A Bonanza of a side project

No I am not stopping work on the 420 but I had been following this Novara Ponderosa MTB on CL for a few weeks for no particular reason and saw the price drop steadily, I threw out an offer of $25 and it was accepted.  An older gentleman had been using it as a trainer bike, hence the clunky book holder clamp on the bars, but he had a fall recently and was liquidating his bikes.  I figured for a $25 outlay I had a chance to make some profit and now that I am temporarily unemployed that could be a good thing.

I took it for a 2.5 mile test ride this morning and found a few items to sort, the rear brake pulses for lack of a better word and the front is too loosely adjusted.   The rear shifting is fine, its a 6 speed Shimano SIS indexed thumb shifter.  The front though has issues in the middle ring the chain makes a racket going into the middle ring but is find in the low and high.

I am not a big fan of gel saddles this might be fine if I just flip it but the cover is a bit loose so I might replace it with something used from bike works.  Very likely the original saddle.

I do like all the Deore bits and if I decided to part the bike out I think the thumb shifters and cranks with intact bolt caps could go along way toward doubling my outlay.  The RD looks like it might be a replacement but it seem to work just fine.

I believe this to be an 87/88 model year bike due to the unique and short lived rear brake set up.  The picture above is the bike upside down, its got a u-brake attached to canti studs on the underside of the chainstays set up.  Never worked on this type of rear brake and the odd pulsing I was getting from the rear brake my just be a feature of this brake.  I need to do some research and see if this unique brake has any worth on the used market.

Nice Tange MTB steel, fillet brazed.

A little sleuthing shows this bike spent some time in Montana, could have been a college bike at Montana State Univ.

I am going to scavenge the trek branded water bottle cage for either the 420 or 520.

I haven't got around to sleuthing the serial number yet but as I said I think the unique rear brake pegs in the late 80s.

I have this vague idea that I could double my money on this bike, then take the proceeds and find another project and keep on going a little more upscale each time.  I am aided by the fact that I was given some amazon gift certs as a very nice parting gift on my exit from the contract job by an appreciative boss.  So I could replace the tires, chain and grips basically for free.

The paint is in rough shape as you can see so its ,not going to clean up as nicely as either the Bianchi or the Rock hopper.  I think I can work the winter bike, beater, commuter angle when I list and it will benefit from some rubbing compound and wax..

Losing the clunky book clamp off the bars has already improved the looks and I think removing the bull horns will help even more, they can be very practical giving you more hand positions but they don't do much for the look of the bike and I find pretty sells faster than practical.  My gut feeling is to sort the issues I found, give it a through clean and tune up replacing as little as possible, some fresh grips  and then we'll see if I can double my investment.  Who knows?

Did I mention it seems to fit me.........

Ride. Rescue strays. Smile. Repeat