Tag Archives: retrobike

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How to buy a vintage mountain bike

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OK, so you have some idea about what model of vintage mountain bike you’d like to have. How do you go about buying it?

By far the best place to buy a vintage mountain bike (or any kind of vintage bike) is retrobike.co.uk. Prices are generally fair, and the sellers are almost all honest. Ebay is a bit of a mixed bag: prices tend to be higher that at retrobike.co.uk, and borderline fraud is not uncommon, unfortunately. Gumtree can also serve up some gems, if you’re able to collect from the seller.

Retrobike doesn’t just have a for sale forum, there is a also a forum for posting ‘wanted’ adverts, of you’re looking for something specific. More often than not, somebody who has the item (or bike) you’re searching for, and will reply to your advert. There is also a handy forum where the retrobike.co.uk community can be asked for honest valuations on any bike or component.

Things I look out for

A rule of thumb is that buying a complete (or nearly complete) bike is more cost effective than buying all the parts separately. Of course, if money’s no object, or you have a specific set of components in mind, then by all means do the latter!

Similarly, sometimes it pays to buy a ‘donor’ bike to get a full set of components to turn your bare frame into a complete bike. Some even buy complete bikes for a single part, and then break down the remains to sell separately, to cover the cost of that single part.

I’ve found that the level of wear on moving parts usually makes little difference to the price of a vintage bike. A bike with a nearly worn out drive train could sell for the same or a similar price as an identical bike with very low mileage. The key to detect a low mileage bike is to look at the parts that wear out fastest: tires, chainrings and cassette. It helps to know beforehand what the original specs of the bike were.

What I try to avoid

I try to avoid bikes with evidence for having had a hard life, or which haven’t been looked after. For example, a little bit of rust is not necessarily deal breaker, but it would be pot luck as to whether the rust is just skin-deep, or has gone all the way through the tubing. In the event of there being more than a little bit of rust, I would not touch the bike with a barge-pole, unless the frame is something really special and/or cheap.

It sometimes happens that a seller tries to sell a decent frame, but built up using low grade parts, to an unsuspecting buyer. I’ve seen frames go cheaply on ebay, only to get relisted a week or so later at an inflated price, having been built up with inferior parts. Imagine a Zaskar built up with a Shimano SIS pressed steel and plastic drive train!

A seized seat post is another ‘gotcha’ that occasionally crops up. Although not fatal, it does take a fair bit of work to remove (or dissolve) a seized-in post. Similarly, beware frames that have been stripped down, with the exception of the bottom bracket, which could be hinting at a seized in bottom bracket.

Suspension can be a thorny issue, as it can be hard to tell whether they still work. For suspension forks that use elastomers, it’s common to find the elastomers have disintegrated. Oil forks may require new seals. If you really want suspension, it may be best to buy separately a set of forks that you know are in good working order.

Finally, beware adverts or listings with no photo of the item, or only limited photos. A good seller will show the bike from all angles, and will show and describe honestly the condition, and any damage to the item.

Which bikes to choose?

Tastes and budgets differ, so there is no clean answer to this question.As a general rule, it’s hard to go wrong with a double-butted cromoly steel frame with a Shimano LX or DX groupset, which should cost somewhere in the region of 75 to 150 pounds (100-200 Euro; 120-230 USD) in good working condition.

But also check out my highly subjective list of some of the best vintage steel or aluminium mountain bikes. If you’re up for a less conventional bike, then perhaps an elevated chain-stay (e-stay) mountain bike might hit the spot. I also highly recommend Raleigh Special Product Division’s titanium and steel composite frames, which are usually very good value for money. For more refined tastes, hand-built Reynolds 853 frames occasionally come up for sale.

my rides

My rides: Raleigh Dynatech Mission (Dynacurve)

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One of my projects is a 1990 Raleigh Dynatech Mission. I’ve heard great things about this frame, and I’m rather looking forward to getting it built up, when time permits.

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The frame is of an unconventional construction, having butted Reynolds 653 mang-moly steel main tubes (531 material, after heat-treatment), a Reynolds 531 Mang-Moly fork and rear triangle, and an aluminium head tube.

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Look closely, and you’ll see the frame is lugged. But unlike most lugged frames, this one isn’t lugged and brazed. In fact, the main tubes are joined by bonding (using high-tech aerospace glue) into lugs. This actually makes for a stronger join than could normally be achieved through welding or brazing – the heat from which can reduce the tensile strength of heat-treated steel – and allows different metals to be joined (aluminium and steel in this case, but Raleigh also bonded titanium and metal matrix to steel and aluminium).

