Racing Cyclocross in the 90's?

[Pegoready]

Cyclocross from the 90's holds a dear place in my heart but was some of the worst equipment. I still shudder to think of all these things:

• Tall gearing, see that Bontrager review posted above that claims a 39x28 low gear is perfect for climbing dirt hills. I guess riders were stronger then...
• Barely functioning, squealy, wide profile canti brakes.
• Home brew 1x drivetrains with "crossing guards" sandwiching the front chainring. No clutched rear derailleurs, no narrow-wide rings.
• For 2x drivetrains, those seat tube pulleys that add a lot of friction and excess cable runs.
• Skinny tires. Skinny tire clearance. Expensive tubulars that disintegrated by looking at them.
• Short head tube, level top tube geometry, for shouldering and standover.
• Unhinged crosstop levers, or worse, re-purposing MTB levers and having frames modified with double cable stops.

Fun times.

If I were building a modern take on an old CX bike, I'd use Avid Shorty Ultimate brakes and a wide range true 1x group like SRAM Force 1x11, tubeless wheels, and the widest tire that gives you 5 mm of clearance to the inner chainstay face.

[November Dave]

Originally Posted by Pegoready

Cyclocross from the 90's holds a dear place in my heart but was some of the worst equipment. I still shudder to think of all these things:

• Tall gearing, see that Bontrager review posted above that claims a 39x28 low gear is perfect for climbing dirt hills. I guess riders were stronger then...
• Barely functioning, squealy, wide profile canti brakes.
• Home brew 1x drivetrains with "crossing guards" sandwiching the front chainring. No clutched rear derailleurs, no narrow-wide rings.
• Skinny tires. Skinny tire clearance. Expensive tubulars that disintegrated by looking at them.
• Short head tube, level top tube geometry, for shouldering and standover.
• Unhinged crosstop levers, or worse, re-purposing MTB levers and having frames modified with double cable stops.

Fun times.

If I were building a modern take on an old CX bike, I'd use Avid Shorty Ultimate brakes and a wide range true 1x group like SRAM Force 1x11, tubeless wheels, and the widest tire that gives you 5 mm of clearance to the inner chainstay face.

The days of wooden ships and iron men, huh?

I raced my first CX race in 2011 so I'm nowhere on the background some of you guys have, but I remember people dropping chains left and right on 1x setups back then. Fortunately Shorty Ultimates were very available by my time, and they worked ok. Carbon rims in the wet seemed to accelerate when you used the brakes, but otherwise they weren't awful.

When first sold frames, a lot of people were militant that cx bikes needed eyelets. Still don't really know why.

Was at a restaurant on Block Island last week and saw an ultra sweet Colnago from the Sven Nys era parked outside. That looked retro-riffic to me, but the photos on this thread are fantastic.

[Pegoready]

Originally Posted by November Dave

The days of wooden ships and iron men, huh?

I raced my first CX race in 2011 so I'm nowhere on the background some of you guys have, but I remember people dropping chains left and right on 1x setups back then. Fortunately Shorty Ultimates were very available by my time, and they worked ok. Carbon rims in the wet seemed to accelerate when you used the brakes, but otherwise they weren't awful.

When first sold frames, a lot of people were militant that cx bikes needed eyelets. Still don't really know why.

Was at a restaurant on Block Island last week and saw an ultra sweet Colnago from the Sven Nys era parked outside. That looked retro-riffic to me, but the photos on this thread are fantastic.

Ah, yes, I forgot about carbon rims and canti brakes. What a nightmare!

[Peter P.]

Originally Posted by mhespenheide

Other people will remember and explain it better than me, but yes -- there are different types of brake levers. The TL;DR version is that there are "short pull" levers and "long pull levers". Even that explanation isn't complete, because once mountain bikes came on to the scene, the definitions of what constituted "short" and "long" got mixed up. But the word "pull ratio" in the earlier post is the key. Brake levers (the things your hands squeeze) and brake calipers (the things that squeeze the rims (or discs)) need to be matched or at least relatively matched to work well together. That's true even when you're working with "short pull" levers and cantilever brakes; some pairings will work better than others because the pull ratios are well-matched.

Exactly. I experienced this as a youth in the mid-70s when I swapped out my centerpull Weinmann brake/lever combo with Mafac levers. Well, it was the levers or the calipers first; I can't recall. What I CAN recall is I had absolutely NO modulation. It was power stop or nothing. Feathering the brake was almost impossible until I got the matching part.

Wasn't the lever/canti-V-brake issue solved with the Travel Agent? I also believe Shimano made a drop bar lever specifically for cantis or Vs.

[catchourbreath]

There were a couple guys still on Spinergy wheels racing masters up until a few years ago around the NE. Always cool and terrifying to see.

[fignon's barber]

Back in the late 90's I raced cross on a Czech-made Fort bike equipped with an old chorus 9sp group and a pair of $25 Avis Shorties. Nothing special.

[truth]

Originally Posted by fignon's barber

Back in the late 90's I raced cross on a Czech-made Fort bike equipped with an old chorus 9sp group and a pair of $25 Avis Shorties. Nothing special.

I always wanted a Fort MiniMax cross bike!

[Radius PNW]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

It may seem like you're committed with the headset, but I think going for all black components (including a new headset) could make this frame pop in a new way. Just envisioning the blazing blue logos with the shadow details of the crankset, wheels, hubs..seatpost... etc.

