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Okay, here's my 1993 GT Outpost. I love my 1988 GT Timberline, and it's great for touring and hauling loads, but I wanted something slightly more nimble (the '88 has long chainstays) for commuting duties, and being car-free I wanted to have two bikes so that I have a spare if one of them needs repair or overhaul or has a mechanical issue.
I still haven't quite got there, as my efforts have gone to getting the Outpost set up just the way I want and need it, and then I found a nicer frame that I am building up to take over commuting duties from the Outpost. There were a few more things I had wanted to do with this build, but since the '94 GT Corrado is going to be taking over as daily driver once I get it built up in a few weeks, I've stopped upgrading the Outpost.
When I picked up the Outpost, it was sans wheels, seat, and seatpost. I had been keeping an eye on Craigslist for old hardtail GT's, and off and on was looking at all the ads with poor descriptions that were in the price range I was looking for. For the hell of it, I clicked on one ad that said "bike $10", and there was this lowly Outpost, covered in filth and pro wrestling stickers and although lacking wheels and a saddle, the seller indicated it was otherwise intact in their brief description.
Turns out the seller was the manager of an apartment building not too far from me, she had split up with her boyfriend years before and he had abandoned the bike in the garage under the building. She said he had tried to true the wheels and destroyed them instead, and so they were long gone. I pulled the wheelset off my Timberline, strapped them to the back of my courier bag and hopped a bus up there. I was pleased when I arrived to find that it was indeed my size and there were still shifters, brake levers, and derailleurs on it, so I happily gave her the $10 she was asking for it.
Two things I didn't really think about before I set out. First, I had had the rear triangle spread on my '88 Timberline so that there was room for a 9 speed wheel, and this '93 Outpost was originally outiftted with a 7 speed transmission. Luckily I'm a bit of a brute, so I was able to flex the frame enough the get my 9 speed rear wheel into the triangle, but it took some serious doing, and it's quite possible it bent it a little, and it probably isn't perfectly straight. Next time it is in the shop, I'm going to have them check that, and re-align it if necessary. I probably should have just hopped the bus with the bike, or even walked home with it, as I was only about 20 blocks away.
Next it dawned on me that although I had brought wheels, I didn't bring a seatpost or saddle. I recalled considering it and realizing it would have made me too cumbersome to get on and off the bus, given that I already had two wheels lashed to the outside of my courier bag!
So I rode all the way home standing up! :lol:
Initially my plan was to leave this bike ugly and with low-end components, since I was going to be locking it up out in the rain five days a week at a community college in a neighborhood filled with thieves. But after removing the pro wrestling stickers and cleaning the bike, I discovered that the paint underneath was nearly perfect with just a few chips that were easy to match with model paint. After seeing how great that old DuPont Imron red swirl paint looked I started buying nice red and chrome parts to go with it.
So, I somehow went from planning on having a beater looking commuter that hopefully wouldn't attract any attention from thieves to this:
So, that's a twenty year old, low end moutain bike that was 300 (1993) dollars MSRP, that I picked up from Craigslist for 10 dollars, that I've now put about 2K into! :lol:
Currently outfitted with:
Sun Rhyno Lite rims laced to an LX front hub and XT rear hub
Salsa tandem skewers
Vittoria Randonneur Pro 26 x 1.5" rear tire
Panaracer T-Serv Protex front tire, nominally* 26 x 1.5"
Honjo hammered aluminum fenders (these at least I got on sale for about $100)
leather mud flaps
Nitto Big Front Rack
Velo Orange front wheel stabilizer
stem with a ridiculous amount of rise to bring the handlebars up where I like them.
