A while ago my old blue and yellow GT cracked, such a shame but the bike did have a solid 10 years of work done on it... conveniently enough I discovered the crack when disassembling it to swap components on to a new frame.
This frame was bought off Gripsport, me seeing it and thinking "oh, wow... I remember spending some time playing with one of these at my old workplace). When it arrived and had the shops sticker on it I laughed and wondered how it travelled a full circle.
Now I can't own a bike without adding my own touches, I'm sure some of you have realised by now
So I set out to give it a real flashy retro flavour. Have a look and see:
Partying like it's 1999!
As for details:
It's a Sintesi Snake, one of the first slalom-specific bikes made. Up front is a '98 MrT with top crowns removed. Because the head tube is so tall and the angles slack I dropped it down to ~60mm travel to keep things steering sharp, plus it's stiffly sprung to suit road riding.
Wheels are Velocity Deep V, the rear hub is a bastardised Shimano SS unit.
I took a Hone hub and installed a DX bmx freewheel on it. Rebuilding it with spacers to bring it back out to 135mm allowed me to tune it to zero dish
Cranks were 5/94 but since I wanted to run the 4 bolt gear I had a custom spider was made at work out of stainless steel plate. It was very lucky the cranks had a bolt-on spider which made my life easy. Red e13 was sourced OS, a bit pricey but damn it's worth the cost and effort just for the looks!
There's a few other small touches too, it took many months to tweak it right but I must say the effort is worth it!
This thing looks incredible in my eyes, a real throw back to what riding was like 10 years ago, with some minor changes made to make it suitable for commuting on. And my how much fun it is to ride, it's still a bit slack so does take some wrestling to throw it around but that's what makes riding it enjoyable.
One thing I'd love to get is a pair of red Magura rim brakes, but the cost for that isn't justified given it'd be a bit of a downgrade from the V's on it now.
I should've posted this earlier but it was only now whilst updating this project thread I made the effort to show off my Snake.
There'll be a few retroheads out there that'll appreciate this and many younger guys saying "wtf is this crap!"
This frame was bought off Gripsport, me seeing it and thinking "oh, wow... I remember spending some time playing with one of these at my old workplace). When it arrived and had the shops sticker on it I laughed and wondered how it travelled a full circle.
Now I can't own a bike without adding my own touches, I'm sure some of you have realised by now
So I set out to give it a real flashy retro flavour. Have a look and see:
Partying like it's 1999!
As for details:
It's a Sintesi Snake, one of the first slalom-specific bikes made. Up front is a '98 MrT with top crowns removed. Because the head tube is so tall and the angles slack I dropped it down to ~60mm travel to keep things steering sharp, plus it's stiffly sprung to suit road riding.
Wheels are Velocity Deep V, the rear hub is a bastardised Shimano SS unit.
I took a Hone hub and installed a DX bmx freewheel on it. Rebuilding it with spacers to bring it back out to 135mm allowed me to tune it to zero dish
Cranks were 5/94 but since I wanted to run the 4 bolt gear I had a custom spider was made at work out of stainless steel plate. It was very lucky the cranks had a bolt-on spider which made my life easy. Red e13 was sourced OS, a bit pricey but damn it's worth the cost and effort just for the looks!
There's a few other small touches too, it took many months to tweak it right but I must say the effort is worth it!
This thing looks incredible in my eyes, a real throw back to what riding was like 10 years ago, with some minor changes made to make it suitable for commuting on. And my how much fun it is to ride, it's still a bit slack so does take some wrestling to throw it around but that's what makes riding it enjoyable.
One thing I'd love to get is a pair of red Magura rim brakes, but the cost for that isn't justified given it'd be a bit of a downgrade from the V's on it now.
I should've posted this earlier but it was only now whilst updating this project thread I made the effort to show off my Snake.
There'll be a few retroheads out there that'll appreciate this and many younger guys saying "wtf is this crap!"
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