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Defo a 90 as the 89 had a different groupset and the 91 a different colour. The 91 Bolinas Ridge was this colour but with Suntour parts. The U-Brake is because of the size as all small 90's had them, including my mates Palisades bitd.
Light resto - 1990 Marin Muirwoods
- Thread starter Tsundere
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frkl
Retro Guru
I actually found a post you made about that in a thread on upgrading Muirwoods.
Funny, I also have a complete bike's worth of 90 and 91 LX and 400LX and am pretty sure I am just going to replace the exage trail and country stuff it came with. It was all plastic anyway, and a few things were broken. Buying used exage trail stuff on ebay for more than the price of the whole bike, just to maintain the originality, seems not worth it.
I would like to reuse the wheels, though, and so might stay with a six freewheel, and would have to figure out the shifters then. It has 130mm spacing, and I need to test mount a seven speed 135. I'm not worried about cold setting it if I have to, but the Araya/Joytrch/Solid axle combo is kinda cool.
Completely agree about the wheels and will definitely stick with the originals, they're in superb shape as are the tyres. 100/200GS though is a pretty dire groupset being as it is bottom of the range, but these framesets are far from dire, sure they are relatively heavy but the steel is of good quality, they are solidly built and even with the shitty groupset (and no brakes) mine was a hoot to ride, not to mention the fluro paint job is far too good to waste on substandard parts.
So I think they deserve the upgrade, frankly we deserve the upgrade if we're planning on riding them. I might hang on to the original stuff just in case I come to sell it and the new owner is a stickler for catalogue spec.
frkl
Retro Guru
The upper end Shimano stuff is undeniably nicer, and I go that way whenever I can, but I have to admit that Shimano did a good job making their lower end stuff more than decent.
The road bike I got for my wife a while back came with Exage 500ex, which is a few steps above Exage Country, to be sure, but I was planning to slowly upgrade everything to 600, since the same frame had been available with that too. But the 500ex worked so well I never have.
80s/90s low end groups are considerably better than their modern equivalents, as demonstrated by how many are still running on bikes after +/-30 years, but the leap from 100GS to 4/500LX is well worth it, especially when the stuff is laying around. If you're planning on riding a bike regularly it's got to be worth getting the best parts for it you can, although there is a point where the cost negates the increase to QoL.
Having said that if you're happy with what you've got then there's no need to change anything, and if I didn't have parts going spare I would happily keep this all original and would still get pleasure riding it.
Having said that if you're happy with what you've got then there's no need to change anything, and if I didn't have parts going spare I would happily keep this all original and would still get pleasure riding it.
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Another small, U-Braked 90 here:
https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/small-marin-bear-valley-1990-warrington.441975/
https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/small-marin-bear-valley-1990-warrington.441975/
frkl
Retro Guru
I suppose they were worried about the cantis hitting the rider on smaller frames? That's pretty thoughtful, really.
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