Genesis cycletruck/Tricross/Solaris MAX - KingTwin tandem

Cheers! Yep, all just for fun, I just enjoy putting things together really. Having said that, this Merida has been sat in the shed for ages. It's always good when the enthusiasm hits and I'm enjoying hunting out bits and spending a bit more time on this one.

Getting stuck in with budget/quality but ratty/4th hand bits is great too.

I'm starting to piece together a parts list for the Merida. I'd like to spend a bit more time on the details and finish of this as I'm prone to being a bit slapdash and rushing things, and the budget is tight which will slow things down too. I also want to get the torch back out and add some braze ons.

Plan for frame/fork:

• Internal Dyno routing on fork leg
  
• Under DT and fork leg bottle bosses
  
• Dropper cable guides and drill seat tube
  
• Bracket for rear dyno light
  
  

The Scott has been stripped and helpfully also had an XTR BB (with okay-ish bearings), an XTR Ti cassette and a salvageable Tioga headset. Various stripped bits will get listed shortly to fund the rest of the build.

I also want to get it powder coated and I'm thinking a bright yellow. My dad had an ex-AA VW T4 (not actual one below) when I was a kid and both myself and my brother really loved it, especially as it still had the working amber light bar on - essential equipment when you're 10. Unfortunately it got rolled into a hedge and written off 7-8 years ago, so it'd be nice to try and get the closest matching RAL colour and get it done in that.

Going to put together a parts list shortly and then start hunting for the missing bits. Currently weighing up if I want to spend £70 on a Garbaruk chainring (the only one that'll fit and only available from the US) for the XTR cranks..

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Great plan and even better color!
Re chainring - also available here:
https://www.garbaruk.com/shimano-xtr-m950-round.html?category=1

Because it has been mentioned before: I promise I am in no way, shape or form affiliated with Garbaruk! :D
Just happen to like their stuff. ;-)

Thanks, I'm excited about the colour! Wondering if there's some way of tying in the green bar along the bottom edge..

Cheers for the link, it's good to see people are still out there making chainrings for obscure 90's cranks!

Bar ends on the Dolan. Tempted to get some skinny guards and use it through the winter, along with a second chainring. The Hooger Booger, Rockhopper and Scott frames have all been stripped ready to sell to make some space.

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I'm slowly gathering bits for the Merida, hunting out mostly black bits to go with the yellow frame, but with some silver mixed in too.
I'm thinking disc front and v-brake rear, I'll rebuild the front rim with a dyno disc hub. Picked up some Deore levers, a Fizik saddle that needs some love and found the raceface cranks in the spares that need some new spindle spacers. The bontrager post is pretty neat too.

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Wheels! Today I serviced the rear hub and gave it all a good clean. Rear wheel is an XTR m950 hub with Mavic 217 ceramic rim, Continental Cross King 2.3, a Specialized skewer, and an 11-40t 9spd Sunrace cassette. The matching front wheel has been disassembled and I'll build up the rim with a yet to be ordered Shimano dyno disc hub. All the old XTR bits are worn and tatty which will suit the rest of the build nicely.

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Decided it was time to get the slick tyres, guards and lights back on the Tricross for some winter miles. I really love how versatile this frame is, from cross to winter road bike, it's my most ridden frame ever by distance travelled.
The front guard needs a bit of adjusting and I need to get some flaps but apart from that it's sorted. I used stick on Di2 cable guides to hide/tidy the dyno cables as best I could.

The front light was a bit of a nightmare, both input spades snapped when reattaching the cable, looks like they've corroded. Bodged it by pulling apart the light, dremeling holes into the stubs of the spades and connecting the wires directly. Soldering iron is on the to buy list to make it more secure but it'll do for now. Annoying on a £150 light (B&M Luxos U iq2) that's been carefully plugged/unplugged half a dozen times max in 3yrs, honestly just a poor design.

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Such a great looking bike. Top work. I have an IO as well that I have to keep telling myself I shouldn't cut up ha.

Thanks! Really happy with the colour and the silver guards, a big improvement over the drab dark blue. Pic of it this time last year.
I fully support and encourage any chopping!

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As predicted the Merida project is a slow burner, but I've got a few more bits together for a not very exciting update. Pleased to find some steel, 1 1/8th, disc forks of the right length and with straight legs from the local bike charity that'll have a few more bosses and dyno routing brazed on. I'm thinking of just getting the frame and fork blasted to get a decent starting point and then rattle can again, to save ~£100 of powder coating.

Also stripped the front rim and ordered the cheapest Shimano dyno disc hub and some spokes along with a spindle spacer rebuild kit for the Race Face cranks. Filed down some chainring bolts to fit the 1x ring too. The last few bits to source include a 22.2 BMX stem (ideally black and top load if anyone has one?), a thumb shifter (probably a Sunrace M96), a chain and some tins of paint.

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Had my powder coating done for £50. Nice job as well. Always good to go in and ask for what basic colours then do then work onto price. Ha.

Where did you get your powder coat done...? The pink Marin is great btw!

Cheers. Project powder coating in Brierley Hill. It's not uncommon though, just need to shop around. There are about 3 places around here that charge similar. Friend had her CX bike done bright pink in a 2part for £70.

