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: