Profanisaurus
Retro Newbie
Not one for the purists but I thought I'd share my '94 Team Marin - it's a bit of a hotchpotch of bits & bobs from the 90's and beyond and you can probably tell from the seat pin it's too small for me, but it's become one of my favourite possessions! I originally bought the frame to make up a town hack when I was working up in Newcastle to go from the hotel to the shipyard everyday. It was advertised as a 19" but I found it was in fact a 17.5" when it arrived, but I decided to do the 'old skool' thing and bung in a king-size seat pin!
I had an almost new STX SE groupset so on that went and also a load of bits salvaged from a Team Ti I bought that was also far too small for me (I'm not learning from past mistakes here, am I?!)
On went some Conti slicks and I was left with a light, pingy steel road weapon to hoof about in Newcastle on! Happy days..
Trouble was, the STX canti's were a bit crap even with new Kool Stop pads, and this became abundantly clear when I nearly ran over a small child running across the road down at the quayside on a sunny Sunday afternoon! His old man was ready to rearrange my face, so that was catalyst enough to sort out the brakes! Another rummage through the archives turned up a set of XTR V-brakes my booze and age addled brain had forgotten about, on these went with a fresh set of Kool Stops and bingo, no more crap brakes induced quivering hoop! I had to change out the shift-levers to accommodate the V-brakes and eventually just opted for the dirt cheap EF51's still widely available for chump-change - I did try to find something suitably authentic for the age of the bike, but decided to give up when I realised most folk clearly believe Shimano made everything out of billet platinum back in the day for the frankly hilarious prices being asked!
I'm back home now, so mostly using it for rides round the New Forest mostly on the roads - I still can't bring myself to do the whole road biker spandex gig, so I'm sticking to my mountain biking roots for now!
Cheers!
I had an almost new STX SE groupset so on that went and also a load of bits salvaged from a Team Ti I bought that was also far too small for me (I'm not learning from past mistakes here, am I?!)
On went some Conti slicks and I was left with a light, pingy steel road weapon to hoof about in Newcastle on! Happy days..
Trouble was, the STX canti's were a bit crap even with new Kool Stop pads, and this became abundantly clear when I nearly ran over a small child running across the road down at the quayside on a sunny Sunday afternoon! His old man was ready to rearrange my face, so that was catalyst enough to sort out the brakes! Another rummage through the archives turned up a set of XTR V-brakes my booze and age addled brain had forgotten about, on these went with a fresh set of Kool Stops and bingo, no more crap brakes induced quivering hoop! I had to change out the shift-levers to accommodate the V-brakes and eventually just opted for the dirt cheap EF51's still widely available for chump-change - I did try to find something suitably authentic for the age of the bike, but decided to give up when I realised most folk clearly believe Shimano made everything out of billet platinum back in the day for the frankly hilarious prices being asked!
I'm back home now, so mostly using it for rides round the New Forest mostly on the roads - I still can't bring myself to do the whole road biker spandex gig, so I'm sticking to my mountain biking roots for now!
Cheers!
