old mountain bike thread (1 Viewer)

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1996 Trek Singletrack 930. Had a 1985 Schwinn Mesa Runner before this bike, but I don't have any pictures of that bad boy.

Love the Ice Blue paint on this bike though.....



Trek by tonkota, on Flickr

I have a '95 Trek 930. I hate that thing. Horrible over agressive geometry and uncomfortable on the trail. It was my first mountain bike and nearly ruined me for the sport.
 
Here's one of my many obsolete bikes in my collection. This is a 97 Outland VPP. Santa Cruz bought the patents when Outland went defunct.
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Ha... 1985 Schwinn High Sierra. Dia Comp brakes, Sun Tour friction shifters (no index shifting), but was 18 speed. The Sierra was 15 speed. The only Schwinn model higher was the Cimarron at the time. I bought it for ~$260 on a model-year closeout in the spring of 1986, this pic was Fall of 1986 in the Cascades by Snoqualmie Pass, WA. Dig the hockey-style helmet, no? Check the massive brake levers (4 finger), the huge hub flanges, and my awesome cycling shoes...
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btw, I still use the pedals off of this thing on my '90 Stumpjumper Comp. I love the big bear traps.
 
Dude...you couldn't pay me to go back to a hard tail! I don't care how much "pure" the ride may be, a well designed dualie smokes the hard tails for speed and comfort.
Years ago my full-sus bike I commuted on was inop, so I pulled out my ancient Cannondale for the ride. Blasting over a curb into sand, tapped my rear tire on the curb and the rear tire bounced instead of sucking up the hit, and sent me over the bars for a face-full of sand. I didn't realize how lazy my full-sus had made me!
 
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Hahah, just stumbled onto this thread. Thought it would be appropriate to throw up another Zaskar Le pic. Circa 95, full xtr group
 
This is the old Cannondale I picked up at a pawn shop, in Merced in the early '90s. I need to get rid of it, kind of hate to just throw it away but don't think it can have much value. Still rides nice, just not much to look at.
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I went through it and updated the components with a Shimano Deore groupset. I retained the original brakes, pedals, headset and other parts. I had to replace the rear hub, and went with a new wheel, to accomodate the newer 10 speed cassete.

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Rides like new, or at least good enough for my purposes.
 
Rides like new, or at least good enough for my purposes.
Nice resto. I'm struggling with what to do with my old bikes, tough to give them up, but they would be pretty expensive to bring back to a fun condition. Full sus and hydraulics require more than casual tinkering, better to replace them or have them rebuilt if I want a reliable bike again, which takes the fun out of bike wrenching for me.
 
Nice resto. I'm struggling with what to do with my old bikes, tough to give them up, but they would be pretty expensive to bring back to a fun condition. Full sus and hydraulics require more than casual tinkering, better to replace them or have them rebuilt if I want a reliable bike again, which takes the fun out of bike wrenching for me.

I spent more than I had thought I would. I think the original cost of the bike was ca. $425. The resto cost was under this but not by much because of the little things began to add up. The front derailleur was the only component that needed a little extra for fitment in that a shim was needed to fill the gap between the tube and the clamp. I replaced all the cables and housings but could not fine tune the derailleurs for shifting so had the local bike shop do that. The younger guy at the shop thought that having new parts on an old frame was cool. This guy is also wanting to pick up an old Land Cruiser and showing up in my 60 scores some points. I have an old Bianchi frame I pulled from a scrap pile that I'd like to build up but I'm not sure putting a few hundred $$ into it is worth it. If one of my kids had a real interest in it then I'd do it.
 
I bought my kids $500-ish mountain bikes, they hardly ride them, pretty much still like new. A $500 bike is pretty adequate for thrashing around in the woods or cruising or whatever, better than what I used to race, so I've always got a bike in a pinch. Once a year we take all our bikes up to Mackinaw Island for a few days, that's about the only time I might possibly want an extra bike around, otherwise extra bikes are just in the way, with the bikes that hardly get used.

Still, I hate to scrap out a bike that has served me well. Guess I have to get over it. Or build a shed.
 
1986 Stumpy...when they were still made in Japan! Bad MoFo!
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I just found this thread so I'll post a couple of my old bikes that I still have. I used to race cross country and downhill in the 90's. I had an Intense M1 for downhill but sold that years ago and I had a Schwinn Straight 6 for awhile after that. Those were both great bikes.

I just finished restoring my 1990 Yeti Ultimate. I found some old original parts for the build to get it back to how I first rode it. This has been a very long restoration and the bike has quite the history. The owner of a shop I worked at in the Bay Area in NorCal originally owned it. It was stolen then recovered about a year later. I bought it from him and started racing it. Years later I started racing for Action-Tec and my dad started riding the Ultimate. In 2007 my dad passed away from a heart attack while riding this bike... About a year or two later I striped the bike down and had it powder coated. I slowly started collecting early 90's parts for it and started building it.
Parts list:
Yeti Ultimate frame.
Grafton Mag-Lite brakes.
Grafton cranks.
Phil Wood bottom bracket.
Answer A-Tac stem.
Answer Hyperlite bars.
Flite Titanium seat.
Original Manitou 1 fork.
Chris King hubs with Mavic 231 rims.
Chris King headset.
Ringle skewers
Shimano XT thumb shifters.
Shimano XT rear and Suntour front derailleur (I want to find an XT front)
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And this is my Action-Tec team bike from the mid 90's. There were only a dozen or so made for the team. Most of us built them with different parts depending on budget. If I remember right Curtlo made the aluminum frames. The Pro Shock is built by Action-Tec and Canondale copied the design later for their head tube shock. Action-Tec was mostly known for their titanium chainrings, cog sets and bottom brackets.
I sold it to a friend about 15 years ago and got it back from him about 4 years ago. He put the wider riser bars on it and changed out the Grafton Mag-lites for Avid V brakes. Thankfully he still had the Grafton's and I used those on my Yeti Ultimate restoration.
I mostly raced cross country on it but I raced the Mammoth Kamikaze downhill with a 60 tooth front chainring a couple times before getting the Intense M1 for downhill.
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Here is one I put a lot of miles on before upgrading about 5 years ago; 99' Gary Fisher Sugar 3. I still have it. Keep it up at the cabin for guest to use.

Recently stuck a 760mm wide handle bar and 60mm stem on it and a XO 2X10, both off another bike of mine.
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Bought this 1986 Fisher ProCaliber new when I was a pro bike mechanic in San Diego. I raced it XC in Big Bear and rode it all over the west. Unlike most "do it all" mountain bikes of the mid-80s, this was built as a true XC race bike of the day with a shorter wheelbase and steeper angles, but without the price-tag of the U.S. handbuilt Fisher framesets (which were largely beyond my bike mechanic/college student salary). It has a Japanese-built Tange Prestige cro-moly TIGged frame (the Prestige tubes are quite thin). I performed a restomod to it a couple years back (this pic was taken when I was done). This bike came with Fisher Bullmoose bars, 180mm cranks, Suntour XC seatpost and compe pedals, Hite-Rite, Araya RM-20 hard anodized rims, and DuraAce hubs and headset. Those are the original frame stickers with mostly new paint.
 
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