I Found The Coolest Bike on eBay - This Bike RIPS! 

I think that this kind of video is what we need. Financially, tough times are here for a lot of people and cycling is good for the environment, mental health, fitness and can help save money on travel costs. Many people will turn to RU-vid for advice and if all they see is videos on the fact that any sub £500 bike is no good then they will turn away from cycling. Good work.

I can see this bike developing into a similar theme to what GCN have done recently with their cheap Eurobike purchase. They must have done a good 5 or 6 episodes featuring it. Look forward to seeing it on the north east gravel mud paths, beating the hell of those pesky kids in the local bike parks ,seeing if it will ride under water, putting on to it the cheapest one by system on the market, designing matching colour clothes with Jimmy to wear when you go out and about on it and competing with the Scott Pro’ team at their latest training camp. Ah the list of future episodes are endless - what fun for £150 !

cool vid. Love a second hand bike. My commuter was bought for £100 - Orbea (sora x2 8 speed.) All works well. I don't have to worry about damaging it and any repairs don't cost that much.

The problem with bargain 90s mountain bikes is you end up with 6 of them as you become addicted to bargain hunting! 🤣 I've bought 6 since March!

This brings back loads of memories, my dad brought me a Scott Sawtooth as my first full size mtb and I loved it.😍

What a great colorway, would love to see something like this on new bikes

What a find on ebay Francis 👏You have brought back memories ( the early 90s!) of my first " mountain bike"...... a KHS 17" frame, riding around the tracks of Whickham Sunniside & Tanfield Lea. Loved the legs " going like the clappers!!"

Great Scott! I'm one of those who raves about 90s MTBs. I have a Panasonic MC-5500 from 1993 and rebuilt it last autumn. I am now using it in the mountains on rocky, steep single trails. Yes, it's rigid, but keeps up fabulously with my 2020 Scott Scale, even though I use it way beyond its intended terrain. The tyres (new Panaracer Smoke & Dart, best option for 26" MTB in the world in my opinion) contribute their thing. Not that you can do everything with an oldie you can with a modern full squish, far from it. But they are much more capable than many people think. Also, there's something truly magical to these old reliables.

I used to ride a biopace thingy until 2019 and I loved it!

Thanks Francis .. looking forward to seeing more of this bike !!

Great find Francis! Reminds me of a Scott I had when I was a kid. The bike I use when out with the kids is one I got from my Dad (which he bought new) which is a 90’s Marin Bear Valley, which is just perfect for the job!

There's so much you can do with these. I've just made an old steel Rockhopper into a drop bar, put a pair of cyclo-cross 700c wheels on it instead of 26 inch, made it a 1x and gravel tyres. He absolutely loves it. I've made two 1x old steel Rockhopper and Hard Rocks for my wife and she loves them. On the road I leave her behind but up tricky single-track, she absolutely rides away from me like a mountain goat. It's the perfect bike for her, and she prefers it to her Ragley Blue Pig! I've also made an old steel Specialised Crossroads Hybrid into a gravel bike. It's already 700c, tonnes of clearance and really stable as has such a long wheelbase. Obviously, these aren't perfect but I honestly believe they are much better than so much that's even labelled gravel these days as their versatility is incredible. Yes, I know they don't have disc brakes but you can't have everything!

My dad's got an old Trek in his garage that I used to commute on for a bit 20 years ago. Seeing these kinds of videos makes me think about using it to have a tinker with.

The bike looks so happy when he started to giggle.

Can't wait to see what you'll be doing with this bike in the future.

What a beauty. Looking forward to seeing this out on some adventures soon

We done Francis. I'm pleased you've done this vid. In an era where some YTers bang on about £2000 wheelsets or £500 ceramic bearings - this really lays it all out for about 90% of cyclists. You can get a really good bike for £150 as you've shown that will likely last another 30 years. Don't get me wrong - I love fancy shiny bike things - but most folk aren't in that £££ ball park for bikes, and they probably don't need to be. I get that GCN rely on sponsorship but most of the stuff they feature is largely niche.

That looks really fun. I converted my old 90s MTB into a gravel bike myself two years ago, and it has seen more miles since than it had in the 20 something years prior. Not a second hand bike, though. Got it new from my parents when I was 10. I’m sure you’re gonna have a blast with this.

