I thought I'd share another project in the works, an early 90s (1992-93?) Moots Mountaineer. For those not familiar with Moots, it was the brainchild of Kent Eriksen out of Steamboat Springs, CO. Kent starting hand making bicycles in the early 80s and seems to have focused his designs on versatile, comfortable and well balanced bikes. One of his innovations included the moots mount (brake mount) which allows the user to configure the bike to run roller cam or cantilever brakes as well as to run 26, 650B or even 700c wheels simply by switching the orientation of the brake mount - a very neat feature.
The bike came to me with a host of problems, but all the right parts were there (original fork, moots stem, Cook Bros cranks and Ti BB, Chris King headset, and the very-very nice WTB rear roller cam brake.) The seat post was stuck and pushed all the way down, the BB was hopelessly frozen (had to be cut out), wheels were mismatched and beat, parts were fairly abused and frame showed a general lack of care.
After a few days of soaking with PB blast the post finally yielded and was free. The original Cook Bros BB was beyond saving and had to be cut out, unfortunately the BB shell suffered a little nick as a consequence, sometimes that's the cost of doing business.
The Moots design has soooo many wonderful little features, custom lugs, multiple tack mounts, rotating brake stops, etc.. Although most of them are intended to be functional they are all executed with flair that adds to the bike's overall appeal.
At this point I've managed to get the bike mostly back together. I happened to have a nicer XC-PRO front and rear derailleurs and some nice XC-PRO wheels. I even had a spare black CBR bottom bracket, but am unable to find the correct bearings (modified 6002RSR) to complete the build. I may use a XC-PRO instead and get it done.
The bike originally had Mavic wheels (front was missing and rear was in bad shape.) I happen to have a set of nice Mavic wheels on mismatched rims that I can rebuild and use on this bike, but for now I'll stick with the XC-PRO. I still need to install the XC-PRO chain, a real seat (only used that one for the purposes of seat post removal), BB and the nice CBR cranks.
Stay tuned!
Epic. For my money, the coolest of the lot. I _love_ that alligator.
ReplyDeleteIt is a very cool bike. I need to take of my purse and finish it. It's been hanging in the back of the garage for months now.
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