Marin Palisades circa 1987

[VelvetDonkey]

Time to stop reading other peoples' stories and contribute one of my own, then

Just tidied up this lovely Marin Palisades, which we found in a musty corner of a charity shop.

The colour scheme dates it as pre-'90, which is when Marin moved to 2-tone paint jobs. Probably '87 or '88, but any advice greatly appreciated. The logo font hasn't shown up on any other search; I'm wondering if this was a 'lite' version of the Palisades Trail?

Anyhoo, here's one of the 'Before' pics (more follow soon once I tidy up my pic files):

 

[VelvetDonkey]

As you can see, it's in pretty fair condition for its age. Covered in congealed mud & oil, and although it doesn't show on the picture, there was quite a lot of plaster stuck to the frame.
My impression was that it had been ridden hard, but not often, then had found its way into a garage where it gathered dust for a couple of decades before being donated to - well, me, actually! Once I'd paid the princely sum of £20, that is.
One of the tyres was an original Pro-Combo, the other a generic amber-walled one. As far as I could discern, all other components were original, down to the chain and, I believe, even the brake blocks!

 

[kingroon]

Awesome Exage Trail :twisted:

£20!

I have an '87 I loan out to mates, kitted up with Deore.. Lovely bike..

 

[JonTom]

Re:

Nice. And a bargain!

Looking forward to seeing it cleaned up.

I reckon it's a 1988 model (possibly '89) - when I was trying to date my 1987 Muirwoods I recall someone commenting that the cable guide wheel on the stem was introduced in 1988.

 

[Muddy paw]

If i correctly remeber i had a mate who had an 87 Saracen Trekker which had the exage trail on it and those brake levers always felt comfy too .

I remember the marin 2 tone being well popular in 89 so i'm pretty certain that paint scheme came out in 88 so that's the year i'd put my money on mate and very nice find by the way and that front brake cable wheel guide on the handle bar stem has got to be an 1988 design from what can recall seeing back then mate and if i recollect correctly back then it was the snail trail that was the lowest model and i think your bike would of cost in the region of £300 - £400 at a guess but excuse me if i'm a bit out on that as i was a bit wraped up with my Muddy Fox Explorer back then .

The chain stays used to be quite long on a lot of mountain bikes up until 89 when manufaturers then shortened them to around 15" inches to improve rear end grip by placing the rear wheel further forward it enabled the rider to place more weight over it improving traction on the climbs while off road riding plus it improved stiffness in the rear triangle which helped improve the direct effect of each pedal stroke .

 

[hamster]

A pal of mine had one BITD. It was awesomely comfortable to ride and was nicknamed the 'Flying Armchair'

 

[randomdan]

Nice.. for 20 notes that's a find!

I read somewhere on here that the U brake down on the chainstay was only on 1988 Marins.

My BV (daily commuter bike) could possibly be the same year.. although decal fonts are slightly different and I have exage mountain not trail. Are they black Araya rims on Exage hubs? Completely indestructable combination...

 

[VelvetDonkey]

Thanks for all the info, guys! With the colour scheme, U-brake and cable guide insights, I think it can now be dated beyond reasonable doubt as 1988.

Apologies for delay in updating this post - I realised it was time to have a Flickr account to post pics more easily ... unfortunately that involved Flickr scouring my entire digital life and downloading all pics from 1999! It took a while :roll:

So here are some more of the bike in its 'found' state. As I mentioned, the underlying condition was really rather excellent, so it would turn out to be a fairly light restoration. But the lube throughout the bike had long since taken on the consistency of candle wax so it was a matter of dismantling the entire bike, then cleaning and rebuilding from scratch.

https://www.flickr.com/gp/57756063@N07/u41to4
https://www.flickr.com/gp/57756063@N07/96j933
https://www.flickr.com/gp/57756063@N07/GC7CA3
https://www.flickr.com/gp/57756063@N07/1A6A16
https://www.flickr.com/gp/57756063@N07/2NXem8

 

[Muddy paw]

This is more straight forward to see .

Yes i can imagine it will look almost new when it's cleaned and polished properly ...

 

[Egghead]

Yeah, pretty hard to definitely date 1988/89 Marins. If you trawl through all the posts on here and other places on the web, you find different dates for the same bike. The shortage of catalogues from these years doesn't help.

There is a "1989" UK catalogue scan of a PT (and BV). The PT is blue, has Mountain LX components, has vertical rear dropouts, low rise roller stem BUT has the same decals as yours. There is also a member's blue 1989 PT on here somewhere which looks the same as the catalogue.

Since yours is red, has horizontal dropouts, the high rise roller stem and Mountain Trail, it is therefore not the same but it looks like you have the same decals as in the 1989 catalogue. There are a number of red PTs on here claimed/dated as 1988 which either have decals like yours or decals like the BV above - very small top tube letters and close-together, small "Marin'. There are also some of them that have a sort of lug at the top of the down tube which you don't have.

Regarding the chainstay U-brake, they were still used on 1989 bikes for the smallest size, which was 15.5" c-c. This was to give heel clearance due to the cantis being wide profile and the use of shorter chainstays as Muddy Paw mentions above. Before ~1988, you had long chainstays and wide profile cantis, then shorter chainstays and u-brake, then narrow profile cantis.

So how about, 1988 frame and specs with 1989 decals?!
I will see if I have some pictures of what I am on about.