Knowing that I like 'fiddling around with old bikes' I occasionally have friends and family say, oh I have an old bike in my garage/shed, do you want it? Normally it is something that I wouldn't be interested in, but very, very occasionally, something interesting turns up. In this case my friend, we'll call him Jim, cos that's his name, told me he had salvaged something from a relative who he helped clean out the garage.
Imagine my surprise when he presented me with the frame, forks and stem of a rusty old 1989 GT Timberline. I was quite excited, but it was pretty rusty, especially the forks. So I treated all the rust to stop it getting worse and then stashed it in my shed, for about 2 years.
It didn't really feature in any plans. It is not exotic in any way, although it does have lovely chain stay Ubrake bosses!! and it is a women's frame. So it kinda just sat there.
Fast forward to this summer and I wanted to try out a new painting technique using Montana Crackle Effect Paint. This Timberline was blue, but there was also the option to get a black and silver one back in the day. I've always like the early 90's paint jobs, so wanted to see if I could recreate it. But Red with Black Crackle, which I thought would look nice with the yellow and orange decals.
Treating the rust previously meant that the existing paint job was poor anyway, so this project was born.
After a rub down and primer I sprayed it with Montana Gold Red:
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Then added Montana black Crackle paint. First time using this, a few test sprays showed that the more you spray, the more it crackles. There's a little delay between the paint landing and the crackle developing...It's quite fascinating to watch....
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Then decals and clear coat (2K SprayMax - wear a respirator folks!!)
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At some point I also decided to throw a whole bunch of GT parts I had at it. This included some BMX bits - a GT Seatpost, and some GT Mohawk BMX hubs.
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Naturally I had to modify these to fit the wider OLD, which was a bit of trial and error. I laced them to some FIR hubs that I bought on here a little while ago. They roll really nicely. I am a little obsessed by Radial lacing on the front wheel...
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At this point it looks a bit like one of those safety bikes from the 1880's So I put some tyres on some GT Rubber - which are hard to find at the moment.
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I finished it off with some nice XT bits - which clearly would have been a considerable upgrade on it's original spec.
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Job done.. It's quite heavy, despite the Ishiwata tubing (13.68kg) in fact it is the heaviest bike I have
, but lightness was never the objective.
I expect some will suggest I should have restored it to original....yeah, I've done loads of those, and will do more. This was about having some fun and learning new techniques with paint - I already know what I'd do better next time...for me that's what it's all about.
. That really does look awesome.
For Sale WRA CNC crank arms – Roox lookalike but lighter and more rare