joglo
Senior Retro Guru
Hi,
i need a bit of help from the Saracen experts here.
I've bought a while a go a blue second-hand Saracen bike.
It was cheap and equipped with low end parts. Also the parts had been pretty mixed and had been according Shimano year codes from various years, up to 1990, but mostly 1992 or 93.
Decals had been mostly not existing any longer, just "AC" and "TRAX" pieces had been left.
The bike has a nice Tioga headset and Ritchey handle bar.
It has a nice segmented fork, a bit like a Tange Struts but with Saracen "S" logo/embossing on top.
Seat post size is 26.4 mm.
I've meanwhile build the bike from new and used a DX group mostly (so don't look at parts used right now to identify the original bike).
This is how it looks right now:
It's still same paint job, it's really hard to catch the color by a picture.
To me it's clearly more light and more turquoise as on my pictures of the refurbished bike, and it's really shining in sun light conditions. On the other side, it's not as turquoise as on the picture of the seller (above).
I was investigating to find the model and year of that Saracen already a lot.
So far potential candidates:
- 1993 Kili Flyer, the variant with rigid fork, but parts replaced by low end stuff? Sure, also the rest of the "trax" decals isn't matching.
- 1994 Tufftrax, but color seems to me clearly more dark, and parts are also not matching
- later models in blue like 1995 Forcetrax or Maxtrax (no clue what year the turquoise-blue one is), but those have no segmented fork any longer
I have heard the font or outline used for the decals could help identifying the year:
Don't have a better picture, but maybe that's useful.
Maybe also helpful to know, I've bought the bike here in Germany.
There was no official distributor to Germany before 1994 and old Saracen bikes are anyhow pretty rare in Germany.
Perhaps its 1994 or younger, or was imported?
Is there a method to use the serial number to identify year and model?
What do you think? Can you please help in identifying model and year. Thanks in advance!
i need a bit of help from the Saracen experts here.
I've bought a while a go a blue second-hand Saracen bike.
It was cheap and equipped with low end parts. Also the parts had been pretty mixed and had been according Shimano year codes from various years, up to 1990, but mostly 1992 or 93.
Decals had been mostly not existing any longer, just "AC" and "TRAX" pieces had been left.
The bike has a nice Tioga headset and Ritchey handle bar.
It has a nice segmented fork, a bit like a Tange Struts but with Saracen "S" logo/embossing on top.
Seat post size is 26.4 mm.
I've meanwhile build the bike from new and used a DX group mostly (so don't look at parts used right now to identify the original bike).
This is how it looks right now:
It's still same paint job, it's really hard to catch the color by a picture.
To me it's clearly more light and more turquoise as on my pictures of the refurbished bike, and it's really shining in sun light conditions. On the other side, it's not as turquoise as on the picture of the seller (above).
I was investigating to find the model and year of that Saracen already a lot.
So far potential candidates:
- 1993 Kili Flyer, the variant with rigid fork, but parts replaced by low end stuff? Sure, also the rest of the "trax" decals isn't matching.
- 1994 Tufftrax, but color seems to me clearly more dark, and parts are also not matching
- later models in blue like 1995 Forcetrax or Maxtrax (no clue what year the turquoise-blue one is), but those have no segmented fork any longer
I have heard the font or outline used for the decals could help identifying the year:
Don't have a better picture, but maybe that's useful.
Maybe also helpful to know, I've bought the bike here in Germany.
There was no official distributor to Germany before 1994 and old Saracen bikes are anyhow pretty rare in Germany.
Perhaps its 1994 or younger, or was imported?
Is there a method to use the serial number to identify year and model?
What do you think? Can you please help in identifying model and year. Thanks in advance!
Last edited:
that means it's has to be a 1994 Tufftrax,
