SkipdiverJohn
Deplorable Brexiteer
- Location
- London
I found an old rigid 26" MTB frame sitting on top of a bin the other day, as you do..... No parts on it apart from an old Sachs-Huret rear mech with quite a long cage, so it looks like a MTB mech, not a swapped-on road one.. I want to identify what bike it is, how old it is, and whether the frame is gas pipe or cro-moly. I'll try to take some pictures later and post them up, but in the meantime a description:-.
It had a rattle can spray job, which has now come off when wiped with a rag soaked in thinners, revealing what looks like the original yellow paint. Faint partial Saracen decal shadow in the paint on the R/H side of the downtube. No headbadge fitted and no rivet holes.There's a small square sticker at the bottom of the downtube near the BB on which I can make out the words Saracen, main tubes, MTB, and a reference to a BS standard, the rest is illegible. Welded frame, two sets of bottle cage bosses, seatpost clamp bolt is at the front of the seat tube. Size is 19" from BB to top of seat tube with a 22" long top tube and 425mm long chainstays. Dropouts are vertical and quite nice quality with a circular machined recess in them where the wheel nuts clamp on. Unusual features are a gear cable boss high up on the rear of the seat tube and a rear brake cable boss mounted on a "stalk" welded to the L/H chainstay Forks are conventional welded unicrown and the head tube measures 130 mm tall between the bearing cups. It's an old-fashioned 26" rigid in every way, but it doesn't look like a far-east cheapo effort, so I'm wondering if the material is something like Tange cro-moly?. The downtube sticker isn't a Reynolds style one I'm sure of that. It isn't super-light but it doesn't feel that heavy either.
It had a rattle can spray job, which has now come off when wiped with a rag soaked in thinners, revealing what looks like the original yellow paint. Faint partial Saracen decal shadow in the paint on the R/H side of the downtube. No headbadge fitted and no rivet holes.There's a small square sticker at the bottom of the downtube near the BB on which I can make out the words Saracen, main tubes, MTB, and a reference to a BS standard, the rest is illegible. Welded frame, two sets of bottle cage bosses, seatpost clamp bolt is at the front of the seat tube. Size is 19" from BB to top of seat tube with a 22" long top tube and 425mm long chainstays. Dropouts are vertical and quite nice quality with a circular machined recess in them where the wheel nuts clamp on. Unusual features are a gear cable boss high up on the rear of the seat tube and a rear brake cable boss mounted on a "stalk" welded to the L/H chainstay Forks are conventional welded unicrown and the head tube measures 130 mm tall between the bearing cups. It's an old-fashioned 26" rigid in every way, but it doesn't look like a far-east cheapo effort, so I'm wondering if the material is something like Tange cro-moly?. The downtube sticker isn't a Reynolds style one I'm sure of that. It isn't super-light but it doesn't feel that heavy either.
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