The Introduce Yourself Here Thread III

[jpc1971]

Another newbie joins the legion

Hi i'm John,

i've got the usual biog - i was massively into the scene in the early 90's and have had a nigh on 10year bike free existence..and have caught the bug again...big time !

Bike history....started off nice and easy

saracen (cant remember name)- was the first one to come with magura hydraulic brakes as standard (cost me about £400)

Scott Super America - full xt groupset (big oversized alu frameset)..

then my truly special bike...bought from the old stif cycles in leeds..

Pace rc200 ,rc35's , royce bottom bracket , ringle zooka stem , cook bros cranks , titanium handle bars , syncros seat post (gorilla post i think) , ringle titanium skewers (the drilled out ones), ringle (bubba hub) with mavic 231 rims....aaah happy days

and then,

SBIKE rear suspension , tioga revolver crankset(with integrated bottom bracket) , tioga disc drive rear wheel , (later replaced with pulstar rear hub with araya rims)

any hoo enough reminiscing - i ended up selling the RC200(around 98-99) and confined the SBike to the loft...fast forward to now and i have just bought a rc300 (couldn't get an rc200 fast enough) and i have just emptied the loft and am in the process of going through what is left... and would just like to chat , swap parts and generally get back into it !

 

[kaiser]

Re: Another newbie joins the legion

Hi i'm John,

i've got the usual biog - i was massively into the scene in the early 90's and have had a nigh on 10year bike free existence..and have caught the bug again...big time !

Bike history....started off nice and easy

saracen (cant remember name)- was the first one to come with magura hydraulic brakes as standard (cost me about £400)

Scott Super America - full xt groupset (big oversized alu frameset)..

then my truly special bike...bought from the old stif cycles in leeds..

Pace rc200 ,rc35's , royce bottom bracket , ringle zooka stem , cook bros cranks , titanium handle bars , syncros seat post (gorilla post i think) , ringle titanium skewers (the drilled out ones), ringle (bubba hub) with mavic 231 rims....aaah happy days

and then,

SBIKE rear suspension , tioga revolver crankset(with integrated bottom bracket) , tioga disc drive rear wheel , (later replaced with pulstar rear hub with araya rims)

any hoo enough reminiscing - i ended up selling the RC200(around 98-99) and confined the SBike to the loft...fast forward to now and i have just bought a rc300 (couldn't get an rc200 fast enough) and i have just emptied the loft and am in the process of going through what is left... and would just like to chat , swap parts and generally get back into it !

welcome and get some pics up pronto

 

[jpc1971]

Another newbie joins the legion

here's my current ride (bought last week) and my old second bike which i dug out of the loft two weeks ago...sacrilage i know...

any thoughts on the sbike frame ?

 

[banjaxt]

Ahoy muddyfunsters!

Hi, my name's Sam and I hail from sunny Brighton, home of some of the loveliest parts of the South Downs, and also Mint Sauce ..!

The first time I saw a set of Deore DX thumbies (in Halfords of all places!) when I was about 12/13 was when I decided to get into mountain bikes. I soon realised sticking them on my 3 year old Peugeot Lynx just wasn't gonna wash and I needed to get me a decent bike..

Realised I'd have to get a job before I could afford a decent rig. Thankfully this finally happened in 1996 when I built my first bike from scratch - a black Orange P7! (which was duly stolen a matter of weeks after it was finished, just before I was due to take it on holiday!)

I had a rocky history with bikes, and a lot of the nicer ones I had for a few years kept getting nicked. Partly due to my naivete at first, and partly down to some seriously determined theives! This meant I would go on and off the idea of riding quite often, and the kick in the balls of having my latest newly built rig stolen a few times was enough to put me off for months/years at a time in some cases..

17 years down the track and I don't ride even a quarter as much as I'd like to.. Still, I had my list of "dream bikes" drawn up over the years and luckily I've now owned (and kept!) most of 'em!

Been quite a party animal since my late teens so have never been as fit as I wanted to be. Recently hit the big 3.0. and decided I have to slow down the partying and get fit again, hence my recent purchase of a Pace RC200F8 which should be finished by this weekend if the postal service is good to me!

 

[bdbath]

how do

hello from the lakes. got on the site to sell my bike but as the rules say...i thought i'd do the simple bit first. im a mountainbiker at heart but gearing up for a trip accross europe and the middle and asia to nepal to do some climbing...all by bike ofcourse. hense the sale of my beloved Trek Y Foil to raise funds for the trip. bring it on.