So sick!!! During lockdown last year, I got my grandfathers 90's Peugeot Mountain bike and sent it off to get GRX put onto it. Got 700c x 45mm wheels/tires which makes it super twitchy.. might need an upgrade! It's such a cool feeling taking an old bike and making it rideable again. Keen to see what you do with this and whether it becomes a 21st century weapon :)

I have a 90’s Raleigh Gemini XC Trail cyclocross bike with biopace chainrings. I use it as my gravel bike and have no knee problems when I ride it. Love your Scott purchase.

Cool bike! There are real gems to be found if you dig a little into the vintage bin.

I bought a Giant Iguana when they first appeared and rode it till the bottom bracket failed. Replaced it and my son rode it till it was stolen while he was at school. Awesome splatter paint work!

second hand bikes are mint, cheap, easy to get a hold of and you get what you want with money leftover to upgrade without breaking the bank, great vid, thanks

Some 1990's models were great . I have a 1994 Giant Yukon and she rides great after a good service thanks to a Cro - Mo frame . It had an easy life when I recieved it .

Great pedal tip. I never heard of that. Your channel just keeps giving. 🤣

Built my pub bike from a sawtooth frame, love it! Single speed, drop bars and Billy Bonkers!

Brings back fond memories. My brother has a lovely old Klein Attitude MTB, still in great shape. I do wish i could convert it a Gravel-esque bike with a new rigid fork and drops. But I'm not knowledgeable or confident enough to do the work myself.

Love this bike, can't wait to see some comparisons.

Thanks Francis...very cool looking bike....good luck with it....Peace

Welcome Francis to the Darkside of 90’s mtb ownership, I have 10 in my bike collection & absolutely love ❤️ them 👍

Still running my 1989 Hardrock…. 1x6 with Billy Bonkers tyres and a BLB flat rack. Best bike I own.

This has inspired me to resurrect my old hardrock bike that’s slowly rusting away in the garden. :)

I had OvalTech on my Raleigh Massif. Loved the way it looked and never had any issues. You did have to get the rings in the right position, though, if you were trying to get up into a wheelie.

Good video! I was nostalgic for a Cannondale road bike with downshifters attached to oversized aluminum tubing that I used to have in the early '90s and recently found one on ebay that I bought for $100. I put on gatorskins, bar tape and new brakes pads. The drive train components are old but the bike was never ridden much. I spent about a year looking for a bargain and one that's the right size, although the color scheme is not the same as what I used to have. It is my standby bike and I'm going to attach platform pedals to it so I can just hop on it and ride without having to put on bike shoes and everything else.

Looks ace! I’ve got my old MTB from the mid 90’s in the garage. All original parts. Still works, but wouldn’t go very far on it as it needs a lot of work doing. I totally plan to restore it. It looks mint👌🏻

Brilliant, at 6 mins the bike build and music much better than Jimmy’s bike build vids, have a word 😂😂

Second hand can get you many places!. End 2018 I bought a well maintained 2011 Giant Roam XR1 ('hybrid' bike) from a colleague for EUR 350. By now I've done > 16000 km on it, with close to 10000 km in just commutes. I do love my more recent carbon (5 kg lighter) Canyon road bike very much, but this Giant has been a workhorse taking me everywhere in every weather

I have a 1995 trek8000zx that I still use as my commuter had it since new. Original wheels and groupset but have 'upgraded' a few bits along the way. Bright yellow was all the rage back then due to the RockShox Judy fork.

What a colour way! Love it. Please if you fit wider bars get some yellow grips. Especially if the stem goes. Got to keep the colour popping.

I just got a 10 usd 1994 stumpjumper frame and I am building it up to a commuter/adventure bike these old bikes are crazy durable!

Really enjoyed this mate just riding ok bikes is fun.

A few years ago I picked up a ProFlex 854 for $7.50. Yes it needed a lot of work. This was 1994's full suspension bike (Proflex marketed the first full suspension MTB and later was bought by K2) The Elastomers in the Gervin fork and rear were completely perished so I replaced them with an Air shock in the front and a a rubber vibration damper in the rear. The STX derailleurs were (and still are) in good shape. The brakes (levers and cantilevers) and shifters were beyond hope. the middle chainring was missing teeth, and the pivot for the trailing arm needed to be machined. The wheels were mismatched but of really good quality and I was able to refurbish them. The narrow bars was how it was done back then, the 360mm bars (that I also Replaced) were what every fast racer was on. Just so it looks the part I have a 2.3" tire in front and a 2.1" tire in the back. I have 1.5" tires and tried to use it for gravel rides but it doesn't suit the fast rolling roads of North Central Florida (Check our the Gravel Cyclist and Clint Gibbs for videos of where I ride most of the time.) It does excel at lower technical singletracks and would be even better for someone who actually knew what they were doing on a MTB :)

I have a specialized Hardrock with dropbars as a commuter bike and it’s a dream!