Raleigh often didn’t publicly acknowledge which tubing was used in their Dynatech ranges, preferring instead to invent their own tubeset designation. In the case of the Mission, Raleigh’s mix of Reynolds 653 and 531 was designated ‘2070 performance enhanced tube set’.

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For comparison, my Dynatech Voyager‘s 2060 tube set has Reynolds 531 main tubes instead of 653, and a chrome-moly fork.

Check out the unusual design of the lugged head tube  in the photo below

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But what really sets my Dynatech Mission apart from other frames is its ‘Dynacurve’ top tube. Dynatech Missions are not exactly common, and frames with the Dynacurve top tube are even more of a rarity – so I feel pretty lucky to own one.

As the name suggests, the top tube has a noticeable curve, so as to “ensure maximum support for the seat tube while keeping the head tube at the optimum length” on larger models of the frame.

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However, it’s not obvious why the Dynacurve is really needed at all. Other manufacturers managed to build large frames without the need for curved top tubes, but perhaps the issue is related to the bonded construction of the Dynatech. Regardless, I think it looks really cool!

See the photos below, linked from retrobike.co.uk, for a few more examples of Dynacurve frames.

Dynatech Voyager with Dynacurve:

Compare the above to the non-Dynacurve (smaller) bike below:

Dynatech Voyager without Dynacurve

And another example of a Mission, again from retrobike.co.uk:

Photos of my own build will follow at some point in the future … watch this space!

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Vintage steel Raleigh Dynatechs

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Often overlooked in favour of the lighter titanium models, Raleigh made some really nice bonded steel Dynatech frames during the late eighties and early nineties.

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Cover of a Dynatech catalogue

The innovation made by Raleigh for this range of bikes was the bonding together of the main tubes, often from different materials, to build a frame that is light yet strong. The Raleigh brochures of the day boasted that bonding gives stronger tube joins, compared to welding or brazing.

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I really love the very visible engineering on these frames in the form of lugs, and the absence of messy welds (although the rear triangle is still welded). Let’s have a look at a couple of the bikes.

Dynatech Voyager

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Dynatech Encounter

Check out the Girvin Flexstem ‘suspension’ stem!

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Dynatech: awaiting trial

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Unlike for some brands, surprisingly little information exists on the internet about the Raleigh Dynatech brand – despite being one of the coolest serious mountain bike ranges from a British manufacturer during the early nineties. To remedy this deficiency, over the next few months I plan to catalogue and showcase as much of the Dynatech range as possible.

To get things started I give you the 1991 Raleigh Dynatech mountain bike catalogue’s front page, whichhas to be one of my favourite catalogue front covers of all time:

dynatech awaiting trial

Depicting a Dynatech Encounter handcuffed on a dank backdrop, the imagery evokes danger and subversion, and the bike screams ‘ride me, as though you stole me’.

Check out this thread at retrobike to see a surviving Encounter close up.

I too have a similar Dynatech Mission frame and forks at home, awaiting trial, which can only happen once I’ve decided exactly how I’ll build them up… And I have every confidence it will be as fun to ride as my Dynatech Diablo STX or my M Trax 300 or 400.

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Are Vintage Mountain Bikes Faster?

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Common sense tells us that the more expensive and modern a mountain bike is, the faster it is.

Otherwise the pro’s would still be winning XC races on rigid steel bikes with 21 gears and 26″ rims, instead of big wheeled carbon rigs decked out in M9000 and various other boutique components. Right?

However, the reality is probably not quite this simple, and I’ll tell you why.

Are vintage (or retro) mountain bikes faster? The answer to the question really depends on how you ride. In an all-out cross country or downhill race, there’s little doubt that you’ll be faster on a modern bike. The better traction, lower rolling resistance and superior suspension will all add up to faster laps, especially on XC courses that seem to be tailored to exactly the kind of bikes pro XC racers ride these days.

But most mountain bikers are not pro racers. So, what about the ‘normal’ rides that ‘normal’ mountain bikers do? I think its fair to say there’s probably no such thing as a ‘normal’ ride these days, what with all the different tastes and styles that have blossomed in recent years, from old school XC to hardcore free-ride; from trail centres to epic wilderness expeditions. Clearly, it’s a case of horses for courses — different bikes will excel under different conditions.

