1993 Marin Bobcat Trail

[widow71]

Here goes at the start of my project...

New to this forum with the exception of buying a few bits here and there. Hello all. Very addictive this old bike stuff!

Anyway it all started back in 1993 when I got my first proper mountain bike, a Marin (soon to be uncool?) Bobcat Trail. My dad got a Bear Valley which he is still riding to this day with minor upgrades and a recent powder coat. I rode this bike all the time as a child, I even got to 44mph as a 13 year old which at the time I was very proud of. My addiction to bikes started with this bike, and led onto many years of spending what little money I had on bikes, race fees and petrol money. It was the first in the line of what later would lead onto a Proflex 856, Kona Stinky, Kona Chute, Big Hit, Intense Tazer, Yeti DH9 and so on. All coming full circle with the bike I now ride the most a small steel hardtail (DMR Trailstar LT).

Recently I decided that I needed an XC bike again so I could ride more miles in the little time I have available (due to babies taking up a lot of my free time now). I thought that the cheaper option would be second hand, and I chanced upon a 1993 Bobcat Trail for £75 from a bloke who lived a couple of minutes walk away from me. Plenty of nostalgia in this. Not so cheap now I keep buying more parts for it.

So the plan....

If I wanted a bike with suspension and great brakes I'd ride one of my other bikes, but I am building this bike up as a retro bike with a few new additions. Some may ask why I should put all this effort into a low end bike. Why not go for an Eldridge Grade? But then why build up an 1993 Eldridge Grade in the first place? I guess I really liked this bike at the time and I still love the whole colour scheme. Try and explain our love of retro bikes to anyone outside of this scene and they won't get it anyway.

So I'll be stripping the paint, respraying, decals from Gil_M and then high quality components from around 1993 that look similar to the original spec. That is the plan now, we'll see how it goes.

Thanks for looking. Check back in many weeks.

L

 

[lewis1641]

cool! i've just bought one of them

 

[clockworkgazz]

welcome to the site and you hit it on the head- the bikes are cool but it's all about the passion- looking forward to seeing how you get on with this one- how you going to replicate the paint with powdercoat?

 

[lewis1641]

. Welcome to the site! Sorry, got excited last night

 

[widow71]

At the moment I have stripped it down (including a LOT of hassle with getting a seized BB out, plastic cup shattering etc). Next is to Nitro Mors the old paint from the frame, fork, handlebars, stem, bottle cage, seat QR. I'll see how this goes, but at the moment I think it is too cold outside to get this work done. I am planning on priming it in grey and seeing how it looks then going for a matt grey finish. After this I'll get the BB threads re-tapped then start re-building.

Will Nitro Mors affect the BB threads? And will it affect the bearing surfaces in the headset cups?

 

[mechagouki]

Nitromors won't hurt most metals. Make sure you wear goggles and gloves!

 

[widow71]

I spent the afternoon today wearing a pair of extra small yellow rubber gloves that made my hands sweat too much and a pair of goggles that were also so tight my eyes sweated for two and a half hours.

I thought that working on a bike would be a bit different to the things I now do daily round the house: namely lots of cleaning and making sure things are tidy. So to relax in the few brief moments I have I now clean this bike in an almost obsessive manor. I have also organised my tool kit and spares box to a level of OCDness I would never have dreamed of when I was a student.

This was my first ever attempt at removing paint. Armed with a big tin of the Nitro Mors stuff, some newspaper, protective equipment for me, a baby bath full of water (baby does not fit in it anymore - it is just a £20 bucket my wife bought!), wire wool, toothbrush and bike bits I spent a lovely afternoon outside in the drizzle.

So I laid out the bits for a quick photo (see below). I then spent a while brushing on the chemical goo, getting very excited as it started to bubble away. As a stroke of luck my dad found the original Marin Lite bottle cage from my original Marin, along with the seat QR that he sent down to me. On both of these Aluminium parts the paint just fell away. It really was a joy (no primer?).

I then moved onto the bars and stem. The bars were quite easy to wipe down due to the shape. The stem was a bit harder with all the nooks and crannies but I got most of the paint off. Having never done this before I was pleased with how easily the lacquer came off, but it did take rather a lot of scrubbing with the wire wool to get rid of the paint and undercoat. I also spent a happy ten minutes scrubbing away before I realised that my rubber glove thumb had rubbed itself away so I was rubbing the Nitro Mors into my skin. Anyway no damage done, it is still the correct colour and not too red. At the moment.

I am really pleased with the result. It will be a shame to paint the bike now, the look of bare metal is beautiful, with the welds showing up neatly and the brazed on guides looking lovely (not sexy, just beauty to an engineer, you know what I mean).

Next up were the forks. These took, for such a small part, quite a lot of work to get rid of the paint. From reading other posts I was under the impression that you paint on the Nitro Mors and all the paint just falls away. That was not the case today. Eventually the paint was removed and my fingers were starting to cramp with the effort.

Finally I started on the frame. So far this has taken a lot of effort. Partly due to not having quite enough wire wool, so the last hour was spent with old bits trying to scrubb the paint away. I also had to finish a bit earlier than planned because a) it got dark, and b) I had to go and make tea for my daughter.

Next up on the agenda is, wife permitting, to re-Nitro Mors the frame after buying some more wire wool and LARGE rubber gloves. Logically, if I had known it would be this much effort I should have just bought a new bike. But then it would not have meant so much to me.

From watching American Hotrod on Quest it looks easy all this restoration business!

Thanks for listening,

Lewis

 

[saltyman]

great stuff, keep us updated with more, enjoying this thread.

 

[lewis1641]

Logically, if I had known it would be this much effort I should have just bought a new bike.

steady on chap!

 

[widow71]

Frame still developing but slowly.

Once I have stripped all the rest of the paint from the frame I am going to try and sort out the inside of the frame, to treat the rust that is there and stop it getting worse in years to come. So my question, to those in the know, is what is the best way to go about this? I've seen a product called Frame Saver that you can just spray into the frame and this waxy coating stops it getting worse. Is it any good? Or can I buy something cheaper to do the same job. At the moment the frame does sound a bit rattly when I shake it so hopefully the bits of rust will stick to whatever I spray into the frame. Thoughts and ideas welcome.......

Secondly my plan for painting the frame was to get rid of all the paint, sand down with wet and dry, wash with water, wipe with acetone nail varnish remover then use some Plasti Kote grey metal primer on the frame. All the time using an old seatpost in the frame to act as a handle and from which I can hang it. Any comments on this plan so far? Anything I need to watch out for?

Cheers,

Lewis