You were lucky with those shifters those first-generation Shimano STi were notorious for failing. Cool bike, I love it.

Put modern bar and stem, a 1x by chainring setup with a clutch derailleur, billy bonkers tires that you can setup tubeless (despite what schwalbe says) and you've got yourself a cheap banger hybrid gravel.

Cool. Prob not even mid range...more entry level. Yes totally agree. For many people a 90’s mountain bike would work brilliantly and can fit 27.5 wheels on many if you prefer. Can get adapters to raise the canti. brackets.Had a lovely light,fast bike in the early 90’s..super light steel frame..Hope ti. Hubs on Campag rims-26x1.75 tyres..Magura rim brakes..Middleburn Cranks..Super cool Syncros Cattlepod stem..XT gears. Flight titanium saddle Original Rock Shox Mag.21’s. Fast,lovely bike. Some great bikes still around.

Scott sawtooth from 1992. Used to have one, exactly like this. The forks were made of cheese. It has 1” steerer not easy to get a replacement fork.

That reminds me of my Scott Montana. Great paint job, very durable. Except for the front chain ring which I managed to bend,

I turned a fluro orange 90s apollo MB into a single speed commuter and used the middle biopace ring. It worked pretty good as a single speed. I didn't really notice the oval 2bh.

Also love the paint job

Had this model back in it's day.... still have it upgraded about 25 years later....

A super COOL blast from the past 👌

90's narrow bars just need bar ends, the down side is you have to move your had to grab some break lever. Personaly I prefer the feel of narrower bars & barends.

I used to have a Trek Antelope 830 in a purple/green fade and by today's standards it's probably a pretty rubbish bike but at the time it was amazing and gave me loads of happy times on the trails!

i love my secound hand cx bike. i put waaay to much work into it, but i love diving into the tech and upgrade/replace components. Brakes (canti) and front shifting are shit, but its much easier to accept and like those flaws, when its a product of my own work.

I sold on my older 90s bikes but still have some stuff like bar ends, mag 21 forks, club roost, bars. 90s Haros and Kona's fetch big money in mint condition. If you want serious old School MTB cred track down an alpine stars from circa 91with the ritchey comp wheel option. Very hard to find a complete Bike now though.

If the pedal problem resurfaces and you want to keep the cranks you could helicoil the crank arm

Nice vid, Francis, and thanks for not acting like your audience doesn't realize how to score a good deal or fix up an old bike. Schooling is always beneficial, but no need for acting like the audience doesn't have a clue because, c'mon now, a lot of us have been riding for decades and we're still here, riding and making the most of whatever we're riding. And it all counts, like last evening as I was riding home on my early-this-century aluminum mountain bike--souped up with a rip-roaring 250w front-hub motor, O yeah--a guy was blowin' off steam by riding his Kawasaki dirt bike around his old farm house and we exchanged momentary greetings as we each did our thing on two wheels.

I rode my 90’s MTB last year, as it’s been in storage for ages, even taking account of age and well disrepair, and yes was a hoot to ride it about. But it was less capable and adaptable than the gravel bike, probably geometry and so on since both are rigid, tires where remarkably close in width. I agree if felt a lot more fidgety and less planted than the Gravel bike, hugely different and less capable than MTB this century. Still fun to ride for a while though!

Absolutely mint find that, ride it in a Magic Johnson Lakers Jersey!

Sweet find! 👊🏼✌🏼👍🏼

26", like rock and roll, will never die

Fit it up with drop bars and a Sensah 1x gravel group set. A real budget gravel bike build

I had a bio pace chainset fitted on my Carrera Krakatoa in 92 and had no problems with them.

I bought 2 bikes 2nd hand : one for commuting when I was living in a city (for 50 € ), a complete disaster, shifters were not working, pedal cranks would come off the bike ever two days, a pain in the ***. This bike ended up being stolen in my building, so good riddance! My other one was from a well experienced cyclist, a 1996 Lapierre road bike with Campagnolo groupset and Mavic wheels (for 190€) he had already fixed everything that needed to be fixed and now it is my main road bike! So buying second hand can be tricky but when you stumble on passionate people, you end up with good working bikes! 😊

Nice score!!

