'90 GT Tequesta Nimbus.....

[sherlylock]

New headset fitted



Stem paintwork touched in



Some bad chainsuck still to sort out. New bearings fitted to bottom bracket (+ clean out & re-grease)



Fork paintwork cleaned up and touched in



New seatpost installed (with plenty of grease!!) and a Miche quick release clamp from the spares box. Starting to look a little more respectable.....



Just sorting out the handlebars now - going to stick with the original steel bars as they're uncut and original. They just need paintstripping and a minor amount of rust sorting before a re-spray in gloss black.

 

[sherlylock]

Handlebars prior to refurb - not too bad, little bit of rust around the stem clamp area and a bit of shifter/brake lever scuff.....but way better than some of the Tequesta steel bars I've seen on other projects



Attacked with some Ambersil gasket stripper (works well as paint stripper)



Cleaned up the rust with 60 grit paper and applied Kurust, followed by coats of etch primer, filler primer (avoiding filling the GT logos with paint) and 3 coats of gloss black. Also gave the wheels a good clean and polish and fitted my new charge splashbacks.









Starting to look like a bike again......

 

[artsyfartsy]

Re:

I love it, looks great and you're almost done. Saving most of the parts and refurbishing them definitely helps keep cost down. I think most of the older parts are superior in quality to new ones, so it's a win win. Job we'll done.

 

[minor_LEGEND]

Hallelujah for not throwing nos parts or a respray at it.

Great thread.

 

[sherlylock]

Hallelujah for not throwing nos parts or a respray at it.

Great thread.

Cheers!

Bit of a budget build this as the bike originally only cost me £35. I've spent waaay more than this now though but I've kept it sensible and relative to the cost and quality of the bike.

I love it, looks great and you're almost done. Saving most of the parts and refurbishing them definitely helps keep cost down. I think most of the older parts are superior in quality to new ones, so it's a win win. Job we'll done.

Thanks!

Almost done - was hoping to get some more done over the xmas hols but the lurgy has put paid to any further progress, along with a planned retro ride

I love getting bikes to this stage - everything that gets bolted to it now will be cleaned/mildly refurbed but more importantly fully functioning.

Gears and brake levers are next on the agenda - just need to replace a return spring in a lever as it's missing on one side.....as with a few things on this bike it seems that over the years this have been dismantled, played with, adjusted badly and generally not re-assembled correctly.

Not sure what I'm going to do for a replacement spring yet - canti brake return springs are the right diameter so I may be able to cut one down to suit. The wire diameter is larger so the spring rate may be too much but we'll see....

Also going to re-spray the levers as they would've been black originally.

 

[sherlylock]

I've managed to get together a few nice finishing touches for this build via this fantastic forum.

A few weeks back I received a pair of original GT waffle grips - which will be a nice finishing touch once the bars are built up......and alongside that I've managed to get hold of a GT instaflate CO2 pump.....which would've been original fit (in a bracket attached to one of the bottle cage positions) when the bike was bought back in 1990.

I found out about the pump (and the waffle grips) researching the bike and finding the 1990 GT catalogue on RB. Wondering if I could get hold of one for originality I did a quick search for "instaflate" on the for sale section (not expecting much) and found one in an ad from 2011. Again, not expecting much, I PM'd the owner to see if he'd sold it and was glad to hear it was still available, 3 years later!

A swapping of PMs and some paypal funds saw a GT Instaflate pump land on my doorstep (cheers James!)....although Royal Mail made me sweat.....they took 3 weeks to deliver it - it finally arriving on xmas eve. Of all the bits that I didn't want to lose in the post, this was the main one!

 

[Dare]

Very nice bike mate! Lovely paintjob!
If you don't mind I would suggest you to touch up those cable stops on downtube too for esthetics.

 

[sherlylock]

Very nice bike mate! Lovely paintjob!
If you don't mind I would suggest you to touch up those cable stops on downtube too for esthetics.

Of course! I did a bit of crafty masking to spray the cable stop on the top tube and it worked really well so the downtube stops should be fairly straight forward to sort out.

Also still need to sort out the bad chainsuck too. Hopefully I'll be able to blend in such a large repair into the surrounding paintwork (at least it's in a fairly inconspicuous place!)

 

[sherlylock]

Managed to find a couple of hours to work on the Tequesta tonight.

Made up a new brake lever return spring by cutting down a spare canti brake spring.....works a treat! New one is on the right



Cleaned up and lube'd the gear change units.....this little guy fell out of one of the housings. Think it's one of those false widows (there's a lot of fake stuff in Essex)....or just a common garden spider



Carefully refitted the gear shifters, followed by the brake levers and then the waffle grips.....taking great care not to zig-zag scratch the bars (nothing more annoying!)



Waffle grips close up....



Coming together well.....!

 

[Hairylegs66]

Nice build, you don't see many Tequestas of this vintage around, well done for saving it!
I see that you are looking for an original GT saddle for it - they were sooooo uncomfortable, probably why you can't find one easily! My '91 Tequesta came with a GT Sport saddle which I threw away 22 years ago and replaced with a Turbo Gel saddle. The studded leather GT saddles I think are the Competition version fitted to the higher end bikes.
Good luck with the build, be great to see it when you're finished!