Many of our regular readers are familiar with our current Murphy’s Law Project, but we wanted to take a few minutes to let everyone know about one of our other unique projects:

Something Wicked This Way Comes is a classic fantasy / horror novel from Ray Bradbury that inspired a whole segment of popular culture, from the self-titled movie to the Stephen King masterpiece Needful Things.  Likewise, we hope that this 1983 Specialized Stumpjumper can be an inspiration to mountain bikers looking for something both vintage and unique.  It’s a little bit classic, a little bit more modern — much like the resto-mods of American car culture.

1983 Specialized Stumpjumper

A vintage Specialized Stumpjumper converted to 650B wheels and a SRAM X.0 1x9 drivetrain.

19 Photos

 

Basically, this bike serves as a proof of concept.  At the onset, we were looking to incorporate a few unique elements all into one bike:

• Vintage lugged steel MTB frame with matching rigid fork.
• 650B wheelset with plump MTB treaded tires.
• Very modern 1 x 9 drivetrain

And along the way, we added a few other unique touches of our own:

• Metallic Copper paint
• Gold accents — shifter, derailleur, cassette, spoke nipples, etc.
• Soma Clarence handlebar (for a little more swept-back hand position)
• Cane Creek Direct Curve 5 V-brakes in place of the original cantilevers.

Obviously there is still more work to do, but we hope to have this bike out and about our local trail system right after the first of the Year.  At this point it is hard to imagine letting this beautiful bike into the mud, but it is all about the experience of  bringing together something old and something new.

We’ll give a full ride report once we get a few 100 miles under our 650B wheels.  Until then, feel free to contact us with any technical questions or ethical dilemmas.