Sunday, June 6, 2010

Gone Fishing pt.II



That's what it looked like outside my garage this morning.
Not looking too good.
So, I decided to do some work on my bike.
Let's see, where were we?
Oh yes.
Yesterday, I went off in search of a quill stem for the Rockhopper Project(RP).
My quest took me to KVIBE(see below), a bicycle co-op near where I work. I rounded up some parts I had laying around and off I went!
What they had was a large pile of frames and wheels to look at. In the corner were a bunch of forks and stuff and used tires.
Sorry, I was so excited I forgot to take pictures; sort of bicycle heaven for me don't you know.
First off, I saw this womans frame hanging up on the ceiling.
Yes, I told the dude, I know it's for women, but I was sort of looking for a step through.
Can you tell? Somewhere along the line, I forgot my original mission.
Wait.
It gets better.
So I say, Hey! you got any steel mountain frames?
Well, he says, we got this thing.
Hmmmmm, I say. How much?
Too much, he says.
Time to break out the ammunition. I give him my bag of take offs.
How's about this much? I ask.
Okay, he says.
Okay, I says.
Went fishing and came home with this:



Near as I can figure it's a 1989 Gary Fisher HKII.
A bit rusty but no dings or dents.
Full Deore.
Twenty one year old Deore:





It also has those funkadelic Biopace elliptical rings.
More on that later.
So I spent the morning cleaning it up and getting all the good stuff to work.
I basically oiled everything up, worked out some kinks and presto!
A working bicycle.
A gripless working bicycle. I had to cut off the grips to service all the controls.
I also wanted to change out the bars, but my riser bar just did not want to slip into the stem:



The quill appears to be fused in there also, so I couldn't change it out for an adjustable quill evil Hoku gave me.
What to do?
Well, I'd been working hard all morning.
By the time I got all cleaned up, the weather had cleared so it was time to hit the LBS and have some lunch:



That wasn't lunch.
That was the beach.
To be continued.

1 comment:

John Romeo Alpha said...

Nice find! The bike I mean. That Biopace chainring along with the Deore thumbshifters are indestructible I tell you. My buddy the former bike shop guy tells me that Shimano had actual competition back then in the new and growing MTB market, so they made stuff that lasted. It's a very similar setup that I have on my commuter.