Rockhopper 88 Mild Restoration Project

Picked up this Rockhopper last week for reasonable price, I believe it is 1988 production year. I never knew they made one with the brake caliper mounted under the chain stays.

I’ve really trimmed down my collection down to 2 builds. The Gazelle Monostay & Vitus Sentier MTB. I got rid of my CAAD-X bike packing/gravel bike to @mustard who is doing really a nice build.

This one will fill the bike packing void as it’s got all the mounts, and will make a wonderful Somerset spinner to get my artisan Saturday morning bakery goods and my Saturday afternoon rough cider.

I have 2 plans/minds for this build:-

Plan 1
Strip it all down, clean it up and reuse all the existing components

Plan 2
Strip it all down and spank loads of $$$ on it

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Attempt plan 1 and end up with plan 2 every time for me. I do love a old Spesh 👌

Some recent 90s era 559 projects of my own.

One is a local artisanal bakery transporter and the other will be more for light off road duties. Yellow remains a strong choice.

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Layers of cakes on grease and grim has it advantages, ever but & bolt came out with ease

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I had one of these in yellow! I kept the frame and forks for years with the intention of restoring it but it got dumped during the last house move. The U-brake position was possibly one of the worst possible places for an MTB!

Is that an Exotic fork on the Kona? Looks great!

Correct. No many options left for new 26" forks.

Something like this is coming to mind

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Yes, nice

1988 Catalogue image from Retrobike.
Lots of 80's and some early 90's MTBs had chainstay-mounted U brakes as the cantilevers of the time were wide profile and you could catch your heels on the rear ones, especially in smaller frame sizes. Low profile XT and DX brakes came out in 1991 and the rest of the models over the next couple years. But they do collect crap down there!

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Chainstay U-brake gang assemble! It works pretty well with koolstop pads tbh. Although I don't ride it in the mud much.

Acieed