco in 1994 on a '90 Palisades (820 miles in 2 weeks, camping on the way) and was glad of the barends to shift my grip.

hamster":3nfwqbf3 said:

Awesome job. You might want to consider bar ends as a choice of hand positions stops numb fingers.

I rode Portland Oregon to San Francisco in 1994 on a '90 Palisades (820 miles in 2 weeks, camping on the way) and was glad of the barends to shift my grip.

Click to expand...

So far, I haven't had numb fingers, other than a 45 minute descent on Pace RC36's over big rocks. But that was ridiculous!

I will know more when I start to complete some test runs. Your expedition to San Francisco sounds great. A bit more flash than Cornwall to Shetlands. I get your point around how good the frames are as well. The quality is far better than some other big brand bikes that I've seen from the same country/era. I don't want to start a brand war, but was quite surprised at the differences.

that is a great build and done on the cheap too. white is just soo right for old bikes!

The numb fingers thing usually starts for me after about 3-4 hours - after a couple of days it usually sets in earlier.

After realising that this was too short in the top tube for any distance rides, I broke the frame and forks out, and swapped all the bits for a longer and slightly taller Eldridge Grade which better suits my frame. I had to accept LX parts, which is the lowest grade Shimano groupset I've ever owned. They actually perform really well on the Eldridge as well.

Anyway, I was left with this frame to move on. Put it up for grabs on here and not a single offer or expression of interest!

So, it sat at the back of the pile gathering dust and annoyingly some scratches where 2 dogs leapt at it! I kept glancing over towards it, thinking of what its fate could be...


As it stands me at very little cost (compared to my others), I thought about what it would be like to run it single speed, but not fixed. I had no reason to run it on road tyres as my road bikes handle that chore.

The wheels were exactly what I wanted and got them this morning from Dyna-ti on here - Big thank you.

Now, I'm thinking about Yellow brake cables and the M565 ish Black LX stuff, as I've grown to like it so much. I've got the hubs and brakes, just need some Black LX crank arms.

Anybody have an opinion on the Onza single speed cassette converters? And what gear ratios are best for off road riding? 17 - 34?





I've spotted some completely Yellow tyres too. Not sure whether they'd be better than the Michelins. I could even run White porcs.

Opinions welcomed?

ps. sorry about the front mech. I couldn't be bothered removing it from the strip down.

Hi Ben
Quick question for you, you mentioned getting a BBB seatpost from dotbike in 26.4. I'm having the same problem at the moment trying to source a reasonable quality black 26.4 post for my '91 Cinder Cone, but no joy thus far - nobody seems to stock any. Even checked dotbike and the only BBB posts they're showing (1 ali & 3 carbon) are all either 27.2 or 31.6...
Any suggestions as to what / where I can find another 26.4??? I don't really want to use a shim as I tend to take the post out everytime I chuck it in the back of the car.
Cheers
BB

very nice, in both versions!

Seatposts in 26.4mm are becoming hard to find. When looking to use one without a shim (due to frame design restrictions with curved seat tube top), I found that most were out of stock or deleted lines. CRC have stopped the Brand X one and they were only two types available in Germany. I wanted Black, so my traunch was even harder. Dotbike were really helpful and gave me instock and stock due information over the phone.

Check out the links below for stocked items...

http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/product.asp? ... rc=froogle

Unsure about this one, as the title doesn't match the description...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/26-4-MM-SEATPOST- ... 7C294%3A24

German ebay has a variety of options...

http://sport.shop.ebay.de/items/Radspor ... 86.c0.m282

Happy hunting.

I have had a similar problem with an old Marin, with 26.2 seatposts. I gave up and used a USE and shim.

On the single speed side, start at 2:1 and see how it goes: so your choice of 34/17 is spot on. Run it for at least two months - I just got fitter and stronger and found it fine. It does depend a lot on where you ride of course...

Ben, thanks for your reply - I've pinged ebay chapee to clarify size / make etc...fingers crossed.
BB