lewisflex
Dirt Disciple
So like, I bought a Ridgeback 603.
This was an entry level mountain bike from, I think, 1994. I bought one new back then from money I'd saved doing whatever stuff I did to make money as a 12 year old; still, to this day, the only bike I bought new. My recollection of Ridgeback was that they were the cheapest bike you could buy from a real mountain bike shop back in the day. This is a Tange cro-mo frame, Altus groupset, standard entry level stuff. But it was entirely usable for 12-year-old me to do things on bicycles which me-in-my-40s has far too much awareness of his own mortality to attempt.
I loved it! This was my life for the half decade of my most formative years! I eventually replaced all the parts on it (including the frame), haunted Epping Forest, and then fell out of biking-for-fun around 1999. Something bad hit me around that time which didn't leave me till more than two decades later, and I might tell the full version of that story some other place and time because I can't shut up, but the short version is I've been in some holes and I've dug them deeper; the only good thing to say about that sort of darkness is that you appreciate daylight all the more when someone pulls you out of it.
All I'm getting at is: If your first thought on seeing "Ridgeback 603" was "this is the wrong frame to start with": I know. Ssshhhh.
Anyway, a few months ago, some years out of the hole above, I rediscovered the joy of the mountain bike, and in particular, the retro mountain bike after returning to Epping Forest at my brother's suggestion on a borrowed turn-of-the-millennium Marin. I bought and gave some love (lots of parts) to a rather neglected Proflex 854, finished it to the extent such a thing is ever finished, and then did not buy another bike because the 854 was my dream bike from the 1990s completed.
And then out of nowhere, I accidentally (honestly) found a Ridgeback 603 on eBay in basically mint condition, for £63, 20 miles away. I posted about it here, and ended up buying it myself exactly 1 hour and 7 minutes later because impulse control is not my strongest point. I drove 20 miles, picked it up, came home, and took a bad photograph in the dark under a lamp post because I was excited.
I didn't buy it with any particular plan. I know "catalogue spec" is a thing around these parts, and I'm in awe at the efforts to which people go to do that. I wouldn't even need to do very much to get there, actually; just remove the steel Onza bar ends, find the correct tyres (as I recall they were grey Tioga Psycho copies) and grips and it would be a totally original, basically mint Ridgeback 603, which in another 30 years time would be worth the exact same £63 I paid for it and which wouldn't want to ride.
Or I could do something special, to me, and build a bike around this frame that teenage me would have called "wicked" or whatever we had to use before "sick fam" was invented; all the parts I thought were cool, and ANODISATION, but with a budget larger than "paper round" to pay for them.
It almost seemed a shame to change something so original and almost perfect, with very little indication of having actually been ridden at any point. For example, just look at the condition of the original brake pads!
That was the dilemma; I thought about this for a good two minutes or something before heading back to eBay and ordering a bank-balance-destroying amount of 1990s mountain bike parts. (Related, if anyone has any food they don't need that'd be good; it'll save me from starting an Onlyfans this month.)
That's why you're going to be getting a build thread!! Of a bike which probably doesn't make any sense to anyone but me, and makes barely more sense to me, but it is where my heart is and where my history is. As for you, maybe you'll find something worth reading anyway.
This was an entry level mountain bike from, I think, 1994. I bought one new back then from money I'd saved doing whatever stuff I did to make money as a 12 year old; still, to this day, the only bike I bought new. My recollection of Ridgeback was that they were the cheapest bike you could buy from a real mountain bike shop back in the day. This is a Tange cro-mo frame, Altus groupset, standard entry level stuff. But it was entirely usable for 12-year-old me to do things on bicycles which me-in-my-40s has far too much awareness of his own mortality to attempt.
I loved it! This was my life for the half decade of my most formative years! I eventually replaced all the parts on it (including the frame), haunted Epping Forest, and then fell out of biking-for-fun around 1999. Something bad hit me around that time which didn't leave me till more than two decades later, and I might tell the full version of that story some other place and time because I can't shut up, but the short version is I've been in some holes and I've dug them deeper; the only good thing to say about that sort of darkness is that you appreciate daylight all the more when someone pulls you out of it.
All I'm getting at is: If your first thought on seeing "Ridgeback 603" was "this is the wrong frame to start with": I know. Ssshhhh.
Anyway, a few months ago, some years out of the hole above, I rediscovered the joy of the mountain bike, and in particular, the retro mountain bike after returning to Epping Forest at my brother's suggestion on a borrowed turn-of-the-millennium Marin. I bought and gave some love (lots of parts) to a rather neglected Proflex 854, finished it to the extent such a thing is ever finished, and then did not buy another bike because the 854 was my dream bike from the 1990s completed.
And then out of nowhere, I accidentally (honestly) found a Ridgeback 603 on eBay in basically mint condition, for £63, 20 miles away. I posted about it here, and ended up buying it myself exactly 1 hour and 7 minutes later because impulse control is not my strongest point. I drove 20 miles, picked it up, came home, and took a bad photograph in the dark under a lamp post because I was excited.
I didn't buy it with any particular plan. I know "catalogue spec" is a thing around these parts, and I'm in awe at the efforts to which people go to do that. I wouldn't even need to do very much to get there, actually; just remove the steel Onza bar ends, find the correct tyres (as I recall they were grey Tioga Psycho copies) and grips and it would be a totally original, basically mint Ridgeback 603, which in another 30 years time would be worth the exact same £63 I paid for it and which wouldn't want to ride.
Or I could do something special, to me, and build a bike around this frame that teenage me would have called "wicked" or whatever we had to use before "sick fam" was invented; all the parts I thought were cool, and ANODISATION, but with a budget larger than "paper round" to pay for them.
It almost seemed a shame to change something so original and almost perfect, with very little indication of having actually been ridden at any point. For example, just look at the condition of the original brake pads!
That was the dilemma; I thought about this for a good two minutes or something before heading back to eBay and ordering a bank-balance-destroying amount of 1990s mountain bike parts. (Related, if anyone has any food they don't need that'd be good; it'll save me from starting an Onlyfans this month.)
That's why you're going to be getting a build thread!! Of a bike which probably doesn't make any sense to anyone but me, and makes barely more sense to me, but it is where my heart is and where my history is. As for you, maybe you'll find something worth reading anyway.
