Today has been **** old bike day in Northwind's garage... I'm slowly rebuilding my own '91 steelie mtb for road use but also decided to have a look at the other 2 old bikes buried under heaps of rubbish up the back.
First, one brother's Saracen Rufftrak, a mid 90s hardtail with 60mm of elastomeric goodness up front, and a weird oversize steel frame designed to look like aluminium (I think). 21 mighty gears, Shimano's finest SIS! And all weighing in at a svelte 16.6kg. Not in bad shape at all though, so I put a few hours in and now it's as bad as new, apart from the forks which offer no noticable damping, but have the most horrible topout I've ever felt, I'm guessing the elastomers have shrunk or perished. It's really quite nice fixing old wrecks though, therapeutic, I even got out the t-cut and tidied up the paint a bit.
Then, onto the main attraction, other brother's Saracen Raw 2. This was horrible new, the years have not diminished it
Sadly not the modern one, this is an '00 model, y-frame single pivot full suss. All the joy of gripshift gears and undamped suspension at both ends. It got hung on the garage wall about 5 years ago after the BB wore out and nobody could be bothered to fix it. I'd hoped a rest might help but the BB is still worn out
I decided to weigh it too, almost broke both my arms trying to lift it into the scale- 18.8kg!
So, I think some sort of Horrible Old Bike Ride beckons, I think it could be fun to take these 2 steamrollers to glentress and see who dies first
