Hi all, I am a new member and, at some point in the hopefully not too distant future, when I have vaulted numerous current financial obstacles, I hope to join the ranks of Thorn owners for real. In the meantime, I hope this post is of interest to some of you.
I have had an old British Eagle MTB in the garage for about 17 years, little used, although it was set up as a tourer originally with front and rear racks, panniers and slicks. This is what it looked like 7 months ago:
then, after a rainy summer afternoon of skinned knuckles, WD40 and brute force, this:
Then, slowly, this at the powder coaters:
I decided to try and restore it to a kind of touring look, so on went a pair of black sks mudguards, rear rack, and a pair of Schwalbe City Jets:
It's a proper, steel, 531 frame, so decals were procured to suit the new paint:
And after much pain and rebuilding, the finished article, now resplendent in a Brooks B17 and a nice Carradice Junior rear bag, as well as a new Shimano chain to suit the old Deore XT gearset:
She rides beautifully, and although a couple of snagging issues remain, namely the wheels need truing and the gears tweaking, I ride the bike locally as my 'shops' bike. It was a really good fun project, the only problem is that of course the money one spends seems to increase exponentially as one goes along!
