Yet another bike find
I've been wanting a hard tail mountain bike, and I scored this sweet 1988 Fuji mountain bike for dirt cheap:
I love finding quirky old stuff like this. What's awesome about it (to me) is that it is an unusually large frame, 22.5 inches, so it fits me perfectly. This incidentally would make a sweet touring bike, as it has full rack mounts and 430mm chainstays--long enough to have full size bags without heal strike issues. It also has a u-brake mounted to the chainstays, apparently a popular thing in 1987-1988, which would incidentally eliminate issues with rack/cargo interfering with traditional seat stay mounted cantilever brakes. Also, unusually, it is a fillet brazed, triple butted tange steel frame, and is actually quite light yet rigid. Really pretty fillet joints at the headtube:
....and also a unique and I think cool looking fillet brazed seat cluster.
As you can see, the previous owner had put drop bars and bar ends on it, I presume to make it a sort of ghetto cyclocross bike. Its rideable as is, but I plan to put a flat bar back on it, and likely eliminate the front derailleur and set it up as a 1x9 with an 11-34 cassette in the rear, use it as a logging road cruiser and maybe some single track?
The other possibility I am considering is building a rear wheel with an internal gear hub plus roller brake.........
I love finding quirky old stuff like this. What's awesome about it (to me) is that it is an unusually large frame, 22.5 inches, so it fits me perfectly. This incidentally would make a sweet touring bike, as it has full rack mounts and 430mm chainstays--long enough to have full size bags without heal strike issues. It also has a u-brake mounted to the chainstays, apparently a popular thing in 1987-1988, which would incidentally eliminate issues with rack/cargo interfering with traditional seat stay mounted cantilever brakes. Also, unusually, it is a fillet brazed, triple butted tange steel frame, and is actually quite light yet rigid. Really pretty fillet joints at the headtube:
....and also a unique and I think cool looking fillet brazed seat cluster.
As you can see, the previous owner had put drop bars and bar ends on it, I presume to make it a sort of ghetto cyclocross bike. Its rideable as is, but I plan to put a flat bar back on it, and likely eliminate the front derailleur and set it up as a 1x9 with an 11-34 cassette in the rear, use it as a logging road cruiser and maybe some single track?
The other possibility I am considering is building a rear wheel with an internal gear hub plus roller brake.........
posted by Red Beard at 9:09 PM
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