What do vintage mountain bikes do best? Aside from their obvious advantages of low purchase and low maintenance costs, the stretched out, head-down riding posture of your typical 90s vintage bike helps significantly when climbing. This posture allows  rider to make good use of those powerful lower back muscles, thus bringing significant extra power to the pedal stroke — as is the case with the typical road-bike riding posture.

And if your ride takes in some road sections to link up different off-road trails, a vintage MTB is going to be faster here too, thanks to a more aerodynamic rider posture, allowing one to make-up time (or save energy) for the more technical down-hill trails on your route.

It’s certainly no surprise that some top pro MTB racers now go for the old-school, head-down riding posture. To give one example, olympic and world champion mountain biker Jaroslav Kulhavý famously prefers to ride this way – albeit with a thoroughly modern bike, of course!

jaro

Image credit: http://www.geo.tv/olympics2012/NewsDetails.asp?id=55322

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Retro Raleighs: a trip down memory lane

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A rather nice, vintage Raleigh mountain bike came up for sale recently on retrobike, which set me tripping on nostalgia via google image search.

Raleigh did some excellent mountain bikes back in the day – see my titanium Dynatech Diablo and my titanium M Trax 300, for example. But by the early 90s, Raleigh’s steel framed bikes had come to be seen as a bit naff, unfairly some might say in hindsight.

Their Dynatechs were still a bit cool, but other UK brands or imported American mountain bikes were the new must-haves for the coolest mountain bikers. At least this is how I remember things as a teenaged mountain biker…

However, twenty years on a bit of digging on google and retrobike yields some great examples of surviving 90s Raleighs. And while they don’t have the overt XC racy looks of rival brands like Marin, Cannondale, or Orange, I still find them visually appealing in a way that’s hard to explain.

Perhaps this is partly down to details like the lugged frame design and the Raleigh head badge, which hint at the heritage of bicycle manufacture at Raleigh and give a vintage feel to an already retro bicycle.

Reblogged below are a just few of the fabulous Raleighs I’ve come across:

Raleigh Thunder Road.

Pure awesomeness in the form of a Reynolds 531 mang-moly steel frame. Photo from a retrobike thread dedicated to Raleigh MTBs. I’m now currently building one of these myself.

Raleigh Yukon

… from the same retrobike thread as the Thunder Road. Another 501 frame.

Raleigh Moonshine

… again, from the a retrobike thread. Reynolds 531.

If you like what you’ve seen, then please do go and check out the ‘get ya raleighs out for the lads’ thread on retrobike.

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Rourke 853 first ride

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Finally built up and ready to ride, this is my Brian Rourke 853 mountain bike. 20150206_125313 After collection from the bike shop, I couldn’t resist taking it for a spin around downtown Porto for a little test ride. 20150206_132106 I love the chrome together with the polished aluminium of the Shimano Deore DX rear mech. 20150206_125432

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Overall it rides like a dream, most things work as they should. The Deore XT thumbshifters provide surprisingly crisp indexed shifting across the cassette, and the XTR V-Brakes stop exceptionally well. The Pace RC 36 suspension fork looks great, but will need a bit of tuning to get the sag and damping set up to my satisfaction. And the long stem and narrow bar are going to need changing for something a little more practical!

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Rourke 853 mountain bike build

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And now for something special in the steel mountain bike department – my ‘new’ Reynolds 853 Rourke frame.

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The frame seems to have survived its journey over from the UK, and once unpacked it’s clear I’ve landed a truly stunning frame.

Hand-made from Reynolds 853 tubing sometime slightly after 1995, this is a real work of art.After the tubes were welded together, legendary framebuilder Jason Rourke (son of Brian Rouke of Brian Rourke Cycles) added finely crafted, decorative lugs, and other sublime details such as the wrap-around chain stays (see below for a close up from Brian Rourke Cycles’ webpage).

The red and black paint job is awesome enough, but the chrome-plating on part of the rear triangle is the icing on the cake. Cosmetics aside, I have high hopes for how this frame is going to feel.

My build philosophy for the Rourke takes what I hope to be the best aspects of 90s and modern mountain bike technology, with a mix of Deore DX, XT and XTR groupsets, and other parts (Hope, Salsa, Middleburn, Titec etc.) I had lying around the man-cave begging to be attached to this splendiferous frame.

Photos of the final build and first thoughts from testing riding to be added soon!

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StaFast – Reinventing the Flexstem?