Good call, the Marin does look good! I'd got dnfive saved to pick up some decals too, were you happy with the quality of them?

I need to have a ring around a few more of the local powder coaters..

Yeah happy with quality. I mean the vinyl seems the same as what you would if you had them made at a local graphics place. DN are cheaper though and he has a lot of the graphics ready to make so that's a huge bonus. I wanted all mine done in Mint though which I put in the comments section and I had some come black. I'm sure it said you could request colours as well. Just be aware of this if you are looking at a colour which isn't listed on that graphic as standard.

When I was having the Marin done it was £20 for a dip and blast. I would have been at least £10 into paint and it wouldn't have looked as good IMO.

Nice, that's good to know thanks. I'll drop them an email and see if they have any Merida ones made up.
That's a good point, I'm sure powder would give a more durable finish. The Montana finish is a bit delicate, even with a couple of coats of clear on top.

hi, great thread! i have an old specialised the same vintage as your tricross and wondered about your headset. i would like to get rid of the lower loose ball bearings on mine too. I read you removed an additional race on the lower part of the headset, and i can’t imagine what you mean plus don’t recall this from my last bearing service. do you mean an extra crown race sitting on top of the crown race sitting on the fork? any idea of the specs of the cartridge bearings you replaced with?

Cheers!

It took a fair bit of research to figure out exactly what I needed for the headset so hopefully this is helpful:

Pic shows the bits I removed from the original set up. The left two items show the caged bearings plus the additional 'race' I referred to (my terminology might be off there) from the bottom of the headset. The bottom right is the two identical pieces from the top of the headset, but nested together, as they sit in the headset. I also swapped out the conical 20mm spacer in the top right for a low stack one.

In terms of the bits you need to reassemble with new sealed bearings, from bottom to top:

1. Crown race on fork (I reused existing one)
   
2. A 1 1/8th sealed bearing (30.2x41x6.5 36x45 degree). I bought a pair from Superstar Components: https://www.superstarcomponents.com/en/type-1-headset-bearings-36x45-degree-cane-creek-compatible-x2.htm. This sits directly in the machined headtube (my Tricross didn't have any pressed in cups as some info I found online suggested it might).
   
3. Headtube
   
4. The second sealed bearing.
   
5. A 2mm 1 1/8th (28.6mm internal dia) headset spacer (bought from eBay for a couple of quid), this is important as the machined recess in the frame is deep and this spacer needs to sit on top of the upper bearing to give the top cover something to sit on and not bind with the top of the headtube.
   
6. A replacement low stack top cover for the conical one pictured above (you could reuse the existing conical one, I only replaced it as I wanted to lower the stem). I bought a 45mm dia, 2mm depth one from gbj_testers shop: https://www.grafixbyjorj.co.uk/.
   
7. Stem or spacers then stem.
   
   

All in cost was about £20 and in the future I'll only need to replace the sealed bearings.

Caveat that this worked for my Tricross (2014 Sport) and most other early/mid 2010's 1 1/8th Specialized Mindset headsets should be similar but I can't be 100% sure..

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Progress on the Merida! Started with stripping the paint off the fork, went with a wire cup on a drill and it wasn't actually too painful to do. Once stripped it was marked and drilled for an extra boss on each leg (spaced for a bottle cage), an additional cable guide for the hose, and drilled for internal dyno routing. I enlarged the drain hole at the bottom of the right leg and brazed a reinforcing washer around it and then did the same near the crown for the dyno cable. I wouldn't normally drill so close to the crown but this cheap fork is seriously over built with really thick walled tubing so I'm banking on it being fine.. Bosses were then brazed on, filed and everything tidied up with the wire wheel again. I did tack on shoulder bosses for a rack before changing my mind and removing them.

Next up is doing similar to the frame before painting both with rattle cans (high build primer -> yellow -> gloss clear coat). Dyno hub has made it as far as customs and the spokes have arrived already, hopefully the hub should be here this week ready to build the front wheel up.

Annoyingly discovered the frame takes an odd seatpost size (I think 26.4) so I won't be able to use the nice Bontrager post, so that's another thing for the shopping list.

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more pics in whatever order the site decides to load them..

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Very nice. Look great raw as well.

Sorry I haven't been back but well done for great progresss. Most of all though, Thank You! for the help with the headset, so brilliant, cheers.

@Tom13 @tmevans thanks both. Pleased with how it's coming together and glad that the headset info was useful. I struggled to find a single definitive piece on what was needed, just scattered old forum posts, so hopefully it'll be useful to anyone else searching for Mindset info in the future!

Hub arrived today, going to enjoy lacing it this evening then take it down the bike hub to use their jig to true and tension tomorrow.

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Wheels are sorted now, just need a final tensioning twiddle on the front wheel.

• DH-3D32-QR front / XTR m950 rear hubs
  
• Mavic 217 SUP ceramic rims
  
• Sunrace 11-40t 9spd cassette
  
• Conti CrossKing 26x2.3 tyres
  
  

All secondhand and decidedly tatty apart from the dyno hub, but they run really smoothly and I'm happy with how they look. The budget Shimano dyno hub is an absolute lump weight wise but was only ~£25 from AliX so can't complain too much!

The rear hub is missing a seal/end cap thingy on the non-drive side, any idea if individual parts are available for old Shimano hubs?

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