20?? Saracen exile dirt jumper build thread

[Chrisgriff44]

I've just rescued an old Saracen exile frame from the smelters. It's in good order apart from the paint. It's off to the powder coaters this morning. £60 for prep and coat, bargain I thought. Gonna go some shade of yeti (ish) turquoise I think...

Super budget parts bin build incoming...

 

[Chrisgriff44]

Re:

It's going RAL6033. Mint Turquoise.

 

[Sketchyxup]

Those things were indestructible

 

[Chrisgriff44]

Just got the nod from the powder coated. She's ready to rock...RAL 6033

 

[Chrisgriff44]

It's back from the coaters. Immaculate job. The perfect shade of Yeti I was after. Time to raid the parts bin. So far I've found a red Tioga cube stem & bars, tioga dh saddle (the stupidly long banana looking saddle), SRAM 4.0 mech and I'm sure I have a couple of pairs of forks in storage somewhere.... Brakes will be 160mm Clarks clout 1s.

 

[coomber]

Re:

Yeah that looks a great paint job

 

[Chrisgriff44]

Gathered most the bits together to get this thing rolling. Turquoise and red colour scheme wasn't on purpose but I kind of like the look.

Found a set of 'dnm mirage magnesium 110mm' air forks for it. They seem quite beefy and pretty plush. No idea on the history of them.

Bought some clout hydraulic discs to go on later. £44 front and rear Inc rotors, levers and calipers brand new. They're supposed to be pretty good.

Fitting the BB was a swine as the first few threads were full off grit blast and powder coat. It now has a truvative dh BB.

 

[Bonzo Banana]

Think these frames are made by Merida. When Saracen went out of business they tried to get Merida interested in buying the company who were the main supplier of the higher end frames but they weren't interested. Then the brand got sold to Madison. I dread to think how much it would cost today to get Merida to make such a heavy complicated frame in Taiwan and they don't even use 7005 nowadays because like Giant they have moved onto exclusively 6000 series aluminium with 6061 for their lower end frames and I think either 6066 or 6069 for their higher end frames. For a lump of a frame like this though with no flexing 7005 seems an ideal material it has greater strength and the frame design minimises fatigue to say the least. Here's mine which is the image of when I bought it, it's partially disassembled at the moment. I paid £40 for the bike but made that back by selling the crankset, saddle and bottom bracket. The crankset made pretty made back the whole price of the bike near enough. I'm only doing a simple conversion to 1x and adding mechanical disc brakes or possibly fit some Clarkes M2's I have.

 

[Chrisgriff44]

The DNM mirage 110mm forks are goosed. They don't hold air and make wierd squelching noises. Probably not serviceable anymore. I've had these stratos forks following me around for the best part of 15 years. I don't even remember where they came from. They have mega stiction. I don't want to fit them but I also don't want to spend any money....I think these are really easy to service from memory.

 

[Chrisgriff44]

Managed to salvage the DNM Mirage forks. Just swapped out the valve cores and they're holding pressure. Added some 2.2 Trailpac tyres for £7 a throw, a used SRAM trigger shifter and some cheap eBay grips we're just about ready to shake it down this weekend....