Giant MCM Team

[Once A Hero]

Haven’t had cause to start a new build thread for a while as I’ve been winding down my retro bike activities (pretty much completed my collection), but I’ve had an eye open for one of these for many a year, just waiting for the right one to come along.
Whilst this isn’t an expensive bike/frameset, they all seem to be either too big, too much money, or the later model finished with world team colours at the front end - or all of those things.

But finally a small sized, full yellow MCM Team came up for sale on eBay, and I watched and waited as the price gradually became more affordable - bearing in mind it wasn’t local, and didn’t include postage.

As is also often the case, the build specs of the MCM Teams out there tend to be pretty rubbish - which is odd given it’s effectively a top of the line frameset. Perhaps only being offered as frame left the build being open to absolutely any interpretation.

So here’s what I picked up at the weekend:


Great seller to deal with and a fair deal done - but I was really only interested in the frame.

Stage one of the build has commenced, which has included a full strip down, degrease and polish. It’s come up nicely














Once fully stripped down I was curious as to what the frame weighed, and was pleased that it came in a smidge over 1.6kg.

I’ve started gathering parts - many with the help of @Tsundere but I’ve still got a few key pieces to find/figure out.

I’m going for a more 1995 MCM Team build rather than the later years, so this is going to be more M900 XTR, rather than M950. Only wish I’d held on to a set of M910 hubbed wheels over the years…

 

[Dave_H]

Such good looking frames that were largely overlooked at the time.

Can't remember if they were prohibitively expensive at the time or if at the time the world was moving away from the lightweight XC end?

 

[trailwright]

Agree, good looking frame and similar looking to the Trek OCLV of the same period. But I had both one after the other and the Giant was noticeably heavier and not as lively a ride as the Trek.

 

[Once A Hero]

Never had one myself, just recall seeing Rune Hoydahl destroying the field on one during many a World Cup race so it always stuck with me to get one at some point.

Weight doesn't strike me as being heavy, but I'll weigh it once built up to see how it stacks up against my other XC bikes.
As for cost - I'll do some digging and see what I can find out.