Muddy Fox Courier Mixte

During lockdown @Clara was giving up her time to get bikes back on the road in our local area for health, care and other key workers. One of the donations was a ratty black Raleigh mixte with mis-matching cranks that she fell in love with.

It passed onto a new owner who needed it more eventually, but I started looking for something nicer for her to take it's place. Hence this thread: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/351406/

It proved difficult to find what I was looking for. So after I got an old 90s Gary Fisher which she liked, I started searching for 90s mountain bikes on eBay. Some great bargains out there.

Low and behold, this came up, the perfect mix of both. It was delivered by PedalMe a few days later from Richmond.

Updates in due course...

#savethetriple

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@Clara jumped straight onto cleaning it up. Previous owner kept it in very good condition. The drivetrain was near perfect nick. The tires held air. The rear brake cable was seized.

The more she worked through it though, the more impressive the detail was.

• Tange tubing with paw print details on top of the seat stays
  
• Indexed thumbies
  
• Sealed, buttery smooth hubs
  
• Muddy Fox branded saddle, bars, grips
  
• Fat mudguards from new
  
• Sugino cranks and Suntour group
  
• Proper shaped cantis (so rare on a mixte)
  
• OG On Your Bike SE1 supplier sticker
  
• The lights probably worked, but without those size D batteries, we shaved off 1kg.
  
  

After cleaning, and with a nice little re-purposing of v-brake-cable-router for the rear brake, it already looks great.

Yellow cable outer, fatter tires and the front basket are on the way.

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Nice!

I think the old rack looked the part ...

... might work under the basket on the front!

From 1986+ I think . I had some thing similar with chrome bars. Weighed a ton but rolled along beautifully.

I'm not so sure. The front basket is rack supported by design though, so functionality is coming back.

This is indeed a 1986. There's an '89 or so in the Classifieds section right now, the decals are better on the earlier ones.

The Decals Are Better

... should be a T Shirt or a quote in ‘shit fixie skidders say’ thread

Nice, I dig old Muddy Foxes - built up a '91/92 courier comp for my gf last year. Not convinced she's that into it, but I am :p . Not sure if it's true but apparently the guy who started the brand now runs that bike shop Wilsons Cycles in Peckham.

I never updated this thread. Sadly, the bike was finished, and has since fallen into disrepair again, so you all missed it it's glory, but I should share a few pictures. The rest of this story went as follows:

1. Yellow cable outers to set off the logo a bit more.
   
2. Velo Orange bars and a front-basket to make it more of a city-tank than a re-pack-mountain-tank.
   
3. Halo H-Block tan-walls which fit in the mudguards with almost enough clearance for a tiny stone. Not quite. If Claira pumps the tyres up to their max pressure they rub. Mountain bikes aren't supposed to run at max-pressure so it's fine.
   
4. Happy miles covered.
   
5. Bottom-bracket bearings wore out.
   
6. More, less-happy miles covered. Bottom bracket still turns I guess, so it's not a priority.
   
7. A fox who lives in our garden (which Claira named Muddy) got jealous of the fact that Claira loved her bike more than him. So he got into the shed and nibbled the saddle nose and grips.
   
8. @lemonade started a thread and asked for picture, I went outside to take some and a motorbike had fallen on the bike and scratched the paintwork a bit. That'll rust. (That brings us to today.)
   
   

Here's a Google album of right now, even though it's not perfect:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/tUhbU1V3iSfhRv4S8