Project direction --- Marin MTB
 

You guys are quite the band of enablers on here -- i was reading about the fella in CT trying to value a '91 Specialized and it got me to thinking about one of my old mountain bikes --- ITs a nice bike, but like some have opined, and correctly --- these old rigs are worth more for their intrinsic value than they would be throwing them on E-Bay and seeing what you could get ---


--- I cleaned up my garage over the weekend and now its time to do some wrench turnin' --- and its supposed to storm tomorrow , so perfect timing for that --
-- i want to recycle this bike into something nice but am not sure what to do with it ---- I love the Randonnee buildup someone showed on here a week or so ago with his old Trek , - the one with the bare metal finish --- or i could just restore whats there and get it back out on the trail again

Leaving it a singlespeed is also an option, but i would like to build up an eccentric hub rear wheel rather than using the jockey pulley arrangement on there now ----- The stack of spacers on the 135mm cassette hub is downright ugly

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps25fae4e8.jpg

I realize the bike is wearing a singlespeed setup right now --- and is missing the handlebars, -- but its a sub 20 pound bike in singlespeed garb and in the 22 pound range with a selection of decent geared componentry ---- (A nice seatpost and seat would likely drop that value as well, -- i dont know what happened to the original White Industries post it came with, and 27.0 posts, while not uncommon, do not really grow on trees like 27.2's seem to


http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps5c83b8c9.jpg

Tubing decal -- plus all the battle scars of a bike that saw some hard rides

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...pse8b4b9f3.jpg

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/b...ps3392bc0d.jpg

In the meantime, i will keep perusing the Drop bar MTB thread and the other vintage mtb threads looking for ideas too --- making a flat bar touring bike also is an idea -- outfitting it with a rack and some nice panniers

I'd keep it single speed, and use Ghetto Eccentric: file a lil' flat on the axles to make the chain tension right. It isn't pretty but it's cheap and it works great. Looks much cleaner than those horrific chain tensioners too. And a spare axle is a few bucks anyway.

They are very nice as commuters as my fleet of bikes is finding since building up a run of the mill Bolinas Ridge.I have not ridden anything else!
I have Marathon Plus's on it and a rear rack, a very stable bike with panniers full of shopping.
I have 3 other frames 1 of which is a Marin Team Marin with a stuck BB(that will not beat me) that I will build up eventually.

Have you had the BB out lately? If not I would definitely try, as I have had 4 frames now with stuck BB's seems a lot of BB's in Marin's were not greased enough when they were put in, which must have saved some money in the assembly process?

If going single speed you may be able to run the chain ring on the outside with a shorter BB(l do not know if you have changed BB for shorter or not)?