tornado60

Wondering if anyone knows anything about this bike. I'm especially interested



in its age and what would be involved in making sure these old shocks are good to go.

Kevin stafford

Looks like a walmart level bso, worth basically nothing. Fork is total junk, if you are thinking of buying it, don’t.

tornado60

Been mine for many years. Just don't know its whole history. I used to enjoy this bike and decided to restore it.

tornado60

I should have mentioned the rims and brakes have been replaced

AeroGut

Looks like it previously had cantilever brakes so maybe late 90’s? Sticker says it’s 1020 steel which means it’s heavy and low quality. Thruster was a dept store brand. If it’s rideable ride it, but Iwouldn’t put any money into fixing it.

tornado60

Definitely Heavy, but I'm used to heavy as I pretty much on antique and vintage steel most of the time. It doesn't have cantilever mounts. The brakes that were replaced were the same style. Still I think it was fairly new when I got it so that would make mid to late 90's makes sense. This is a budget build hoping to reuse as many parts as possible. The main reason I was asking about the fork. I'd like to just give it some maintenance if that is even possible.

Eric F 

Cantilever mounts and v-brake (the kind you have) mounts are the same.

If you're trying to restore it for some sort of sentimental reason, fine. However, there is no value in the bike, and even if you spend a bunch of money to get it mechanically operational, it will still have no value. In all likelihood, if you take the fork apart to do any sort of maintenance, there is a high probability of it not going back together properly.

That said, good luck on your project.

Darth Lefty 

Thruster is a department store BMX brand owned by Kent. It looks pretty good for a department store bike but it’s not bike store quality. It’s 20 or 25 years old. There’s probably nothing to rebuild inside the shocks. Just a spring and maybe a rubber bump stop.

AeroGut

For the fork, you won’t really know until you open it up, but a lot of those old forks used elastomers (ie rubber) instead of springs. The rubber will be totally decayed by now and it’s very hard to find replacements except for the higher end forks. However you might be able to just clean out the elastomer residue and put in a cheap hardware store steel spring. I’ve read of that being done for old SR forks. Then lube the sliding parts and put it back together and it might be okay.
or just try to find a scrap rigid fork and swap it.

tornado60

Yeah the resto is for sentimental reasons. And cause I enjoy doing it. Not planning to sell it. It's rideable, took it out Tuesday, so probably just gonna clean it up, and maybe do a lube job for now. Frame fits me pretty good so that's a bonus.

Eric F 

A related story....A while back, I was digging through a box of old parts, and came across a zip-lock baggie full of a weird powdery squishy substance. I puzzled over it for a while before I realized it used to be elastomers from an early Manitou fork.

tornado60

Probably a dumb question but if the fork had plastic elastomers that are no good would the suspension still work?

Darth Lefty 

It probably didn't. My guess would be rubber bump stops and maybe not even that. Open it up and find out. If you can't find a way to open it up then it definitely didn't.

Eric F 

Depends. If elastomers were the only device serving as the spring, probably not. That said, I have a 20+ year old Trek that has a hybrid coil/elastomer spring (Manitou SX-Ti fork) It still works. It's not as good as it was when it was new, but it still moves well enough to ride it. However, that was a pro-level fork in its day, and was built with a lot of precision and high-quality materials.