New member who is very happy with the forum.

montair

Retro Guru
Well I feel a bit of a charlatan , I have a little bit of spare time and decided that all the various issues and niggles we had on the bikes were going to be fixed so I needed some suitable parts. As my bikes are old I couldn’t find any bits and pieces in the regular places, so started hunting the net and found plenty of links to this place. Hence feeling like a charlatan as I only came her to pillage parts, but since I am here I may as well show some of the clunkers I ride.

~1991 My first real MTB ~ 1991 was a 90 Stunt Jumper , yellow with purple decals and black forks. This was a replacement frame for someone else’s damaged frame, replacement frames always came at that time with black forks. They didn’t fancy it so I got it quite cheap and then built a bike around it I have a picture somewhere that I need to find. This was borrowed by someone and never returned so I only had it for less than a year.

~1992 I got a 91 Gary Fisher Evo -Montaire farme set from Mark and Doug at Coombes Cycling in Hereford. I always bought frames and then added my bits and bobs. This served me well and was used primarily as a street bike in Edinburgh for 2 years until it was run into the back of a bus at high speed going down Bruntsfield place. The bus had to be removed from service as I detached the back panel and did some electrical damage, i had to be cleaned up in A & E on the other side of the meadows. The bike had some more permanent damage as I snapped the frame below the e stay. Luckily a call to Doug informed me that there fleet of hire bikes was being changed and they had 5 or 6 E stay frames for sale and they had all had a gusset brazed on in at this weak point. The old frame was chucked the key parts salvaged. I sprayed the new frame over the summer holidays and this was my pride and joy having shocks very rare and I was still ex-cyclo-cross so ran drop bars. This lasted all the way through Uni and then as a pub bike until life got in the way and it just got ferried between houses until about 2010 when it was fully stripped cleaned and rebuilt.
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~2012 I got a puncture , the chain needed cleaning and a pedal was squeaking all of which meant a quick look on gumtree for a usable pub bike. I found a “Men’s bike purple” for £30 or £40 just around the corner. If you look at the time line I was really into mountain biking around the earl nineties when muddy fox was sold by very random LBS and not seen locally as a quality product but did have a massive range so I may have only seen the crap ones. SO this was the purple bike.

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It had just been serviced and came with some random tasty bits as shown. This was dully pressed into service and I really liked it so much so that I rode only this for around 4 years and leant it to people who were also impressed by it.

~2016 and my son is old enough to wheel and its time to clean the Gf up. This was cleaned, oiled new inner tubes and then sent back into service.

~2017 I felt the desire to look into cyclo-cross and this frame came up, duel win as it was cheap and means I can get to the pub a bit quicker than on an MTB ( No more info as its too new and boring)

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~2019 Before the , My son is now 7 and we loving getting out and about but he gets tired of the same old places and tired in general – TANDEM. So I went looking for tandems which I knew you could convert with pedal adapters only to find a late 90’s Thron Voyager Kiddie back. This was purchased the week before lock down on the opposite side of the country so it stayed with the owner for 4 months till we could collect. This was a god send as longer 2-3hr trips where no within reason. Again this isn’t an MTB but shares a lot of MTB parts being 26”based and has been updated as we have used it a lot, but wil probably sell this soon as my son is getting a bit cool.

As bought

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After some mods

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This is my wife's mumma’s bike as I get told by the Dutch I work with. Again not MTB but has an interesting slide suspension in the down tube and yes it should be a 700 in the back but I found a 7 speed nexus on a 26” which fits the bill best.

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That kiddieback is cool, hoping my daughter will be interested enough for one in a few years, she loves the Cargo bike so fingers crossed.

Also thats an interesting rear end on that dutch bike, bet that's got a comfy ride quality. Nice collection that, fair play.
 
I have a soft sport for Forme bikes. Completely unknown really (except they are are owned by moore and large) but cracking bikes. the Thorn is lovely, I still service my FILs custom fit one, although he has had to move towards a E bike as his knees are more plastic than bone now.
GF, doing it before it was cool. :)
 
The kiddieback has been a superb buy as it extended the range of our rides and also got over a nervous spell due to a bit of uncertainty at roundabouts. Also you get instant respect from every other cyclist when you are on a tandem. The forme was a mistake as I dabbled in cx in the early nineties and fancied it again but it just doesn't get used.
The Dutch/ mama's bike is actually Italian and yes very comfortable.
 
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