[Radius PNW]

Originally Posted by Pegoready

Cyclocross from the 90's holds a dear place in my heart [...]

Fun times.

If I were building a modern take on an old CX bike, I'd use Avid Shorty Ultimate brakes and a wide range true 1x group like SRAM Force 1x11, tubeless wheels, and the widest tire that gives you 5 mm of clearance to the inner chainstay face.

Agree on this. There was pro 'cross, and then there was 'cross for the 'rest of us' which entailed : 'run it' to whatever bike you felt like putting through its paces.

Determination. Grit. Barely controlled chaos.

It's the ethos, not the equipment?

Bikes like this allowed riders to take drop bars to new places. Still true today...would be fun to let this build take you in a direction we were only dreaming about in the '90s.

[donevwil]

Considering the era of the frameset, it may be worth checking the distance between canti posts, or mocking it up before committing. Assuming you use modern, wider rims you may benefit from brakes that use post mount pads vs stud mount should the posts be a bit closer together than more modern execution.
My vote: keep it silver and go Suntour XC-Pro cantis with a front Power Hanger. Hands down best canti set-up (and better than most other rim brakes) I've ever used.

[gravelreformist]

Originally Posted by Radius PNW

Agree on this. There was pro 'cross, and then there was 'cross for the 'rest of us' which entailed : 'run it' to whatever bike you felt like putting through its paces.

Determination. Grit. Barely controlled chaos.

It's the ethos, not the equipment?

Bikes like this allowed riders to take drop bars to new places. Still true today...would be fun to let this build take you in a direction we were only dreaming about in the '90s.

I was pro by the end of the 90's, but through the early and mid 90's went through that same period as a poor teenage bike mechanic. My first cross bike was an 80's Cannondale touring bike built with whatever donated parts I could acquire. That took me through a blizzard at junior nationals in Massachusetts somewhere around 1995. I then went to the Vitus which was one of the only genuine cross frames I could find and get imported to the US.

Somewhere in there I also went through a phase with my 26" Fat Chance converted with drop bars and 1.5" tires...

[charliedid]

Originally Posted by EB

My first proper bike in the 90s was a cross "conversion" and I remember things a bit differently - it was more of a "run what you brung" vibe, and existing frames were "converted" to cross by various means and methods, so long as they had sufficient tire clearance.

People also definitely rode mountain bikes in cross races, I don't think anyone knew or cared about UCI rules, though I could be wrong about this.

To that end, that bike I rode (mostly back and forth to college) was a black, heavy af Bianchi Volpe touring frame with red knobby tires - I don't remember the brand - and barcons. Pretty sure the tires were 28s. I didn't know any better so I loved that thing, and I didn't know how to adjust the cantilever brakes so they usually didn't work well at all.

Amusingly, Sheldon Brown has a page about the Volpe that describes it as a "kind of a faux cyclocross bike that evolved into a touring bike" but the way I remember it was as a touring bike that had been forced into service for 'cross.

I had a Volpe. It was a SURLY with Bianchi decals.

Horrid thing.

[mickey.d]

The cross nats Blizzard of 95 was in Leicester. The cross nats blizzard of 97 was Ft Devens. Both were tons of fun, but wow, the sport and the availability of purpose built equipment in the USA accelerated so quickly in those 3 years.

[gravelreformist]

Yes, I Leicester was where I rode the Cannondale. Thanks for the reminder!

You're absolutely right about equipment availability through that era. I went from basically being unable to find a real cross bike in the US in 1994/95 to numerous mainstream offerings by '98.

Originally Posted by benb

I am curious how this mess started with drop bar bikes with brake levers that didn't work with Cantis & Vs. It was still an issue in 2013 when I got my All City Space Horse, and from a modern perspective the bike industry didn't fix the issue till they switched everything to disc.

But Cross is old.. a heck of a lot older than integrated brake/shifters. Maybe there was no Cross in the US before integrated brake/shifters but is anyone here old enough to remember what came before? It is hard for me to believe there weren't decades of bikes that worked just fine. The first French Cyclocross National Championship was 1902 and the first Belgian National Championship was in 1910! Were there plain brake levers that worked with Cantis and other brakes that cleared big tires for a long time?

Mostly people used Mafac or similar style long-arm touring cantilevers which worked ok with road levers and had been available for quite some time. Additionally, early cross tires were often 26mm or so - and could clear older style touring caliper brakes.

That said, braking was always more of a suggestion than a directive until discs came on the scene. But honestly that was par for the course in a sport that was, almost in as many ways as possible, made intentionally difficult.

[Spaghetti Legs]

A purist would argue a “real” cross bike doesn’t have water bottle cage fittings but I like to have a bottle at cross races since I don’t have anyone to hand me a bottle. My current modernish but still kinda old Alan doesn’t have cages but I zip tied one on there.

My first cross races were about 2004 and I raced a beautiful Orbea aluminum bike which was probably late 90’s construction. Your Bianchi is interesting Nick with the horizontal dropouts. Anyway I used Avid canti brakes I think and I never could really get effective braking on that bike and a lot of times just resorted to dismounting at a full sprint. Rest of the setup was Ultegra 9 with a compact double crank, which were coming into vogue around that time.