I tried riding the Folsom Lake trails using my Dahon folding bike but the combo of high pressure 20″ inch tires and the single gear didn’t go well with the sand, rocks, hills and dirt ruts of Folsom.

So I was looking for an old hard-tail mountain bike when I found this Specialized Hardrock Classic MTB at Denio’s flea market for $65USD cash, barely used with original everything and pretty good components.

Light Direct Drive cro-mo main tubes, fork and stays. Shimano AceraX deraillers front and back with SRAM MRX 21-speed shifters. Huge Specialized Crossroads III 26×1.95″ inch tires (UK:tyres); Specialized Total Comfort spring seat and over-center instant seat adjust; original Specialized tail light.

Gears and brakes work, steers well, fairly light weight at 33 lbs. (15kg). Excellent paint, decals, tires and components. It is far too short on stem and bar for my neck so I just spent $40 on cables, sheathing and ferules to raise high the handlebars for my required Dutch, Sit-Up-And-Beg seating position.

But I can’t yet find a tall stem in the bike’s oddball 1 1/8″ inch size, so I might try wrapping a beer-can metal shim around my too-skinny 1″ inch diameter very tall stem and bolt it on. What could possible go wrong? My brother told me to go ahead and do it. 

When I get the bars tall enough this old Hardrock should be much better than the Dahon folder for the dirt, plus it fits in the hatch of my car. Stoked.

 

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