Time to pat meself on the back...

[Nick]

Take two very knackered, very decrepit rusty old Claude Butler mountain bikes in horrid lime green.

Strip them both down to their component parts, pick the best from each and clean and service all parts.

Take the best frame, sand it back to the primer or where's there's rust back to the bare metal. Re-prime then spray with a special black undercoat ready for the pearlescent Blue top coat.

Re-fit forks, bottom bracket, cranks, main gear, rear gear, handle bars, saddle... then re fit brakes, brake levers and shifters.

Pop to the local bike shop and buy a length of brake cable and a long strip of outer then refit and tune it all and voila! one perfectly good mountain bike rescued from two piles of rusty rubbish not even worth the petrol to take them to the tip!


This is what one of the bikes looked like... uncared for and unloved for years...


And the other one, now fully restored to working order and with a spiffy new coat of paint...

[Stewart]

Nick, you are so middle aged, it hurts.

[IBM]

Aside from Vaul's rib-tickling comment, how much did the refit cost you?

[Nick]

£10.51 for two new handgrips, some new cabling and some cable end caps.

I had the paint hanging around from an old decorating job, so it was very much a case of using up left-over stuff.

[Rave]

I did that a few years ago with my brother's and my old BMXes. I basically bunged all the good bits from mine onto his frame. It provided about three months of fun and four big scars on my shins before my brother (who by that point was 15 stone) broke the frame doing a bunnyhop.

[0iD]

lol, shell out a few quid for some decent brakes that'll actually work

[Rave]

I learnt my stoppie trade on plain old cantis thankyouverymuch.

[Zak33]

oh my sides ache......Nicks building one bike from two, and he's middle aged!!

I have a water feature in my lounge and I'm drowning!!!!

[Nick]

lol, shell out a few quid for some decent brakes that'll actually work

Yeah I know... but ti was more an exercise in how cheap could I get a working mountain bike for...

I'm looking at getting some disc brakes for my bike... which'll mean that one can have my old wheels and brakes... If I ever do actually do it...

[Tumble]

discs are the way forward... I got my bike 5 years ago still works perfectly, although it's had 3 sets of cranks, many many sets of brake pads and 2 new handlbar/stem combos.. oh and a couple of headsets.... and wheels..

[Tumble]

got the Hope C2's on.. they were actually more advanced, and better at the job than the brakes on my motorbike....

[headbrace]

Smells like Trigger's broom to me tumble...

[Tumble]

not so young man. I haven't replaced the frame yet, and the derailleurs haven't given up.. yet...

[0iD]

I'll stick wth Magura Raceline's for my braking. Had them on 2/6 of my bikes for years (well 2 are road & 2 are BMX) & they've always served me well. Besides my old Sintessi Thruster frame won't readily take a disk mount.
But there's a lot of mileage in a set of good old v-brakes for the average recreational cyclist.

[5lab]

i got home dh4s on one bike, hope c2s on another, avid cable disks (which are very very very very good) on another, u-brakes on a couple of bikes, and v's on the last one..



theres not much performance difference twixt v's and disk brakes when you're on-road (only when it gets muddy), and the cable disks are amazing - every bit as powerful as hopes, cheaper, and just looses out on a bit of the feel. a well set-up set of cantis (you have to get all the angles right - takes a while to learn) can actually be MORE powerful than v-brakes, because the braking is progressive due to the way the cable pulls (hense why v-brakes are called 'linier brakes' sometime). that said, its very difficult to get it right. think of it like cantis have not much power but a big peak in power, whereas vbrakes have quite a lot of power the whole way thru the travel.

phew!

[Lee H]

pfft my bikes been stuck in the shed at my mums for over 2 years and can rot in hell

Give me my rollerblades anyday for getting from A to B