Resurrected: Early 1990s Diamondback Road Bike

[MRC01]

My friends had an early 90s Diamondback road bike (chromoly lugged frame). It was unrideable. Front wheel had broken spokes and was way out of round/true. Rear wheel was almost as bad. Only 3 of its original 14 (2x7) gears were usable, as the original Shimano Tiagra levers were internally broken. Wheel bearings were crunchy. It was ready for the landfill.

Shimano doesn't make those levers anymore, so I helped him find a new set of cheap 2x7 Shimano compatible road levers on eBay. Plus new handlebar tape since the old stuff would not be reusable. Also new cables, tires, tubes, chain, brake pads. Chainrings & cassette were still in good shape. We stripped the frame, cleaned and repacked all the bearings (headset, bottom bracket, wheels) with Schaeffer's 221 #2 which IME is a near-lifetime grease for bicycles good for several thousands of miles. One of the bearing cones had light spalling, but not enough to be worth replacing, so we put them back into service. Cleaned and lubed the freehub, replaced the broken spokes, re-rounded & trued the wheels, installed the new levers and adjusted everything. All in, he spent about $250 in new parts and the labor was free.

Long story short, it's like a new bike. The cheap levers work surprisingly well. All 14 gears work seamlessly, brakes are solid and smooth, rides smooth and quiet. That vintage road bike ride quality brings back memories. Feels good to save it from the landfill and it's ready for another 30 years of riding.

One thing I did notice when servicing the bottom bracket: those old frames are held together by the lugs. From inside the bottom bracket you can see the ends of the frame tubes and there are no visible welds. I guess I always knew that, having worked in a bike shop back in the 1980s but it's been so long I had forgotten.

 

[wpod]

Probably one of the nicest old style bikes I have ridden was a buds old Gitane ! The new stuff is trick though

 

[aquariuscsm]

I still have my 1st gen 1982 Diamondback BMX bike I got when I was 13. It's sort've a candy apple red with freewheel'd yellow Tuff Wheel II's with gold anodized alloy parts.

 

[y_p_w]

All Shimano 7-speed road equipment is compatible. I wanted to switch to Shimano index shifting with a freewheel. I went with 600 Ultegra downtube shifters and a 600 Ultegra rear derailleur, but my only option for a compatible 7-speed freewheel was Dura-Ace. At the time I asked around and Maillard didn't have one (they had a 6-speed one though) with the 600 Ultegra 7-speed setup only a freehub with a 7-speed cassette. But if you can find any new old stock Shimano 7-speed shifters, they should work.

Also remember way before there were any Diamondback road bikes. The company that sold them had the Centurion brand name for their road bikes.

 

[AZjeff]

The tubes are brazed into the lugs, it's not going to come apart because of age. Too bad you didn't get pics but props for saving a nice old bike.

I've been slowly restoring my 1985ish Trek lugged steel road bike into a 1x7 town bike. Because of tight frame clearance the biggest tires I could fit are 700 x 30. Gotta love old soldiers.

 

[skyactiv]

A lot of older bikes from that era have downtime shifters. Some of the downtime shifters on older bikes have positive stops with the ability to switch to friction.
My wife has a Diamondback gravel bike and it has Shimano 105. But it has cantilever brakes. She is long legged and rides a mans 55 CM frame.

 

[georgemiller]

Got to love the steel frame road bikes. Will last forever.

 

[AZjeff]

A lot of older bikes from that era have downtime shifters. Some of the downtime shifters on older bikes have positive stops with the ability to switch to friction.

Downtube shifters (spellcheck?) and there's no earthly reason to switch to friction unless you've crashed and bent the rear mech or frame tab. I was riding when index shifting showed up and there was no going back.

You can also get cable stops that bolt to the shifter boss on the downtube so you can run convert to bar shifters:

Amazon.com : Origin8 Cable Stop OR8 CS1 w/ADJ STD Curved BK Pair : Bike Cables And Cable Housings : Sports & Outdoors

Amazon.com : Origin8 Cable Stop OR8 CS1 w/ADJ STD Curved BK Pair : Bike Cables And Cable Housings : Sports & Outdoors

www.amazon.com

 

[MRC01]

You can also get cable stops that bolt to the shifter boss on the downtube so you can run convert to bar shifters: ...

Yep, that's what this bike had. It was a bit of a Frankenbike, with mismatched brake calipers, front crank had bolts for a triple chainring but only 2 chainrings used because the (square taper) bottom bracket spindle wasn't long enough for clearance. However, it looks and rides great now. It's interesting how silent it is, like a stealth bike. Modern freehubs are so much louder than the old ones.

 

[y_p_w]

Downtube shifters (spellcheck?) and there's no earthly reason to switch to friction unless you've crashed and bent the rear mech or frame tab. I was riding when index shifting showed up and there was no going back.

