How to double the value of a 2000 Saracen Raw 2?

Northwind

Fit a new bottom bracket 8) I can hardly believe I'm doing this, my brother's asked me to rebuild his horrendous Saracen, I think every single part of it needed some attention, the BB was some weird cup-and-cone square taper deal but it'd completely fallen apart, the bearing cages were in bits and some of the bearings had escaped and got into the swingarm :shock: He says "It doesn't feel quite right when I pedal". So, now it's in a million bits, it needs about £50 worth of new bits to get it going again, but even once it's done it'll still be a horrible, horrible short-travel uncontrolled 18.8 kg disaster. But he loves it

It's the details I like. The bomber-branded rims say "extreme use only!". The frame says "cross country use only" EXTREME CROSS COUNTRY USE ONLY!

hucking_fell

Is 'Extreme XC' the next rung up the gnarlyness ladder from 'Aggresive XC' then. Saracen must have seen the way MTBing was going as early as way back in 2000. That bike must have been awsome and well ahead of it's time

ratty2k

Thought you were going to tape a 50p piece to the underside of the saddle....

jairaj

ratty2k wrote:

Thought you were going to tape a 50p piece to the underside of the saddle....

clam down! he said double not triple the value!

Tim.s

Ill bet somewhere, on at least one component if not the frame itself it will bear the immortal words "NOT FOR OFF ROAD USE"

supersonic

Lol, Saracen were well ahead of the time back in 2000, were one of the first companis (and the first in the UK) to develop the long travel hardtail with corrected geometry.

The old Raw was a bit censored though!

Northwind

Oh yeah, I'm not saying that Saracen can't make good bikes. What I AM saying is that this bike cancels out all of the good bikes completely Never forgive, never forget.

supersonic

The full sussers got better though ;-)

Northwind

My other brother (older yet still apparently stupid) has a Saracen Rufftrak, which is a comical thing... As far as I can tell, it's from the era when huge aluminium tubes were fashionable. But it's cromo. So, to make it fashionable it has immense steel tubes like a chav's exhaust pipe. Combined with RST forks which only seem to have travel upwards, to give them the most awesome top-out clunk ever, but no apparent impact cushioning. 15.5 kilos of short travel hardtail. Lovely.

supersonic

Oooh, those old oversized steel frames are immensly stiff! Saracen used to do one called a Vex, a 180 quid bike with the heaviest steel frame I'd ever seen. We had to chuck one in the skip as it was returned (everything fell off it), so we went about trying to fold the frame in two. Took half an hour! Hitting with a hammer never even dented it, eventually we hacksawed half through the frame then took running kicks at it.

Was it you who did the mock up of my FS bike with the Orange sticker?!

dave_hill

How do you make a Saracen do 100mph?

Push it off a cliff!!!

JOKE!!!! Sorry, just thought I'd point that out in case anyone's had a sense of humour failure... :roll:

Northwind

Best of luck getting it to the top of the cliff