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This looks rather nice...
- Thread starter Stressed
- Start date
gtturbo
Senior Retro Guru
Re:
Well it was a long time ago so some details may be a bit wrong.
Guess it was about 90, 91 and me and my brother were both still living at home in Fulham and heavily into MTB. We used to ride a lot with Jamie Tatlow and the Motosport guys (new Beyond mountain bikes) over in Cranleigh and drool over the latest components in Mountain Bike Action. I don't recall how but we got to know Peter the owner of a local bike shop in Fulham called Mend-A-Bike and he would let us get the latest trick bits from Chipps and Simon at NTI. Back then the shop was pretty much as the name suggests a bike repair business. We both ended up working there to earn a bit of cash during College and Uni. Then came along a guy called Roy Taylor who worked as a mechanic. I haven't lived in Fulham for years but my mate who still does heard on the grapevine that Roy may have now sadly passed away. Anyway Roy was a roadie initially but I guess he liked the look of this new fangled MTB thing and soon after joining had built up an Emmelle mtb frame but with a disk drive and Wolber tubular rims/tyres, always did think that was a strange choice. The shop starting getting more and more into trick mtb parts mainly driven by Roy and that Emmelle turned into a Merlin Ti and then a Ritchey P22. It became a bit of a cool shop in many ways and we sold some pretty sought after brands such as Ellison, softride frames, M Steel framesets and all the trick American bits at the time from Ringle, Critical racing, Nukeproof, Bullseye etc. Now this bit is a little sketchy so don't quote me as it may be completely wrong but I think when Sugar City cycles closed down John Gledhill ? sold loads of parts to the shop. At that time I had just cracked my Cannondale frame so I part exchanged the replacement dale frameset for a Fat Chance Wicked they got as part of the deal. We also had loads of Cook Bros stems and my brother got a set of Bullseye cranks. If only I know what I do now, we were fitting CBR stems to cheap no name ali frame builds !. In fact I still have my JT Dalmatian and bad to the bone tops that came as part of the hoard they purchased. Doubt they fit these days though !. Roy was keen to get into frame building, not sure if he ever did build any frames himself, but the Tomcat name was born. I left shortly after to go work for Halfords, yeah I know !, but I remember seeing people riding around on Tomcat branded bikes whilst I still lived in Fulham. And as for that Fat Chance, I'm going to upset some people here, but I never really rated it. So I sold it a couple of years later and bought my mates barely used Pace RC100 which I still have to this day.
Well it was a long time ago so some details may be a bit wrong.
Guess it was about 90, 91 and me and my brother were both still living at home in Fulham and heavily into MTB. We used to ride a lot with Jamie Tatlow and the Motosport guys (new Beyond mountain bikes) over in Cranleigh and drool over the latest components in Mountain Bike Action. I don't recall how but we got to know Peter the owner of a local bike shop in Fulham called Mend-A-Bike and he would let us get the latest trick bits from Chipps and Simon at NTI. Back then the shop was pretty much as the name suggests a bike repair business. We both ended up working there to earn a bit of cash during College and Uni. Then came along a guy called Roy Taylor who worked as a mechanic. I haven't lived in Fulham for years but my mate who still does heard on the grapevine that Roy may have now sadly passed away. Anyway Roy was a roadie initially but I guess he liked the look of this new fangled MTB thing and soon after joining had built up an Emmelle mtb frame but with a disk drive and Wolber tubular rims/tyres, always did think that was a strange choice. The shop starting getting more and more into trick mtb parts mainly driven by Roy and that Emmelle turned into a Merlin Ti and then a Ritchey P22. It became a bit of a cool shop in many ways and we sold some pretty sought after brands such as Ellison, softride frames, M Steel framesets and all the trick American bits at the time from Ringle, Critical racing, Nukeproof, Bullseye etc. Now this bit is a little sketchy so don't quote me as it may be completely wrong but I think when Sugar City cycles closed down John Gledhill ? sold loads of parts to the shop. At that time I had just cracked my Cannondale frame so I part exchanged the replacement dale frameset for a Fat Chance Wicked they got as part of the deal. We also had loads of Cook Bros stems and my brother got a set of Bullseye cranks. If only I know what I do now, we were fitting CBR stems to cheap no name ali frame builds !. In fact I still have my JT Dalmatian and bad to the bone tops that came as part of the hoard they purchased. Doubt they fit these days though !. Roy was keen to get into frame building, not sure if he ever did build any frames himself, but the Tomcat name was born. I left shortly after to go work for Halfords, yeah I know !, but I remember seeing people riding around on Tomcat branded bikes whilst I still lived in Fulham. And as for that Fat Chance, I'm going to upset some people here, but I never really rated it. So I sold it a couple of years later and bought my mates barely used Pace RC100 which I still have to this day.
BsidetheCside
Devout Dirtbag
Seemed like good value!