You can also get cable stops that bolt to the shifter boss on the downtube so you can run convert to bar shifters:

Amazon.com : Origin8 Cable Stop OR8 CS1 w/ADJ STD Curved BK Pair : Bike Cables And Cable Housings : Sports & Outdoors

Amazon.com : Origin8 Cable Stop OR8 CS1 w/ADJ STD Curved BK Pair : Bike Cables And Cable Housings : Sports & Outdoors

www.amazon.com

Yeah - that's what I got. My first serious bike was a Peugeot with a 6-speed Shimano setup but with a 6-speed compatible Maillard freewheel. The frame was made in France and they had a lot of French parts on it including the hubs and chain. I later got a bike that came with a Campy Xenon (plastic coasted version of Athena) grouppo but I didn't like the index-only shifting and swapped out the shifting to Shimano. But the front derailleur still worked fine since it was still 100% friction shifting for the left shifter.

The selectable Shimano stuff was pretty simple. There was a wire half-ring that could be pulled out, and then turned to select friction or index. It was counterclockwise to select SIS and clockwise to select friction. The friction setting would actually click in place while the index setting strangely enough just stopped. Index would still work to some degree even if not rotated all the way until it stopped.

Their mountain bike thumb shifters were different. That had a little slider switch at the top where it rotated all the way left for SIS and then all the way right for friction. I was trying to clean my original 7-speed Mountain LX shifter and in the disassembly process broke off one of the four pins that connected it to the mount. It still worked, but when I found Deore XT shifter on sale at Backroads (when they closed down their bike shop) I just jumped on it. I found a photo of this, although I still have that bike.

 

[vavavroom]

I still have my 1st gen 1982 Diamondback BMX bike I got when I was 13. It's sort've a candy apple red with freewheel'd yellow Tuff Wheel II's with gold anodized alloy parts.

I had a Mongoose and a Kuwahara in the mid to late '80s. At 15 I was getting too tall to ride BMX bikes comfortably. It must have been '92 or '93 that I spent over $1,000 on a new MTB for the first time. Now that seems like a bargain for a decent bike.

 

[aquariuscsm]

I had a Mongoose and a Kuwahara in the mid to late '80s. At 15 I was getting too tall to ride BMX bikes comfortably. It must have been '92 or '93 that I spent over $1,000 on a new MTB for the first time. Now that seems like a bargain for a decent bike.

Nice! I remember Kuwahara. I knew someone who had a chrome plated one with red Tuff Wheels. I still have all my BMX mags from back then. I remember Stu Thompson was one of the guys who rode for Redline. I can't remember the others. He was always featured in the magazines back then.

 

[MRC01]

Got to love the steel frame road bikes. Will last forever.

Frame durability isn't necessarily what we might think. Here is some related testing.

Fatigue testing of 12 different frames:

12 High-End Frames in the EFBe Fatigue Test

The groundbreaking article describing scientific testing of the resistance of bicycle frames of different materials to fatigue failure

www.sheldonbrown.com

Hint: steel frames didn't win!

This will be of interest to people who remember (or maybe owned, like I did) a Vitus 979 aluminum frame:

Finite Element Structural Analysis: A New Tool for Bicycle Frame Design, by Leisha A. Peterson and Kelly J. Londry

This site contains a number of useful articles on bicycling and bicycles, emphasizing practical maintenance, repair and upgrading, plus links to other bicycle-related sites on the Internet.

www.sheldonbrown.com

 

[MRC01]

... there's no earthly reason to switch to friction unless you've crashed and bent the rear mech or frame tab. I was riding when index shifting showed up and there was no going back.

Nowadays this is true: index shifting is perfectly consistent and requires minimal maintenance. But it wasn't always like this. I worked in a bike shop back when index shifting first hit the scene. During the first few years it wasn't as good as it is now, the shifting wasn't perfectly consistent now matter how much time and care spent adjusting it. Especially Suntour, which never really got index shifting as good as Shimano. My impression at the time was that the advent of index shifting was the beginning of the end for Suntour.

 

[AZjeff]

Yeah, Suntour was never as good as Shimano and look where they are. Gone. I can't remember anyone I rode with having any complaints about Shimano SIS not indexing accurately in the early days. Had 1 or 2 bikes with those 600 downtube shifters and have those exact XT thumb shifters in a box waiting for a bike to come along to put them on.

 

[y_p_w]

Frame durability isn't necessarily what we might think. Here is some related testing.

Fatigue testing of 12 different frames:

12 High-End Frames in the EFBe Fatigue Test

The groundbreaking article describing scientific testing of the resistance of bicycle frames of different materials to fatigue failure

www.sheldonbrown.com

Hint: steel frames didn't win!

