fennec
Retro Guru
Hi, I’m new here. I recently got into a world of unpleasantness with UPS, I wanted to learn about older bike components, threaded headsets, square taper bottom brackets, etc, after building up a newer ish bike. So I went to buy something weird, something we don’t have in the US, and ordered a late 80’s muddy fox from the UK. It’s been a month, UPS has lost it twice, I still don’t have it but it’s updating again in the US so it’s presumably still coming.
But in the meantime, I got impatient and ordered this Marin Eldridge Grade off of eBay in kinda rough shape.
It’s presumably a 1988, 1989 has different colorways, but I can’t find anything indicating a date and it’s not in any catalogs I can find.
Retroactive edit: I learned this is a 1990
It came to me in just overall poor shape, stuck seatpost, gouged up canti calipers, sticky shifters and such, this is how I dug it out of the box minus the wheels.
And this is what it looks like now, after replacing the cantis with V brakes, new shifters, saddle, grips, tires and tubes, new cartridge style bottom bracket, some new old stock trek system 3 pedals, new housings and cables, and a complete tear down, rebuild, grease and clean.
Overall I’m very pleased with it. It was very inexpensive, the added parts didn’t cost much either. Though I will say I sold park tool my soul buying their expensive cone wrenches to do the hub hearings.
It’s not perfect and never will be, it’s got damaged paint behind the fork where I think it was hung up on a rack or something like that often, the paint in general has a lot of damage in small spots but it’s easy to hide with black touch up paint.
This is a mid tier Marin from its time, so it’s got a decent drivetrain but very cheap rims, they have a little weld spot and I feel it every time I rip the brakes.
This was my first endeavor into something this old, and attempting to keep it very appropriate for the time minus the brakes. Let me know what you think.
My other mountain bikes are a 2001 castellano fango running 1x10 with a cheap air fork, and a more modern Cannondale trail 6, so they don’t really fit in here like this Marin does.
If that muddy Fox ever does show up I’ll post that here.
But in the meantime, I got impatient and ordered this Marin Eldridge Grade off of eBay in kinda rough shape.
Retroactive edit: I learned this is a 1990
It came to me in just overall poor shape, stuck seatpost, gouged up canti calipers, sticky shifters and such, this is how I dug it out of the box minus the wheels.
And this is what it looks like now, after replacing the cantis with V brakes, new shifters, saddle, grips, tires and tubes, new cartridge style bottom bracket, some new old stock trek system 3 pedals, new housings and cables, and a complete tear down, rebuild, grease and clean.
Overall I’m very pleased with it. It was very inexpensive, the added parts didn’t cost much either. Though I will say I sold park tool my soul buying their expensive cone wrenches to do the hub hearings.
It’s not perfect and never will be, it’s got damaged paint behind the fork where I think it was hung up on a rack or something like that often, the paint in general has a lot of damage in small spots but it’s easy to hide with black touch up paint.
This is a mid tier Marin from its time, so it’s got a decent drivetrain but very cheap rims, they have a little weld spot and I feel it every time I rip the brakes.
This was my first endeavor into something this old, and attempting to keep it very appropriate for the time minus the brakes. Let me know what you think.
My other mountain bikes are a 2001 castellano fango running 1x10 with a cheap air fork, and a more modern Cannondale trail 6, so they don’t really fit in here like this Marin does.
If that muddy Fox ever does show up I’ll post that here.
Last edited:
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