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Help! My new bike is 20 years old!
I have just climbed into the Gumtree time machine and purchased a very lightly used/ unused full suspension bike from the year 2000. It looks distressingly similar to the steel Chinese things they used to sell in Aldi, but it’s got an aluminium frame and allegedly cost £2.5K new. It also looks reasonably solid, has suspension, raised chainstays and has disc brake mounts, which makes it ideal for my…. purposes.
All I have to do is pretend it’s still the year 2000, which I find easy to do when on the side of a mountain or in a forest somewhere, and I have the experience of treating myself to a new, high spec. full susser mountain bike!
The only thing it needs before I can ride it is the forks pumping up a bit as they sag to 50% travel when I bestride the yellow beast.
I have found links to the Service Manual, published by Sram and linked to from everywhere, but this is not the owners/ users manual and lacks the all important ‘Where the @@@ do I put the @@@ing air in, and how much of it?’ sections. What I need is the basic info, from somebody’s memory or if anyone’s got an old user manual they can scan and email, that would be even better.
I know not whether air goes in the top left leg, top right or maybe I’ll have a party and pump air into both legs! I have worked out that I need an adaptor (which are hard, but still not impossible to get), to get the air out of the suspension pump and into the fork.
I’ll also need a shock pump which I wouldn’t be surprised if I only use once and so I’m seriously considering riding to wherever more ‘enthusiastic’ mountain bikers hang out (mainly in their VW vans I note) and borrow one of theirs.
There is also a strange (to mine eyes) plastic cap at the bottom of the right hand fork leg. It only seems to turn through 90 degrees and when you pull it, it completely comes out and has a little, about 25mm of 3ish mm allen key on the end of it. I would imagine if the bike had ever been ridden it would have popped out and got lost in the first 200 yards. I suspect that it pulls out so you can clear the skewer and dropout with it and turn it to get the rebound damping?? via a little allen bolt hiding up inside the bigger one, but I can’t understand how much adjustment it can give only turning 90 degrees?. There is also a larger allen bolt threaded into the bottom of the other leg which I get a strong feeling will micturate all its oil over my floor if I undo it, so I won’t do that.
As I have never owned suspension forks before, it’s all a bit of guesswork for me, and I don’t want to destroy them by pumping air into all the wrong places.
By way of further, entirely unnecessary information, my main use bike is an even more old school 1995 Giant Cadex with cromolly fixed forks, flat bars and bar ends, 1.95 tyres, which I’ve had since new and is still going well and surprisingly still faster than lots of people out on the trails on much more modern and exotic bikes. I note with amusement that the cycle industry nowadays would put drop handlebars on it, call it a ‘gravel bike’ and sell it back to me at vast mark-up. I’ve never really subscribed to this whole ‘new 5 grand mountainbike every 2 years’ malarkey, hence why I am excitedly setting up a 20 year old new bike today.
I’m not on the right forum, am I.
Trying to add pictures.
Again.
before you pump up the forks or ride the bike, remove the valve and put a few cc of fork oil in to lube the seals.
That thing on the bottom that has an Allen key is the rebound adjuster.
Final attempt at posting pictures
DO NOT adjust the twiddly rebound knob at the base of the left fork. YOU WILL break the plastic valve internals.
Praise the Lord! I can see the pictures!
Whatever convoluted process I have to go through to get the correct amount of air into these forks will not and cannot be as energy sappingly arduous and frustrating as posting the above three pictures to this clunky forum.
I can offer no help other than say that is indeed a radical chassis, which should make for easy routing of an internal dropper cable
Some nice kit on there for the period. Looks like someone transferred all the parts off a decent hardtail onto a supermarket frame (unless it's possibly a resprayed Univega, but the swingarm looks a bit flimsy/weird...).
Doesn't look like a supermarket frame.looks decent quality and similar to the treks.put a photo on retrobike and someone may be able to I d it.probably a shops own brand.
If you buy disc brakes for it selling the V's will pay for them as Arch Rivals go for loads ATM. I sold a snotty set for £50 recently and the buyer told me they were a bargain. I'd nearly given them away the week before!
As mentioned, retrobike is your friend.
You need a specified adaptor to put air in the fork, it screws into the top cap and then you just attach a normal pump to the top of it. Very much doubt you can get one new, probably a few floating round in spares boxes all over the country though!
I'd be over on retrobike to ask any other questions, you never know someone might make you an offer for the whole bike and you can fuse that towards something more modern of you wanted to
At least you won't have to look at it if you're riding it.😁
Looks like a quality find.i like it.
I do believe I may have the necessary adapter in my spares box. Let me check and I'll let you know this evening.