Sunday 23 September 2012

MARIN MUIRWOODS (one sold, other in use)

I have two of these, one stored at my brother's house and one I now use to commute.  I bought a third, frame only, on ebay too but then relisted it, paid £29 sold it for £10.  However the other two I still have are success stories. The second one is here.  Making the seatpost for first one took some doing see here.

The second one has done me stirling service for two years now, replacing my REW Reynolds as a commuter bicycle.  The fat tyres give me some comfort when compared to the REW and the riding position is more upright, a boon in traffic but a pain over longer distances.  The chainset is an Ofmega triple which came from my new Orbit racing bike when I replaced it with a Stronglight, it had sat on the shelf for years.  The outer sprockets of 50 and 40 are steel and came off the Raleigh Zenith, the inner sprocket had unusual fixings and is the original 28 although mostly I ride in one gear.

The handlebars, brake levers, grips, cantilevers, mudguards, chain and bottom bracket came off the Rusty Bike (originally mostly off the Raleigh 531 MTB).  The saddle is the one from Pete Coulston all those years ago; thanks again!

I bought it on ebay for £22, the wheel was shown out of line with the forks and it looked like a bent fork.  When I picked it up, the wheel had been fitted into one fork dropout only.  I ripped it to bits and fitted the parts described above.  The frame is gorgeous and delicious, slightly heavy at just over 5lbs but it is cromoly and has a good feel.  The forks are only Hi-Ten and feel dead, the tyres compensate but upgrading to 531 forks with lowrider mounts would make this a top-notch tourer; after all there are four-point fixings for a rear rack.

Ironic that I changed my bars on the Archie Wilkinson fixed to avoid a stress-riser-induced failure caused by the corrosion, only to have the bars on this Marin fail.  What was the cause?  Could it have been when I was doored with these bars fitted at the time to my Raleigh 531 MTB?  Who knows, I survived which is what matters to me.  A photo of the failed bars is now in the album, I fitted steel pullback bars as a replacement.  I believe they will outlast the time I have left with this bike.

Yes they did and I still have them.  25/09/2017 I sold the bike on ebay for £16.05 collection only. I wanted to change the pedals, one was clicking. After buying a new pair the old ones were seized into the aluminium cranks and the threads came out with the pedals.  I fitted a new bottom bracket and a 52/42 from the Dawes that gave me wheels for the BSA, removed the pull backs and fitted straight mountain bike bars. I needed the space and couldn't justify buying replacement cranks and keeping this bike. It was a great bike and will be missed.

https://www.nps.gov/muwo/index.htm Muir Woods, I had been calling it Muirwoods.

First one used regularly by my son when we go for a ride around Milton Keynes on a Sunday afternoon.
04/05/2020 UK date.