Ompelukone
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Hi all!
I decided to register because I recently acquired a piece of Finnish MTB history.
The bike is a custom built 16" GT Zaskar or Zaskar LE from 07/92 according to the frame number. It currently has later, blue-yellow "Zaskar LE" decals, but before polishing you could see signs of the old style big black ZASKAR text but not "LE". The whole bike seems original, but the build is strange. It has full Deore DX groupset, except an XT headset, a GT branded seatpost, Vetta saddle, Minerva stem and some fancy handlebar. The bike has been ridden a lot, rear derailleur is really worn, but nothing seems to be broken and everything works suprisingly smoothly.
The history of the bike is such that it is the first(?) sponsored bike of French-Finnish Dominick Arduin, one of the pioneers bringing mountain biking to Finland. Because of the component setup I simply can't think of anything else but the Finnish importer of GT building the bike for her. As I remember the company was rather small at that time and it seems only fair that the sponsored bike was not built with the most expensive components (XT) of the time, but the second best. Actually XTR was introduced in '92, but I would guess that its availability as separate components in a pre-internet world might have been poor in the remote north. The circles were small.
As I have no more knowledge about the bike I can only speculate why and when it was re-decaled. One possibility is that it was raced several years and the sponsor wanted to make the bike look newer than it is. Or it was not built in '92 and was updated before leaving the shop. Who knows.
To make things more dramatic ms Arduin, who was also known as an experienced wilderness guide in Lapland, disappeared during her second solo attempt to reach the north pole by ski in 2004. Due to several suspicious facts about her expedition she has been speculated to fake her disappearance in order to escape the relatively big debts she left behind. Someone even claimed that she was seen alive and well in Germany a couple of years later! Officially she has been declared dead.
The bike was, as you would guess, in a bad shape after years of storing in a cold shed in the Finnish climate. It came with bar ends and was originally fitted with a RockShox Mag21 fork. I completely stripped the bike, cleaned the components and polished the frame, but left the decals in "as is" condition. The fork needs full overhaul and in order to test ride the bike I put a red Cannondale Pepperoni in place temporarily. At the time of purchase the tyres were rubbish semi-slicks and definitely not original. Still I'd say it was a good deal for 100 €.
Unfortunately I have only a couple of pictures of the bike at the moment as it is in Finland and I'm in MCR. Needless to say, the project goes on and more appropriate tyres are high on the shopping list. A period saddle would be nice and a proper rigid GT fork might do justice for this old lady too!
I decided to register because I recently acquired a piece of Finnish MTB history.
The bike is a custom built 16" GT Zaskar or Zaskar LE from 07/92 according to the frame number. It currently has later, blue-yellow "Zaskar LE" decals, but before polishing you could see signs of the old style big black ZASKAR text but not "LE". The whole bike seems original, but the build is strange. It has full Deore DX groupset, except an XT headset, a GT branded seatpost, Vetta saddle, Minerva stem and some fancy handlebar. The bike has been ridden a lot, rear derailleur is really worn, but nothing seems to be broken and everything works suprisingly smoothly.
The history of the bike is such that it is the first(?) sponsored bike of French-Finnish Dominick Arduin, one of the pioneers bringing mountain biking to Finland. Because of the component setup I simply can't think of anything else but the Finnish importer of GT building the bike for her. As I remember the company was rather small at that time and it seems only fair that the sponsored bike was not built with the most expensive components (XT) of the time, but the second best. Actually XTR was introduced in '92, but I would guess that its availability as separate components in a pre-internet world might have been poor in the remote north. The circles were small.
As I have no more knowledge about the bike I can only speculate why and when it was re-decaled. One possibility is that it was raced several years and the sponsor wanted to make the bike look newer than it is. Or it was not built in '92 and was updated before leaving the shop. Who knows.
To make things more dramatic ms Arduin, who was also known as an experienced wilderness guide in Lapland, disappeared during her second solo attempt to reach the north pole by ski in 2004. Due to several suspicious facts about her expedition she has been speculated to fake her disappearance in order to escape the relatively big debts she left behind. Someone even claimed that she was seen alive and well in Germany a couple of years later! Officially she has been declared dead.
The bike was, as you would guess, in a bad shape after years of storing in a cold shed in the Finnish climate. It came with bar ends and was originally fitted with a RockShox Mag21 fork. I completely stripped the bike, cleaned the components and polished the frame, but left the decals in "as is" condition. The fork needs full overhaul and in order to test ride the bike I put a red Cannondale Pepperoni in place temporarily. At the time of purchase the tyres were rubbish semi-slicks and definitely not original. Still I'd say it was a good deal for 100 €.
Unfortunately I have only a couple of pictures of the bike at the moment as it is in Finland and I'm in MCR. Needless to say, the project goes on and more appropriate tyres are high on the shopping list. A period saddle would be nice and a proper rigid GT fork might do justice for this old lady too!
.