XLC riser bars with a bit of sweep
Dimension "Temple of Tone" bell
Airzoundz horn
ergonomic grips
new Alivio 8S integrated shifter/brake lever units (the old 7S shifter bit the dust early on)
Velo Orange metallic braid brake and shifter cable housings
new BB and crankset (low end Shimano units, 48-32-22)
chain catcher
pedal extenders
Odyssey triple trap pedals
Pletscher twin leg kickstand
Thomson seatpost
Brooks saddle
Zefal locking seatpost skewer
Tektro 720 brakes and Kool Stop Salmon pads
rapid rise rear derailleur (I didn't think the medium cage RD that came with it was going to be up to what I was asking of it)
Carradice Bagman Quick Release Sport (Original) saddlebag support
Zimbale 18 liter large saddlebag
Carradice Cape Roll
Cateye Reflex front light
Portland Design Works Fenderbot tail light
Lightweights wheel reflectors (only used about a third of them so far)
Peterson Manufacturing 465-4K Red/White Reflective Marking Tape
All that survives of the original bike other than the frame and fork is the front derailleur and the headset, but the headset is toast now and I'm about to have that replaced. Although I'm not looking to upgrade this bike further, it is going to serve as my back up bike for the at least the next 9 months and so I am going to keep it in good running condition for a while longer at least.
I'm sure this seems crazy to some of you, but let me explain. Sure, I could have went out and bought a new bike for less than $2000, assuming I had the money all at once that is, but even if I had, I would have still ended up replacing the pedals, saddle, handlebars, grips, tires, and I most likely would have needed to replace the seatpost and wheels. I'm a big Clyde (280 pounds right now, 210 at my fighting weight) and I carry heavy loads over rough roads. I kill lesser wheels, and only run Sun Rhyno Lites when I have a choice. I tried using a cheaper seatpost, but the Brooks is very sensitive to very small adjustments and I needed something that did microadjustments and came in 26.6mm.
That means a new bike to me is just a frame, BB, headset, derailleurs, controls, and crankset, and I'm going to change one of the chainrings on any crankset too. Given that I only like horizontal top tube steel framed GT's, that means I can't buy a new bike anyway. It would've been nicer to start out with a better frame to begin with, but at the time I was pretty poor and sometimes Craigslist will go weeks before a decent old GT bike shows up, and like I said, initially I was planning on this bike being more of a beater that wouldn't attract the attention of thieves while locked up at school.
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For a low end frame, with hi-tensile steel rear triangle, I've got to say I've got a heck of a lot of use out of this! I commute to work on it three nights a week, and for 9 months of the year, I'm back in college five days a week, so I'm riding this bike seven days a week, 13-21 miles a day, except for Sundays when I only have to come home from work, so 7 to 11 miles that day. This tough frame and now tough wheels have taken the constant beating from Seattle's rough and pot holed streets like a champ! I've now put almost 4500 miles on it in the past year and half. In addition to commuting, since my tourer is in pieces right now, I used this bike to get out on a couple of short tours. Although it doesn't have the carrying capacity for me to do bike camping on it, I'm easing my girlfriend into bicycle touring anyway, so I took all of our clothes and sundries on this bike and we stayed in bed and breakfasts and hotels. The above picture was taken as we got home from a trip up to the southern end of Whidbey Island, and all my bags are bulging with loot (mostly alpaca yarn, that's my sweater untidily stowed under the flap of the saddlebag there).
Because I never quite had this bike exactly the way I wanted it and was always tweaking things or adding things and had a few more little additions in mind still, I never got around to taking some nice glamour shots of the bike. Here's a detail shot of the reflective tapes though:
(Should've cleaned the reflective sidewall first!)
I'd been keeping my eye out for a better frame off an on when I felt like I could get away with dropping a few hundred for one of the higher end steel GT frames from this era. I was lucky enough to spot a 1994 Corrado on Craigslist about 50 miles from me for only $125 so I snatched that up! I'm just getting started cleaning it up and doing a little bit of surface rust repair as waves of parts arrive in the mail, so the report on that build will have to wait a few weeks until I get it all together.
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* I say "nominally" because the Panaracer T-Serv Protex's run a little small (at the 26" ones, I don't know about the 700c offerings). So this is actually a 26 x 1.75" labelled tire, but is about 1.6" or closer to 1.5". As far as I can tell, they don't make these in red anymore. The only place I found them in stock was in Australia, so I paid more than I should for it, but I really wanted to have red tires. I love it as a front tire, the rubber content is exceptionally high, so it is cushy and bouncy, which makes for a bit suspension effect over Seattle's rough roads. The Vittoria Rando Pro I run in the rear has stiffer sidewalls that deflect less under the heavy load of me and the bike and is also rated to 90 PSI (where I run it), while I'm running the Panaracer at what theu rate their 1.5" T-Serv at (75 PSI).
