Merlin Metalworks Titanium Mountain Bike
Merlin Metalworks Titanium Mountain
A Classic Bike in a Modern World
The bike industry is shoving gravel down our throats. All fads are circular; the marketing machine has run out of bullshit to feed us. Hiding amongst the vast floodwaters of new bike bullshit there is a Noah's Ark waiting to save us from the coming flood.
Classic 26” mountain bikes are the antidote to the poison that the industry is feeding us now.
Take the newest Specialized Diverge with a suspended seat tube and dampened steerer. It's a modified copy and repeat of Moot's YBB and bushing-ed rear triangle from the 90s.
The classic 26er is more than capable of tackling the type of terrain that gravel grinding has become. On one hand, gravel races are adding in more and more XC singletrack, and on the other hand, gravel bikes are incorporating more and more mountain bike frame design theory and geometries. Since the industry has gone full circle, we have circled back to the “ATB” of the early 80s.
Our All-Terrain Bicycles of the 80s were essentially the same market as gravel bikes are now. Rigid forks, longer wheelbase, slack headtube angle, and long fork rake, all helped to transform a standard bicycle frame into the ATB.
Merlin
And Spooky
The steel and titanium mountain bikes of the 1990s and 2000s have certainly outlived their carbon and aluminium counterparts. The Titanium Merlin outlived its brother the Spooky Darkside by a couple years. However, parts were becoming harder and harder to source for the 1” headtube. This particular Merlin was so vintage that it didn’t even have a 1 1/8” head tube and fork steerer yet. I gave up hunting for vintage 1” suspension forks and built my own out of classic Marzzochi parts.
That never prevented us from riding the steepest and most challenging trails we could find on our vintage hardtails. Here we are at the bottom of the Chaparral trail in Joaquin Miller Park, Oakland CA. We also tackled Cinderella, and Big Trees became our training ground.
We tackled San Francisco’s Mt. Sutro and Laguna Honda, the Boyscout Loop, and climbing Twin Peaks. We called it the S.F. Triple Crown. Mt. Sutro, Twin Peaks, and Laguna Honda; all in one ride. As you can see from the photograph above, the Merlin Titanium handled it all and clawed its way through the mud and slop.
It was a climbing king on simple trails like John Nicholas Trail in the Saratoga/Cupertino area. Technical climbs were also simple and the light weight of the bicycle made any climb a matter of spinning up your legs and bumping up and over. The bicycle weighed 23 lbs in the configuration pictured above (sans water bottle and saddle bag).
The Build:
Merlin Titanium Mountain
Rockshox Judy SL
Shimano XTR M910 drivetrain
XTR M980 Crankset
Thomson 27.2 Seatpost
