Winter Project: ‘95 Trek 830

My bike fleet has been pretty stable lately, so it was time to mix things up. I was sorely tempted by a 62cm Rivendell Joe Appaloosa frameset on the RBW list, but I was worried it was a bit too big for me, and it was realistically out of my Jones drained budget. Instead, I’ve been trawling Craigslist for old mountain bikes. I’ve been missing my old Rockhopper, low stack height and all.

While I was killing time in a Detroit hotel this week, I came across this old Trek and made plans to see it on Saturday. And quite clearly, I brought it home. Maybe because it needed help:

Above is as received. I only raised the saddle... thing for my test ride. It's odd how unbalanced a bike feels when the nose of the saddle is cut off:

Bar ends pointed to the sky with one matching brake lever. But not both?

The drivetrain is mid 90s Shimano entry level 7 speed. The Altus crank arms have a nice shape; too bad the rings are riveted on. It still shifts OK after 23 years:

The seller advertised "brand new front tire!" but it's one of those rock hard, greasy feeling cheapies:

This is pretty much the last of the line for regular production rigid bikes... though that's not quite correct: Trek claims this is "suspension corrected", but maybe only for a 50mm fork. There's a little air space above that front tire.

Rack and fender brazes on all around. This is the kind of useful mountain bike that Riv modeled the Clem after (Riv makes a specious claim that this sort of old bike will need "a full resurrection cost[ing] $1300", which means I have $1210 margin to beat that budget)

But here's what finally sold me: a nice tall (185mm) headtube, with a 1" threaded headset. That's 25mm taller than my old Rockhopper, with easier height adjustment to boot.

It's also nice that the frame and fork are decent shape, and the tubing isn't double oversized like Trek's higher end bikes. My initial plan is to make it a fat tire, drop barred all rounder, the kind of bike that would be fun on gravel roads. I don't have any gravel roads around me, but sometimes you have to go where the project takes you.