Old frame back in the shop

 As near as I can tell without combing through my records, this team issue fillet MTB frame dates from 1990. I built this in my garage shop before I moved the business away from the house. This one illustrates the materials that I had at the time, most of which have been out of production for a couple of decades. The Ritchey seat lug, Tange prestige tubing and Shimano dropouts are history. Tange has resumed making tubes but they are not the same as what is in this frame.

 I built this frame for a customer of a bike shop I had worked at in 1984-85. I never met the customer until today. He used to tear around on this bike all over the Santa Cruz mountains. Now in his '70's he wants to put a new shock fork on it and nothing will fit. I am replacing the whole front triangle so he can do it. This is quite a bit of work to do to an oldie like this but he is unlikely to use it if it remains the same. The bike was built for a Rock Shock RS-1 and the fork is toast. 1" suspension forks have gone the way of the rest of the obsolete things of early mountain bikes.

 One thing unique to this fame is that the customer had a friend hand paint the logos and pin-striping. It will be sad to see it all go away but after nearly 30 years I think that the frame could use a re-paint .

 I'm going to make it fit modern parts while still keeping the flavor of the bike as original as possible. Wish me luck !