Browsing the Interweb for years searching for that bike I saw in bike magazines and dreamed about since 1999, I finally managed to find it in August 2018 selling from the US east coast. Fred from Frame and Wheel, Cape Elisabeth (Maine) kindly agreed to ship the frame set over the atlantic.

It’s a 1999 Merlin Fat Ti XL, 17.5″ size frame with ‘Fatty SL’ fork. I like to ride slightly smaller bikes, as the versatility on rough terrain is highly increased.

First things first

As I had promised to myself (and my partner Sophie) NOT to buy further bikes (I already have 5) I decided to swap the frame of my Serotta XC-bike, which with 19″ is to big for my liking. Fortunately all components will fit fine, there is just this odyssey with the rear wheel…

Here the building process, Saturday 29.9.18, at the Cyclone bike shop Zurich:

The Serotta bike, which will be ‘cannibalized’, having mostly good vintage and extra light components.

The cables are all Nokon covered, honestly only for the looks. There is no front derailleur. Used to drive in single speed mode, 9 gears are more than enough. The brakes and rear shifting gear is vintage Shimano XTR. The excellent RS Sid fork had been stripped of its blue varnish to save some weight and to fit the titanium color of the frame. This had been done by hand with sand paper at that time.

Of course I will keep the V-brake system, as the Merlin frame has no disc mounts. All available adaptors are just a compromise, aesthetically and functionally, so I’ll stick to rim brakes.

Moreover I had built up super light wheels for the Serotta, I don’t want to loose those.

The build

That’s how the frameset arrived from the States. Fred did a great job in packing and protecting the frame. The headshok fork was packed separately. In addition to the frameset, Fred managed to get the original stem and the ultrarare Merlin Titanium handlebar. Fortunately at 550mm, it’s the perfect size for me.

Here it is, with the new saddle, a vintage and well used Brooks with titanium rails and copper rivets. It’s mounted to a titanium PMP seat post. The adjustment of the saddle’s angle is hell, as there is a hidden screw which can only be manipulated with a tiny #6 wrench and tiny hands!

My main concern was that the bottom bracket (BB) would not fit, again fortunately the BSA version of my Serotta’s Shimano XT BB has the correct axle length, so the whole crank system can be mounted perfectly. As mentioned before, no front derailleur.

The (almost) finished bike. The PMP seat post is 2cm too short, so I had to swap it with a Tune version, being black it also fits the bike’s aesthetics better. Unfortunately the Nokon elements were not enough to line all the cables, so the back part of the shifting cable is lined conventionally.

Some stuff is still lacking. The grips for example, these I will get as a birthday present  in a couple of weeks. It’s Walnut Studiolo’s ‘bare knuckle grips’ of the same color as the Brooks saddle. After contacting them directly in Canada, they told me that they discontinue the ‘bare knuckle grips’, so the dark brown version was not available anymore. Well, I managed to find them…. here in Zurich, no less!

The wheel odyssey

Test ride, check! All working great, but mounting the rear wheel earlier, I saw that the rear hub from Tune seems to narrow. The right endcap is somehow wrong, and the chain rubs against the frame. The emergency repair was to insert a washer to increase the distance to the frame, but I still think that it is a road wheel hub which I mounted over 10 years ago!

I’m not messing about, so I contacted Christian Jenny, former head of production at ‘Tune‘, and developer of their ‘Geiles Teil 4.0’ stem and the Mig/Mag hubs. ‘Tune’ is still one of the best manufacturers of super light and strong bike components.