1992 Mongoose Rockadile (and bonus Ross Mt. Rushmore)

[ParkRNDL]

Bought this new a couple years before I got married.

It hasn't gotten nearly enough use since then; I did a couple of trail rides way back when (Long Island Greenbelt Trail? I think) but most of the grime on it was collected hanging in the garage. Now my daughter asked if we could go for a ride in a nearby state park tomorrow and the best bike for this ride would be a mountain bike, so I yoinked this one down, along with the Ross Mt. Rushmore that's been hanging beside it, and rode them up and down the block to make sure everything still works.

The Ross has even less miles on it. We bought it for my wife soon after I got mine, thinking we'd ride together, but we soon discovered that if it doesn't have one pedal to make it go and one to make it stop, she's not interested.

Looking forward to getting these off the pavement tomorrow...

 

[Karate Chicken Industries]

What a great ride that Rocakadile is and still super relevant as a something that can deal in the dirt.

If you ever decide to scrap the biopace rings, those Exage crankset spiders are NOT asymmetrical like later models and can take regular round rings in a common BCD.

That frameset modded out to drop some weight, improve the braking and strengthen key components could enable a Rider to destroy the full suspension crowd on easy flow trails. You'd look good doing it to.

Have fun playing in the dirt today!

 

[ParkRNDL]

Well now that was FUN.

To be clear, I am NOT a real experienced mountain biker. I just bounced my junker bikes off enough stuff in the neighborhood as a kid to have a decent basic knowledge of how to ride over a rock or root or log while minimizing my chances of a faceplant. So when my daughter recommended we hit the trails in this park, I figured, sure. A couple years ago, I mistakenly ventured into them with a bone-stock Schwinn Collegiate. Definitely too much trail for 1 3/8 street tires, but pretty mild as actual mountain bike trails go.

But when we set out this morning, I was a little concerned. It had rained earlier, and all the roots and rocks were just wet enough to be slippery, and there were more of them than I remembered. This would be the first time my daughter was riding off-pavement, and I didn't want to throw her more than she could handle.

Turns out I needn't have worried. As we were riding back to the car, she said she thought i should look for another MTB so her brother could come with us. She likes that it's an outdoorsy thing to do without the high-speed danger of, say, downhill skiing. (We did really pick our way through slowly; I'm sure experienced riders would have laughed at us.) But yeah, it was very cool and I'm thinking I gotta get out on the trails more often.

 

[ParkRNDL]

What a great ride that Rocakadile is and still super relevant as a something that can deal in the dirt.

If you ever decide to scrap the biopace rings, those Exage crankset spiders are NOT asymmetrical like later models and can take regular round rings in a common BCD.

That frameset modded out to drop some weight, improve the braking and strengthen key components could enable a Rider to destroy the full suspension crowd on easy flow trails. You'd look good doing it to.

Have fun playing in the dirt today!

Ok so school me: is there a reason I'd WANT to change the elliptical chainrings? Advantages/disadvantages either way? I don't know that I'll ever get to the point where I'm competitive with anybody on any kind of trails, but hey, knowledge is power...

 

[Karate Chicken Industries]

They feel funny to me compared to round chainrings. Also not great for singlespeeds, though Saint Sheldon Brown preferred to run elliptical chainrings on his fixed gear rides. YMMV

 

[MattiThundrrr]

They went out of favor when it was discovered that elliptical rings were bad for knees. The oval ring actually caused changes in gearing throughout the crank stroke.