1993 Brodie Catalyst

Early 90's NOS Brodie frame? Lucky guy. I find your comments on the riding characteristics of early mountain bikes and your continued collecting interesting. I can't imagine many here would describe them as having poor braking and riding characteristics. I'm imagining that you grew up in the era of hydraulic disc brakes.
 
Early 90's NOS Brodie frame? Lucky guy. I find your comments on the riding characteristics of early mountain bikes and your continued collecting interesting. I can't imagine many here would describe them as having poor braking and riding characteristics. I'm imagining that you grew up in the era of hydraulic disc brakes.
More or less. My first mountainbike had canti brakes, the second one V-brakes and the third one hydraulic disc brakes. I got that when I was 17.
 
As you can already tell the fork is a Brodie Gatorblade. It's the third generation variety with straight legs and CNC-machined dropouts. Frame and fork do not belong together originally. It was definitely used before and the paint on it is slighlty darker.

Now the interesting bit:
According to se German retro gurus Gatorblade forks did not get any serial number. There is something written in felt pen on the steerer however.
And this would put it into the B-series. And according to a list of Brodie serial numbers that I found by chance the number written on the steerer is coherent with it being a 3rd gen Gatorblade, which were built from around 1992 to 1996 (I think).

It weighs 910g. The frame is not that much heavier at 1870g.

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A very, very nice frame and forks to come up on.

Congrats!

And a very interesting build, too. With some quirky decisions made along the way!

I like quirky decisions though. It's almost like you've built a brand new version of someone's old bike.

If that makes sense?

Like stumbling across a Craigslist beater that's been ridden for decades, with a mix of parts and home hacks.

Only yours looks flawless and brand new!
 
Thank you for the kind words!

Building it up, almost all the parts were there. One part that I was not sure on was the stem. I like stems to be shorter than the frame would/should have been built up with in the past and the bars to be wider.
So I felt quite lucky to have found a Joe Murray Velocity Stem in decent shape online. It has 100mm extension, some rise and a very effective brake cable routing.

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It fits me and the bike.

As I exchanged a few emails with Paul Brodie I also attached a photo for him to have a look at my bike. He commended the overall proportions, but also pointed out: "That stem is a terrible mismatch!".
Having now read his book, I know what he means.

TBG or later Kona did not do that great as the only raw material supplier and distributor for Brodie Research. The conflict ended in a lawsuit.

Therefore this stem has to go. However I do struggle to find a replacement that works.

I want to put some modern bars on there. By that mean 38mm rise Reverse Base bars with 25.4mm diameter. Just because.

Right now there is a set of Ritchey WCS Rizer bars on there. Which works ok, but they are just a touch too narrow and keeping them would be too easy.

So for that 38mm set of bars I need a 0° stem, which obviously looks much better. With 7° of backsweep I will need to twist those bars back towards me to get a comfortable hand position. But that is a bonus, as this will allow me to use it with a longer stem.

I eye-balled that a 0° 120mm stem would be ideal. But not without some sort of brake routing.

I found a 3ttt stem on Ebay that should work. Unfortunately the brake cable routing is just a hole through the extending tube with a constant diameter from top to bottom and the bars that I want to fit, do not to fit, as the 'rise' part of the bars is too wide.

That stem will be modified.




This is the first try.

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Since these last photos I have changed the wheels, rear brake and pads and bars.

It rides really well. Pedalling position is excellent. Only the brakes are a bit down on power. I still have to find out how much offset the forks have. Does anybody of you know?

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The chainstay lost quite a bit of its paint coat unfortunately, due to chainsuck.

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The drivetrain works perfectly.

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As do the tyres.

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The drillium cog

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It took a lot of adjusting to get the rear brake set up well.

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Here is the rest of the spec sheet:

Frame: 1993 Brodie Catalyst

Fork: Brodie Gatorblade

Headset: Shimano HP-M735
Stem: Joe Murray Velocity Stem
Handlebar: Ritchey WCS Rizer
Grips: ODI Björn
Barends: none

Saddle: WTB Silverado Team
Seatpost: Moots
Seatpost Binder: integrated

Weight: no idea
 
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