‘89 Brodie Romax (Sky Camo) FINISHED BUILD PAGE 3

[Ryry_1985]

I figured it might be fun to share a recent and favourite bike of mine. Some months ago I was lucky enough to buy a 1989 Romax (# 585) from its original owner on Vancouver Island. It came with a few Brodie catalogs, magazines featuring Brodie articles of that time, the original bill of sale and a 4x6” print from the day the owner took his bike home from The Trail Shop in Halifax, NS in 1990. As per the receipt, the bike’s paint scheme was noted as “Sky Camo.” It’s tough to know if that’s a Brodie classification or just one that the shop thought of but it seems fitting to refer to it as such. One other bit of receipt context relates to the $400.00 discount, supposedly a trade in credit for his old Miyata road bike - pretty sweet!

Of all the Brodie paint schemes, the sky camo/cloud schemes always checked off all the right boxes for me. I’d seen photos of two others previously, an incredible TIG climbMax with a matching P2 fork which I think resides somewhere in the EU (Germany?) and another Romax in BC with Paint by Rich. As per Paul B., it’s possible that this Romax and the climbMax were painted by Art Tyler (Art Department). Either way, all three bikes are fantastic and I’d really wanted one after seeing the other cloud examples. Lucky for me, this one also came with a 1st generation curved Gatorblade, pretty exciting!

Now onto the less-than-ideal part… It had a lot of surface rust, considerable paint loss, a seized seat post stuck wayyyyy down, a seized bb and a bent derailleur hanger. All solvable stuff really, the great news was that there was no actual corrosion. All said, there was no way I could pass on it and I’ve really enjoyed getting it back on the trails after giving it a lot of TLC. I guess I’ll quit rambling and post some photos

As found:

 

[Ryry_1985]

Initial tear down. Bb wasn’t all that stubborn but the post was another story.

 

[vtwinvince]

That's a beauty, any time you want to send it back to the Island, let me know.

 

[Synthiaks]

beautiful......what a find....love those forks.

 

[Ryry_1985]

A fellow from Vancouver had posted an Evaporust vintage MTB seat post removal video on YouTube which inspired an improvised apartment seat tube soak method.

Evaporust is fairly inexpensive and is great because it doesn’t damage paint. It’s technically only causing a reaction with steel so I’m guessing it wouldn’t work with an alloy post in an alloy frame or other non-steel frames but it worked wonders in this matter. I’d bagged the post, plugged the water can braze ons and filled the seat tube to the top through the bottom bracket and let gravity do its work for 5 days. Once drained, I brought the frame to @Warhorse’s bench vise and it came out with ease. Pretty wicked method for very stubborn posts.

 

[mk one]

nice, looking forward to seeing more.

I think it is more cloud than camo, great colour whatever its called.

 

[raidan73]

Thanks for sharing on here Ryan. She sure is a beauty

 

[Dr Dremel]

Very nice bike. Even if it´s a bit neglected the original owner still cared enough to keep the original documents. Loving the "when I bought it" picture. Wish I´d had the foresight to do that with my bikes BITD.

 

[Ryry_1985]

Here’s a quick peek at how I handled the surface rust. I used a dremel with some soft brass wire attachments that blasted all the rust away while not affecting the paint. I felt that touch ups were out of my capabilities so I opted to cover the bare metal with clear nail polish. Not at all bothered by the patina.

 

[mk one]

Here’s a quick peek at how I handled the surface rust. I used a dremel with some soft brass wire attachments that blasted all the rust away while not affecting the paint. I felt that touch ups were out of my capabilities so I opted to cover the bare metal with clear nail polish. Not at all bothered by the patina.

View attachment 686187View attachment 686188

Interesting, you could have probably found a nail varnish match for the colour too.