 

[Farmfield]

The Farmfield

Oi folks,

So I thought it was time - to take the time - for this...

I'm 38 years old and I've only been into cycling & bikes since the mid 80's. I started out with a 600-equiped Nishiki RoadMaster back in 1985-86 and a year later I moved on to a Italian Conti w/ columbus tubing & full Campa - both of these road bikes of coarse.

1995-1990 I was also into skateboarding, travelling around competing in 'street' so skateboarding and bikes was competing heavily during this time.

In 1989 I bought my first MTB, a GT Avalanche. From 1989 to 1993 I had that GT, then I had a Yeti FRO, an Ultimate, a Rocky Mountain Altitude and lastly a Salsa - all of these have steel in common but somewhere in there I had a Tucker (imported by the swedish skatestore ProStüff 1991 or 1992) with full Easton tubing and aheadset (which was very unusual). The Tucker frame has been lying around in the basement since sten and is currently rebuilt w/ non orig equipment. This thingie was the reason I started thinking about retro MTB'ing...

In the late nineties and a few years into the 21'st century I rode a lot of BMX which was transmorphed into riding street/dirtbikes the last years. I'm currently selling my 24" singlespeed steel street/dirtbike as I'm not capable to ride it as it's supposed to - and by that isn't that fun anymore...

My nick, Farmfield, is actually the direct translation of my swedish last name to english and is something that was thought out (by my girlfriend back then) when I lived two years in London back in the mid nineties (where I got stuck after a 6 month trip in the middle east, freediving).

As for the rest of what is supposed to be an adult life, I'm a graphic/illustrator since 1989 who moved on to system design ten years later (now specializing in open source). I have a son (9 y.o.), due to him I do my best to be an adult, but basically I live a very immature existence, hehe...

I'm also a certified TIG-welder (spec. small tubing) - even though I never worked professionally w/ it - and otherwise all around mechanically 'gifted'. Another 'hobby' is CQC and been 'training' Krav Maga and alike since 1997-98.

Current bikes:

1991 Miyata TrailRunner Carbon (main bike)
1991 Miyata ValleyRunner CroMo (mint cond.)
1992-93 Tucker Easton frame/fork (soon to be of to get powdercoated, new stickers & some clearcoat on top)
1991-93 CyclePro Stony Point - 100% CroMo (to be used as a foundation for a SS Yeti Ultimate tribute bike)
2008 GT Ruckus UF24 (street/dirtbike. 4sale)

Upcoming projects:

Simple online-bike/parts-shop - as I got to much stuff lying around now, need to sell and/or a lot of stuff off to get cash for current & upcoming projects.

Rocky Mountain Ultimate tribute bike - same as my yeti-project, to be run as SS w/ disc brakes.

That's it - or kinda it... But there's the gist of it anyway...

 

[ColinS]

My MTBing and PRO~FLEX History

As a kid in 1977 I modded my 24" wheel road bike with cow horns and the widest Knobbly tyres I could find - 1.75", I think. I spent hours and hours in the countryside just exploring and attempting little gullies and jumps. Near Luton, we had a great big hill with a dirt track down it and a tarmac road to ride back up on. That descent still scares me!

I Bought my first “All Terrain Bike” in 1985, a Raleigh Maverick that cost £200 brand new.
The best Raleigh Team Banana racer only cost £127.
Everyone said “what do you want 15 Gears for??”
(My brother’s still got this bike somewhere in his garage…the frame was guaranteed for 15 years! It broke in 2000, but we got it brazed)
Then in 1991 I bought a fully rigid Marin Pine Mountain brand new and this did me for a number of years and lots of long overland journeys (it’s been to Greece! And I’ve still got it!)

I first read about PRO~FLEX’s in MBi magazine in November 1995 when they reviewed the 855 and described it as “Two Wheeled Dr. Martens”
I thought it looked absolutely brilliant and exactly the sort of bike I wanted to replace my rigid Marin, then I saw the price tag £1499 !!
No way!! I waited and even tried to get a friend to buy one in the states as they were only $1400 over there.