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Way back in the early 90s, before real suspension was invented, Girvin came up with the innovative Flexstem. Designed to soak up a bit of trail buzz, which would otherwise be transmitted to the rider’s upper body, the Flexstem was little more than a normal stem with a hinge and an elastomer. Some riders complained that when using a Flexstem, the constant rotational motion of the handlebar would irritate their wrists. Nonetheless, the Flexstem plugged a gap for a few years until real, fork suspension arrived on the scene, and was then forgotten by nearly everybody.

The StaFast suspension stem

Now fast-forward to Fall 2014, when sta-fast announce they have developed an innovative suspension stem for bicycles, retailing at the hefty price of $350 United States Dollars.

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Although unlikely to pose a threat to fork-based suspension on mountain bikes, one might expect the StaFast to find its niche in the touring and commuter bike scenes, where rigid forks are the norm.

The good old Girvin Flexstem

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Little more than a hinge and a bit of rubber added to a quill stem, yet a huge innovation in its time.

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My 1993 M Trax Duo Tech 300

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Way back during the early 1990s, Raleigh’s Special Products Division (or RSP for short) came up with the novel idea of bonding titanium or cro-moly steel tubes into steel or aluminium lugs, to build mountain bike frames that had a fairly low weight, a rigid rear triangle, and some of the damping and flex of titanium.

In its day, this was something of a genius idea, insofar as it allowed ownership of a hand-built titanium bike, with prominent ‘Titanium’ decals, for a fraction of the price of a welded, full titanium framed bike. While there’s little doubt that some clever marketing, along with a generous sprinkling of ‘titanium aura’ tinged hype, played a role in the relative success of RSP’s ‘Duo Tech’ framed mountain bikes, their performance and ‘ride quality’ was also usually quite highly regarded by those who rode them.

Originally branded as part of the Raleigh Dynatech range until 1994, and part of the Raleigh M Trax range from 1993 to 1995, the demise of the Duo Tech frameset came when the cost of materials and fabrication rose to such a level that the frameset stopped being profitable — at which point Raleigh switched to more conventional designs and materials.

My 1993 Raleigh M Trax 300 Duo Tech

As the bottom of the range model of the newly introduced M Trax brand, the M Trax 300 was the cheapest titanium framed mountain bike you could buy, retailing at about £350 back in 1993. Bought for the princely sum of £50 from retrobike.co.uk, this is my best value for money bike purchase to date. It’s getting common to rebuild retro bikes to their more or less original specifications using parts collected from ebay, but my M Trax is a true survivor: all original parts (down to the tires, grips, and brake pads), very little use at all, and carefully stored for 20+ years, albeit with some conspicuous rust on the bottle cage bolts and brake bolts.

Raleigh M Trax 300
Raleigh M Trax 300: unpacked and ready to ride

After removing the reflectors and adding modern SPD pedals, at 27.5 lb it is not unduly heavy by modern standards, but is close to the upper weight limit that a self-respecting 90s mountain biker would be able to tolerate. The bike has potential for some easy weigh savings, such as replacing the steel stem, bar and seat post with lighter aluminium versions, and fitting lighter tires.

The good

  • The bike feels lively and springy (less so than a good all-steel framed bike, however), with noticeably more trail-buzz being soaked up by the steel controls and titanium tubing than I would usually expect with the 90s standard set-up of aluminium controls and an all-steel frame.
  • Steel controls and seat post give added confidence (at least for a taller/heavier rider like me).
  • The Shimano Deore II thumbshifters and hyperglide cassette shifted between gears remarkably smoothly, which some may find surprising for a bike of this age. The ability to shift across the entire block or chainset in a single movement was appreciated.
  • Reasonably light in weight.
  • Metallic turquoise paint job looks the business.
  • Titanium at the price of far-east steel.
  • Ostentatious decals on the top-tube emphasize that this frame has TITANIUM.
M Trax 300: destination Nun's Cross
M Trax 300: test ride, destination Nun’s Cross

The not so good

  • The gear ratios are a little on the high side for the steepest off-road riding, with its lowest ratio being 1:1.
  • A design fault in the Altus chainset’s non-replaceable inner ring makes chain-suck episodes all too frequent.
  • The plastic four-finger Dia Compe brake levers look ugly and lack power.
  • The bar is just slightly too narrow to steer the bike properly over technical terrain.
  • RSP’s Duo Tech frames were known to de-bond, and there are anecdotal tales of having a tube pop out of its lug mid-ride, in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, this seems not to be an especially common problem.