This will be of interest to people who remember (or maybe owned, like I did) a Vitus 979 aluminum frame:

Finite Element Structural Analysis: A New Tool for Bicycle Frame Design, by Leisha A. Peterson and Kelly J. Londry

This site contains a number of useful articles on bicycling and bicycles, emphasizing practical maintenance, repair and upgrading, plus links to other bicycle-related sites on the Internet.

www.sheldonbrown.com

I'm not sure how a bench test accurately represents real riding. The worst thing is possibly when a bike is in a crash and then something cracks. That's supposedly when carbon fiber has the biggest chance of failure, and I've heard of carbon fiber failing spectacularly. But there's a ton of problems that can lead to failure including corrosion of all metals or poor quality welds.

 

[y_p_w]

Nowadays this is true: index shifting is perfectly consistent and requires minimal maintenance. But it wasn't always like this. I worked in a bike shop back when index shifting first hit the scene. During the first few years it wasn't as good as it is now, the shifting wasn't perfectly consistent now matter how much time and care spent adjusting it. Especially Suntour, which never really got index shifting as good as Shimano. My impression at the time was that the advent of index shifting was the beginning of the end for Suntour.

I don't know what it's like now, but Campagnolo's first attempts at index shifting were really bad. It was sloppy and would clunk into place. I heard their later efforts were much better (especially with brake lever shifters) but the downtube shifters sucked.

 

[MRC01]

Yeah, Suntour was never as good as Shimano and look where they are. Gone. ...

It's been a long time, but I recall one of the reasons Suntour index shifting never worked as well as Shimano was because Suntour never changed the cassette gear teeth. Shimano changed them in various ways, from tooth profile and angle to how they line up from one ring to the next. This helped the chain jump more readily from one cog to the next. Suntour's index shifting cassettes were unchanged from prior friction shifting: standard tooth cut, same for all teeth, no differences in profile or angle. This meant each shift required going slightly past the desired gear, then back a touch (standard friction shifting technique). Which of course their index shifters did not do. If you adjusted Suntour with the derailleur perfectly in line with each cog, it would shift equally slowly and poorly both up and down. If you adjusted it to improve the up shifting, the down shifting was terrible, and vice versa. It was totally frustrating.

I agree with @y_p_w , early versions of Campy index shifting were as bad as Suntour. But back then, Campy riders were too busy mocking index shifting to ever consider having it on their own bikes.

 

[y_p_w]

It's been a long time, but I recall one of the reasons Suntour index shifting never worked as well as Shimano was because Suntour never changed the cassette gear teeth. Shimano changed them in various ways, from tooth profile and angle to how they line up from one ring to the next. This helped the chain jump more readily from one cog to the next. Suntour's index shifting cassettes were unchanged from prior friction shifting: standard tooth cut, same for all teeth, no differences in profile or angle. This meant each shift required going slightly past the desired gear, then back a touch (standard friction shifting technique). Which of course their index shifters did not do. If you adjusted Suntour with the derailleur perfectly in line with each cog, it would shift equally slowly and poorly both up and down. If you adjusted it to improve the up shifting, the down shifting was terrible, and vice versa. It was totally frustrating.

I agree with @y_p_w , early versions of Campy index shifting were as bad as Suntour. But back then, Campy riders were too busy mocking index shifting to ever consider having it on their own bikes.

Suntour had some good stuff. I remember the Bridgestone MB-0 had a mish-mash of carefully selected parts including Superbe Pro road pedals, but with with their XC mountain bike pedal spindle. I still have my old mountain bike where I installed some Suntour Cyclone pedals with the same basic shape. It make it a lot easier for commuting compared to traditional mountain bike pedals.

There was this Schwinn aluminum bike I wanted in the late 80s with some Suntour stuff. I don't recall everything, but it seemed like a good bargain.

As far as the tooth profile goes, Shimano was doing that for years. I forgot what they called it back then. But it looks like they still have it.

Still not as odd as old stuff like Biopace or Ovaltech. I remember when Sakae started making fun of their previous attempts at a Biopace competitor, with their "Roundtech" chainrings. I love the "Constant Radius Chainring" wording.

 

[MRC01]

Suntour had some good stuff. ...

Yeah some of the Suntour stuff was well made, especially Superbe & Cyclone. Their index shifting just never worked as well as Shimano.

As far as the tooth profile goes, Shimano was doing that for years. I forgot what they called it back then. But it looks like they still have it.

That's exactly what I was talking about. It's essential for index shifting to work well. By comparison, the Suntour cassettes that I saw in the shop back then had simple consistent tooth profiles. None of the tooth shaping, angling, ramping, etc. that Shimano used. Like this:

As I was pulling my hair out trying to get Suntour index shifting to work as well as Shimano, I realized the cassette tooth profiles were part of the problem. All that funky stuff Shimano did to the cassette teeth made the chain shift more readily.