Then I saw the 856 and again held off because of the price..…..
Then in 1997 I saw an ”XP-X” (which is basically an 856) advertised as "Why ride when you can fly?"
I believe they were only sold in the UK by the importers “Ultra Sport UK"
They had a competition to win one......,
.........I entered.......
................ I didn’t win ...............

Then lo and behold a freebie copy of “Exchange & Mart” was put through my door, I opened it up and a golden light surrounded me and Angels began to sing as I saw the advert that read..................
“UNWANTED PRIZE FOR SALE”
“PRO~FLEX full suspension mountain bike, unused”
and it was only 80 miles away!

I rang them up, jumped in the car and saw the bike; it was the prize from Ultra Sport! All the labels were on it and not a mark on it. I tried not to act too keen, and managed to get it for £750 !! Bargain, I thought!!
The XP-X was an 856 frame which allegedly has additional welding to strengthen it against some reported failures and doesn’t have the hole through the seat post for the canti’s, instead it has Magura Hydraulic brakes which were pretty rare back then. It came with ODS shocks and MCU’s which I quickly replaced with Speedsprings.

Well that bike has lasted me since then and it’s ridden nearly every week and is still in great condition (I really ought to sell it, but I won’t……) The only draw back was I rode to work on it weekdays (1.3” slicks) and then had to change tyres for off-road weekends, what a pain and so I resolved to buy a spare pair of wheels, but realised that for the cost of the wheels and cogs I could maybe buy another bike!

Then I bought an 857 frame dirt cheap on eBay and planned to move everything off of the XP-X to this frame, but I just didn’t have the heart to do it, instead I bought a 856 type BEAST as a donor bike but again didn’t do anything with it (I've sold them both now!)

Then in 2004 I noticed that 4500’s and 5500’s were popping up on the market at reasonable prices. Like everyone else, I had coveted these carbon bikes with their “Smart Shocks” when they came out, but £4000 for a bike? Get out of here!

I missed out on a few and then Jeroen “Stoerevent” contacted me to say he was selling his 5500 in the Netherlands and was I interested? I was, but wanted to see it in the flesh and no business trips to the Netherlands were forthcoming so I told him to go ahead and sell it.

As a consolation a 4000 came up on eBay and I managed to get it at the seller’s reserve price which I was very happy with. Apparently this bike was sold in the Netherlands to the Dutch/Belgium equivalent of F1 commentator Murray Walker and was top spec’d ! Allegedly Michael Schumacher has had his leg over it!

Then Lo and Behold a business trip came up for the Netherlands and Jeroen still had the 5500, I came, I saw, I bought!

Then in 2006, I bought an unridden OzM that had sat in a garage for 5 years, it's still got the manufacturer grease on it!
Also, an OzX that has seen a bit more life, eventually both of these bikes will emerge as re-worked and modernised versions for me and the missus.

So I decided to sell the 5500, which I did, but incidentally bought another carbon Frame..............

So now I have too many PRO~FLEX’s to ride, and my wife calls it my “Pro~Flex museum”
Thank God PRO~FLEX stopped making decent bikes!

Although I do have my eye on a Whyte 46………………………

Col

 

[orange71]

Hi Colin - glad you made it over here

The new Proflexes look interesting - Callum's going to see if he can set up a 'viewing' of the high end ones - I've asked if it could be at Sherwood Pines (where they distribute the new Proflexes) so reasonably central for most people.

Ed (Orange)

 

[Dick Spanner]

Hi everyone, I discovered this site a couple of weeks ago and thought it was time to quit lurking. Having considered myself a fine figure of a man it was somewhat surprising when my dear wife said "Oi, fatty, get away from the window you're blocking out the light." minutes later as I locked the cellar door and put away the gaffer tape and cattle prod I began to reflect that I had perhaps gained a few pounds and ought to do something about it.

With that in mind I went and exhumed my Orange E3 from the garage and end its 10 year incarceration, (did you hear that darling, 10 years and it didn't even call me fatty, hah!)

 

[1210tech]

Hi all,

Put my first post in the wrong place so thought I'd say hello again. I stumbled across this forum while trawling google for my dream 1990 Klein Attitude but after searching the for sale section there are a couple more that have caught my eye!

Riding a good ol' Pace RC200F8 which I have owned for about 10 years, also one of my dream bikes that I managed to fulfil when I found it in M&P Cycles in Swansea at a stupidly low price just because it had a tiny scratch on the top tube!!!

Lovin the forum, good work