There were plenty of great mid-range bikes in the 90's you could buy (new) for less than $500 and had good quality steel frames (Ishiwata, Tange) decent wheels and the ubiquitous Biopace cranks. This was before carbon fibre was the norm and people just locked up their bike at a bike rack. These bikes are great for commuting and slow bikepacking, because they have triple chainrings. But they may need some repairs like replacing the thumb trigger shifters with simple paddle shifters. The BBs are rock solid and supported simple cup and cone systems.

I have (3) 90’s-era MTBs that I’d like to renew and pass along, a Trek MountainTrack, GT Timberline, and Kona Yukon. The Trek works flawlessly, just needs a bit of touch up - the GT needs the shifters & derailleurs rebuilt or replaced, and the Kona kinda needs the equivalent of the “frame-off restoration” of a classic car. If you were going to have a go at these, what would you do? Make one look original, one specc’d with the best parts of the era, and one that was a restomod gravel grinder? Ideas? Love your channel. Bike fit Tuesday has saved my knees.

Great bike

Just turn the bio pace crabk wheerls by 45 degrees and they work the same as modern oval chain rings

Try flooding the non-working shifter with gt-85. There is a good chance that is will remove the gummed-up lube that's probably stopping the ratchet working.

I've just got an '03 GT 'Agressor' for 20quid as part of my PubBikeChallenge (400miles of stuff you do in a car, for the coat of a tank of fuel/£100) and it total rocks! I forgot how much I live 26ers!!

Solid vid bro ✊🏾

With modern wheels, tan wall tyres, new set of deore groupset, some racks It would be a perfect daily commute bike

6:12 ooh a shadowstand that works and doesn't fall off...

Very cool... yes those bio pace rings were NASTY!

Need to compare it to your mountainbike though. I find myself occasionally wondering how my current trail bike compares to the bikes I rode in the 80s and 90s. You should find one similar for Tony, too.

I think it would be cool to include a link to the group that are fixing up the old beaters and selling them on eBay.

Great vid Francis. Would it be possible to fit larger rims like 650B? Does that 26" Scott frame have enough clearance? I still own a Scott Sandoa'93... you just enlightened me! Thks

Rode a biopace chainring bike for years for 1000’s of Km. Never had any knee problems. What a coincidence it’s a Scott bike.

Very very cool ride that is

I had a Raleigh hybrid back in the early 90’s which had a biopace chainset-I don’t remember it giving me any problems? I also rode my Specialized FSR Competition full suss at Cannock Chase trail center about 4 years ago-definitely underbiked-the 26” wheels kept dropping into the spaces between the rocks-which is why I sold it and bought a hardtail 29’er soon afterwards.

Nice!! Some wider bars and better tires would be 👌🏼Petition for you to commission this paint job on your new Scott gravel bike

You can rotate the rings 90-ish degrees, to get the modern oval orientation.

Could of loaned you my old Specialized Rockhopper that's a 17, though it was mainly XT with a flexy SID suspension fork as the original RST PRO elastomer fork got given away long time ago. Have fun playing about with it, once your used to it you won't need a wider bar, 660 riser is what I run, and yes all my mountain bikes are still 26" wheel. :)

That is sick.

Imho some yellow ESI grips would look fantastic on this bike

Narrow wide in the front works fine with 8s.

Bro the biopace is not a fail you just haven't ridden one enough oval wins my heart all day

Budget bikes are the best, paid £45 for my 2012 carrera zelos with a broken derailleur, converted to single speed put on some gt mtb riser bars quality commuter bike

i really wanted a biopace ring back then

Have you been down jesmond dene yet? I lived in the town for 20+ years! Now in Brazil

If biopace is mounted right it’s cool.

Sawtooth!!

I have a bike with the same wheel size and it's just slo. When I get on that thing I just have to accept and embrace it's slowness. I put a rack on the back and use it occasionally to run an errand or go for a short spin in normal people clothes.

Shimano RSX 413 triple cranks are good .

Nice, more second hand bike content please

Oooh, the upgrade possibilities... ;)

That’s at least $300 usd here. Pretty rare bike so you got a nice find.

My biopaxe chain ring is still going strong