Early - mid 80s Norco Dumpster Dive

Pulled an interesting early to mid 80s Norco out of the dumpster at my Birch Bay trailer park this weekend. Really not sure what year it is.

At first I was mostly attracted to the Suntour pedals in spite of them missing the dust caps. Pedals like these should not go to the metal crusher!

Upon closer inspection noticed these other nice parts: Suntour Roller Cam, XC friction shifters, Tange Levin MTB-225 1” headset. Then there’s the Tommaselli Racer Brake levers. These are very cool and pricey if a person is forced to but some through eBay I found out.





The lugged Rampage frame looks very well made. I really dig the unicrown fork top lug and U brake bosses. Not sure what I’m doing with this yet. I may post some of the parts on my local FB and vintage swap meet portion of FB MP to make some bucks to pay for this habit .

Looking forward to cleaning everything up first

Pic one looks like it may have Bullmoose bars??!!

enc said:

Pic one looks like it may have Bullmoose bars??!!

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Yup, another cool part I neglected to mention, I'm not back to the trailer for two weeks but looking forward to a bit of a strip down when I return. I was curious to see if those bullmoose units were of a higher or a lower quality. Based on the parts on this Rampage I'd say it would have been one of Norco's higher spec'd models of the day though.

Wow, that's a really interesting spec there. The biopace and neon pink make me think its more a late 80's frame, but the rear mech and the bullmoose bars make me think its more mid 80's. The headset looks a lot like the post arabesque shimano 600 road ones from the early 80's.

Could make a fun porteur / city bike build.

dirttorpedo said:

Wow, that's a really interesting spec there. The biopace and neon pink make me think its more a late 80's frame, but the rear mech and the bullmoose bars make me think its more mid 80's. The headset looks a lot like the post arabesque shimano 600 road ones from the early 80's.

Could make a fun porteur / city bike build.

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Yep, good points, hard to nail down the year, I'll check the serial# eventually. The rear U brake vs front roller cam is a bit odd as well. Possibly an original rear roller cam had issues and was replaced. I think in what ever form it takes the frame deserves to roll again

That is very nice and of pretty decent quality

1985 or 86, there will be date code on the cranks, they are the Deerhead era XT equivalent before the M730 lot came out

FC6206 - I think Takagi made these for Shimano - my favourite crankset

Canuckbiker said:

Yep, good points, hard to nail down the year, I'll check the serial# eventually. The rear U brake vs front roller cam is a bit odd as well. Possibly an original rear roller cam had issues and was replaced. I think in what ever form it takes the frame deserves to roll again

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All of the rollercam braked models I saw BITD didn't mount them on the chain stays. I feel like that is a legit U-brake spec.

My friend's BIL was a Norco employee way back when and I recall that the 90's Rampage was near the top of the range so if that's an 80's Rampage I'd expect it was a decent bike. Heck, it might have been welded in Japan before manufacturing switched to Taiwan due to the change in the exchange rates.

Ross stuck their rollercams on the stays

Triple pulley rear mech too, nice. Definitely mid 80s?

legrandefromage said:

Ross stuck their rollercams on the stays

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Interesting. On the other hand we are talking about a Norco here. I'm shocked to see a roller cam on the front end of that puppy.