Cool thing

One of the blogs that I pay attention to is Cork Grips who recently posted pics and a link to this sweet Hufnagel custom shifter/lever combo. Check it. Viva thumb shifters!

1986 Mt. Fuji LTD

This is a new project that I hope I can convince my brother in law to accept as a kid hauler and grocery getter. It was Fuji's top of the line mtb for 1986, and it is loaded with radness. Front and rear early model Suntour rollercams, drilled, and with the alloy cams. Suntour XC hubs, shifters, rear der (sport 7000), and pedals. Sugino AT crank with some BB that I've never seen before (maybe Suntour XC). Here's the catalog info: http://classicfuji.com/MtFujiLTD_1986_Page.htm
The frame is fully lugged and has double eyelets on the rear vertical drop out with the "hidden" interior eyelets up top. The entire frame seems to be chromed under the paint and only exposed on the drive side chain stay. The fork is just tigged unicrown and has the "lawers lips" drop outs. Anyway, I know that's probably too much detail so here's the candy as I found it:

The chrome stuff:
Never seen one of these before:
Very similar to the Superbe Pro pedals:
...on the middle anyways...
Head lugs:

XC POWER!
Not the original bars:
Radical stem:
Two bolter:
Mid flange hubs:
Hard anno RM-20s:
It's light too! :
The bike will get a bit of a overhaul before becoming the ultimate city bike; different tires, bars, seat, grips, racks, and fenders. We'll see how it goes.

Fat tires

Had to take a pic, sorry for the product placement. I still have great love of canned beer, and this was probably the first 12 pack of good beer I've ever bought. A bungee and the Nitto mini front rack worked great to haul it over.

East Ridge Runner

I know this "winter" weather won't last, but this last weekend was really killer. I got a chance to try out the '85 Stumpy that I happened to find recently. I can't believe that it works so well. The components are all original and in great shape. I was most impressed with the Suntour XC "high normal" front der. which is so smart. My other old timey mtb will shift into the small ring up front about half of the time because the spring is losing it's juice. With the reverse movement on the XC I can at least get it to drop into an easier gear when I need it, which I do more frequently than using the big ring.
More later on the stumpy...

Old stuff

My interest in old technology doesn't stop at bikes, even if it does consume a large amount of my time. I recently got a hold of some tools from my carpenter ancestors. Here are just a couple of pics:

This was stamped on the end of a few of the moulding planes.
Some of the moulding planes
A measuring tape. Money on the mind.
Some sort of two handed plane.
Another measuring tape made by Lufkin. The exterior is covered in leather.
A screwdriver that looks like it belonged to Louis the 14th.
Some squares with inlaid brass.

And some bike stuff. I just Got these old Specialized toe straps. They are so nice! Super thick.
It's hard to believe that any big bike company would have had anything acually made in Italy. But then again, they had bikes made in Japan back then too.
Just a great book idea and design.

3 rad reasons

One of the blogs that I follow is Vintage Bicycle. I liked this most recent post http://vintagebicycle.wordpress.com/

Friendship, Freedom, and Unity (and Dirt)

Some Ideas about old Treks and a Diamondback discovery

I'm spending the night in, still sick, trying top beat this cold that's been dogging me. This is always the kind of time when I can find a few hours to pour over the web, dig around, and fall into an internet black hole looking at bikes. I was super excited to find this little dude existed. It's a Diamondback Mean Streak. Not sure about the years of production but I'd hazard a guess at 1983-5. I can't seem to find catalog scans or really much info at all about this bike. What I do know for sure is that the Mean Streak is almost exactly the same as a Ridge Runner from similar years. I have a soft spot for the Ridge Runner since I've owned two, one is still my regular mtb and the other was stolen on my wedding night (punks!).
Anyway this one is up on ebay right now and is so cool. Only apparent difference here between the Ridge Runner is the unicrown fork.

I dug around for other pics and found this one with a lugged fork. It must be an older model:

Then there's my Ridge Runner shown here returning home:

I also saw this thing recently on craigslist. It's a Panasonic MC7500 maybe '87 or '88. Such a cool frame. The MC stands for "Mountain Cat". I love those corny tough guy MTB names of the 80's

I've also been thinking about how much I like the late 80's and early 90's lugged Treks. A guy had a really nice 950 at the coffee shop this morning, and it reminded me that I should post about those bikes. Here's a 950 from ' 89 just taken off the web:

These bikes are fully lugged and had an awesome seat lug. The only thing that is not so rad are the super beef unicrown forks, but I'd bet they handle great and are fun in the dirt. I guess I'm interested in these bikes because I've focused so much on the early production mtbs that I forgot to look at the later models. Other lugged models from about 1989-92 are the 930, 970, 990, 870, 850.

Here's a seat cluster from an 870:

Random projects

This is a little project that I've had around for a while and finally got to working on. I moved about six months ago and the new place is up a little hill. The hill is no big deal but it has been a bummer to ride up on my old commuter which was a single speed. The single speed was also a crappy old road bike, and since we've been riding mtbs I want to run over stuff in the road rather than avoid it. Anyway I got this bike instead. Enter the new geared janktastic Prant Geterson designed XO-Whatever. Yes, it was a rare find, but the mythical polished turd does indeed exist. This is that aluminum trek 8000 from posts of the past, freshly sandblasted, and looking just kinda weird.

These are the tires from that cracked trek 890. Still good after 25 years!
I'm surprised at how comfy the mustache bars are.
This is an ancient Ideal Saddle, when I got it you could still see the Daniel Rebour signature on the center of the top.
Although on it's face it wouldn't seem like these next pics are about mtbs, and mostly they aren't. This is my new old roadie. It's a 1991 Basso Loto. Just as I mentioned above, riding fat tires has made anything less than 25c just no fun. I was stoked to realize that I could squeeze 28s in the frame and still have some room. I would have guessed that it would be impossible on anything that is this racy.


This is a bad angle really; there is probably 1/4" clearance.

Phone shots

Saw this cool bike/build on the street the other day and stopped to snap a few pics. Fifteen minutes later I met Steven who owns the bike and is a rad nice guy. Add Shogun Prairie Breaker to the growing list of sweet early 80's production mtbs.


Blurry pic from this weekends dirt doggin'. Threading the Ewok needle!

Sometimes I feel like this guy only about mtbs. Thanks Tamar.

Street Bikes

I just returned from a very brief east coast blitz. I didn't get to dirt a dog a day while out there but I was obsessively checking the streets for cool early Mtbs. It's kind of funny how getting interested in these old production mountain bikes really makes looking at crappy bikes in the city so much more fun. Many of these bikes are obviously just commuters and delivery bikes. Now I catch myself really trying to see if crackheads are riding some old gem, because well, these bikes turn up all over the place. Anyway, I only saw two bikes of note; one in New York and one in DC. Apologies for the phone shots:

An 1986 Bianchi Grizzly ( a guess on date and model, but seems right)

By the looks of the parts on this Peugeot I'd guess 84/85 and it's either the Canyon or Orient Express model. I didn't do tons of research because I was just being lazy, but here's a link to some catalogs.
Same fork crown as my '84 Ridgerunner and similar lugged bullmoose bars like the ones that came on the 1983 Trek 830.