TreaderSteve
Senior Retro Guru
Made you look, made you stare...
Before Christmas this little (ahem) beauty cropped-up locally for £50 on Facebook. The old fella selling it was a lovely chap. He bought it new. It came with the Cosmic bag and two new 26" Gatorskins so I thought it was a deal. The Cosmic bag will be handy for transporting savoury pork snacks when on an expedition.
I think the EX was the better-specced more serious MTB. This one had Mountain LX which seems nice enough, but 6spd is just not going to cut it.
It'll soon be a 1x8 Pathcrusher - to sling/ pootle about on the towpaths around here by the river Cam on sunny days and high days.
Most of the parts on it were shagged which I expected - hubs, BB, headset, pedals. The rear wheel was fooked - spacers and locknuts missing - rear frame spacing was down to 120! I think it should have been 126 for a 6psd freewheel. It took my LBS some sorting but they got it out to 130 to accept the new black Shimano 105 rear hub which they built on to a Mavic D521 for me. Ignore the Ringle front wheel - Colin (bhill22) is kindly sending a D521 which will go onto a black LX hub.
It's no lightweight with plain gauge 4130 tubing but it looks good with the tubes being quite oversize. Most of the parts that came off it were steel so it'll actually be much lighter than OE with the better spec parts that I'm mounting from the supplies in the shed. I LOVE the wide Shimano SLR cantilevers!
The handlebars are by Dimension if anyone's interested. I was searching for 'high' risers for ages - these came from the States. The postage was ridiculously low - I thought I'd never get them - but I did. They went in the shed for future use - here they are. They're really nice quality.
I'd prefer the Rock Ring to be black but this is a fairly cheapo build trying to use bits I already had. Tyres are some GEAX ones that I got from Ebay a couple of weeks ago. Light, folding, seem well made (with Aramid fibres..oooh!), shame about the huge GEAX.COM script but they'll do.
The pedals are XCII clones from Tipsum/ Wellgo - they spin not too badly for £20-something pedals, and they sure look the part.
It'll come together quickly when the front wheel's ready, but for now, some pics. EXOTICA!
Before Christmas this little (ahem) beauty cropped-up locally for £50 on Facebook. The old fella selling it was a lovely chap. He bought it new. It came with the Cosmic bag and two new 26" Gatorskins so I thought it was a deal. The Cosmic bag will be handy for transporting savoury pork snacks when on an expedition.
I think the EX was the better-specced more serious MTB. This one had Mountain LX which seems nice enough, but 6spd is just not going to cut it.
It'll soon be a 1x8 Pathcrusher - to sling/ pootle about on the towpaths around here by the river Cam on sunny days and high days.
Most of the parts on it were shagged which I expected - hubs, BB, headset, pedals. The rear wheel was fooked - spacers and locknuts missing - rear frame spacing was down to 120! I think it should have been 126 for a 6psd freewheel. It took my LBS some sorting but they got it out to 130 to accept the new black Shimano 105 rear hub which they built on to a Mavic D521 for me. Ignore the Ringle front wheel - Colin (bhill22) is kindly sending a D521 which will go onto a black LX hub.
It's no lightweight with plain gauge 4130 tubing but it looks good with the tubes being quite oversize. Most of the parts that came off it were steel so it'll actually be much lighter than OE with the better spec parts that I'm mounting from the supplies in the shed. I LOVE the wide Shimano SLR cantilevers!
The handlebars are by Dimension if anyone's interested. I was searching for 'high' risers for ages - these came from the States. The postage was ridiculously low - I thought I'd never get them - but I did. They went in the shed for future use - here they are. They're really nice quality.
I'd prefer the Rock Ring to be black but this is a fairly cheapo build trying to use bits I already had. Tyres are some GEAX ones that I got from Ebay a couple of weeks ago. Light, folding, seem well made (with Aramid fibres..oooh!), shame about the huge GEAX.COM script but they'll do.
The pedals are XCII clones from Tipsum/ Wellgo - they spin not too badly for £20-something pedals, and they sure look the part.
It'll come together quickly when the front wheel's ready, but for now, some pics. EXOTICA!
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