For as long as I can remember I've been a fan of Kleins, so naturally when I first got involved with vintage bikes back in 2000/2001 my focus was almost exclusively Klein.
This time around I've decided to branch to out a little bit. So to start off my second forray into restorations I decided to go a slightly different route and went with some steel hardtails. My first acquisition is a 1990/91 Grove Innovations Hard Core. Grove Innovations was/is the brainchild of Bill Grove and all of his bikes were build very close to my hometown of State College, PA. I've been after a Hard Core for a very long time and was lucky to finally find out while visiting my parents last Christmas. I was very lucky to find a Hard Core complete with the hothead bar/stem and Hard Core forks.
The bike was in pretty good shape, but not perfect. In another stroke of luck Bill Grove himself took on the project of repainting the bike for me and complete it with original Hard Core decals. The new paintjob will retain elements of the original Wineberry color which I really liked, but will be augmented with a fade. The front of the bike will be black with a wineberry clear and will fade to wineberry in the back.
The frameset will be built as a 1x8 complete with Bill Grove's own Hot Rod cranks, painted to match of course. For drivertain I decided to go with a set of vintage Hugi wheels built up on Mavic 231 Ceramic rims, with Dura Ace 11-24 cassette, DA rear derailleur, DA bar end shifter on a Pauls thumbie adapter, silver Graton Speed Controller brakes, silver Kooka brake levers, American Classic post and Suntour XC-Pro pedals.
I expect to have the bike complete by Thanksgiving at which point it will become my primary mode of transportation.
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