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Once again, the famous Cleanskin is a garage wall ornament, looking for a purpose.

To save the first time vistor read all the guff below, here's a brief history of The Cleanskin.

It was a Shogun Prairie Breaker Pro. I bought it near-new in late '96. Yada yada, upgrade upgrade...as happens to bikes that get ridden a lot.

I eventually took to the frame with paint stripper, and left it as bare, as-extruded aluminium. The legend of The Cleanskin was born.

When I swapped all of the 'Skin's components over to my new frame and fork in '01, the Cleanskin frame (now with skinned fork) spent some time hanging on the wall. Then I rounded up all my spare bits (and accumulated a few more) to turn it into a massively over-specced commuter hack, with road cranks, narrow traffic-weaving bars and 1.4" slicks.

For various reasons, it was rarely used as a commuter hack. I was commuting on my roadie more often than the Cleanskin. And Bec was showing a bit of interest in trying some proper mountain biking on a bike that fit her better than Blackbike. So, I tweaked the 'Skin up to be as much of a smaller-person's MTB as a mid-90s 17" frame can be.

A mid-90s 17" frame doesn't make much of a smaller person's MTB. When Gaz the Giraffe Boy did a bike reorganisation and found himself with a small-sized Mongoose NX something-or-other frame to spare, I snapped it up and did the classic frame-swap with Bec's Cleanskin.

Now, the Cleanskin lives on the wall of the shed. Frame, seatpost, bottom bracket, front derailer, buggered headset. Maybe it will rise again.

With a brief and significant spate of upgrades (frame, fork, headset, BB, seatpost, front derailer), I think it's time to admit to myself that I have a NEW bike.

The Cleanskin, as it became known, spent some time as just a bare frame and fork in my bike room, waiting for a new reason to exist. That reason soon became obvious - the schweetest commuter hack on the planet.

I'll update this page with full details and pictures some other time, but, in brief, the general layout is:

• Frame: Cleanskin, formerly Sh*g*n
• Fork: Cleanskin, formerly '98 Judy XC with Total Air Cartridges
• Wheels: STX-RC front and XT rear hubs: Bontrager Mustang front and Araya rear rims, DT 14g spokes, Ritchey "Tom Slick" 1.4 tyres
• Drivetrain: Sakae road crankset with 40-50 rings, XT 11-32 8-speed cluster, Deore front derailer, ~'98 XT rear derailer, old worn-out Gripshifters that will be replaced as soon as I can be bothered, long spindled (124mm?) UN52 BB (needed to get the big schmoad rings off the chainstay)
• Brakes: Avid 1D V-brakes with cheap-ish Avid levers
• Controls: 135x5 GT stem (long and flat), narrow-ish flat bars, purple ano bar-ends inboard of the brake levers - cheap aero bars!

It's fast, and more comfortable (for mine) than my schmoadie.

The remainder of this page is for historical purposes only.

My bike is a few years old now. I bought it "second hand" at the end of '96. That is, the brother of the guy in the shop had decided to take up mountain biking, and bought a bike. Changed his mind two rides later, and sold the bike for about 70% of cost. The tyres were original (Tioga Psycho IIs), and could have been new off the shelf for the wear on them. The bike was genuinely "as new". New price: $1300 odd. My price: $950.

The bike in question is a 96(?) model Shogun Prairie Breaker Pro. Lots of people dismiss Shogun as a manufacturer of pretty average commuting bikes, just a few steps up from Hu##ies and the like. Their upper models are better: I like to think that my frame is about as good as a mid-range Giant ATX (860 or so). It's TIG-welded out of triple butted Easton aluminium tubing, with a big reinforcing gusset at the stem, and it had "Made in USA" stickers on it. At one stage I stripped it down to a bare frame (with headset races still in), and it weighed about 2kg (4lb) which is about what you'd expect of a reasonable, but not exotic or fragile, hardtail frame.

It came with an STX-RC group (hubs, canti brakes, RF shifter/lever pods, derailers, 7 speed cluster, cranks and rings), Tioga Alchemy headset and a pair of original Marzocchi Zokes suspension forks.

Over and above (and subsequent to and replacing) standard equipment, I put on:

(...this list has become my way of keeping track of what's going on with my bike...)
• SPD-M535 pedals;
• steeper stem (about 30 degrees x 135mm);
• WTB Velociraptor rear tyre;
• My home-made 20W Headlight;
• Sugino cranks and rings (because the Shimano cranks were insatalled too loose, and their tapers were damaged);
• '98 model Rockshox Judy XC forks (second hand again...$350 after 2 months instead of ~$700 new);
• kool-stop brake pads;
• a Norco speedo/computer;
• Sachs PC-41 chain (replacement when the Shimano one wore out);
• Shimano IG-70(?) cluster (the old chain was too far gone);
• '99 model XT rear deraileur (replacement when the main bearing wore out);
• OURY grips;
• WTB Velociraptor front tyre;
• Shimano UN-52 bottom bracket bearing (LP-26 died...as they do);
• Total Air cartridges for Judy;
• Another WTB Velociraptor rear tyre;
• Another Sachs PC-41 chain;
• Gripshift 009 front shifter (old leftovers);
• Dia Compe left brake lever (old leftovers);
• Gripshift 009 8-speed front shifter (partner of the above, only using 7 clicks)
• Avid SD-25 V-brakes and SD-1.9 brake levers (leftovers after a friend bought Magura brakes)
• Paint stripper! The original paintjob was pretty ordinary, and getting very chipped. Bare, unpolished aluminium makes for an interesting looking frame.
• Specialized Body Geometry saddle
• Back to the Selle Bassano leather saddle, cos the BG was too wide
• '98(?) Shimano XT 8-speed 36-hole rear hub (ex-display stock, going cheap)
• Araya DH-915 rim: wide, eyeletted, double cavity, machined, reasonably light, and CHEAP! One of the few 36-hole rims I could find at the time. I like high spoke counts...
• 36 DT stainless 14g spokes: I built the wheel myself, 3x/radial
• '98 XT 8-speed cluster, second hand off a run-over bike a friend picked up out of the classifieds - I now use all 8 clicks of my shifter
• LX 4-arm cranks, 22-32-42T rings. Came off the same run-over bike.
• GT CrMo 135x5dg stem. Something more flat and conventional than my "riser" stem. Easy swap-in option, but I almost always use the old riser.
• A friend's old wheelset: Bontrager Mustang ceramic rims on 32-hole XT hubs, all rather well used. I did a rim-swap, and now have two ceramic-rimmed front wheels, and two alloy-rimmed rear wheels. For normal MTB use, I use the "new" front wheel (XT hub and Bonty rim), and my "old" rear wheel (XT hub and Araya DH rim). The other wheelset (my old STX-RC front hub laced to the other Bontrager rim and the "new" XT hub laced to my old Araya front rim) have slick tyres permanently mounted, or can be used as a spare at any time. I needed new spokes for the rear wheel, because the nipples had been loctited on the old spokes.
• XTR 12-32T 8-speed steel cluster. Came with the wheelset.
• Bontrager Jones 2.2" front tyre. Came with the wheelset. I had been riding for months on a velociraptor with a big gash in the sidewall.
• Titec Hell-Bent Flat-Tracker bars. 9 degree sweep flat bar. Not light, but lovely.
• STX-RC 8-speed rapidfire shifters
• New OURY grips

Just out of interest, now that the list above is getting pretty long, these things are still original on my bike.

• Frame (Shogun)
• Seatpost (Kalloy?)
• Front deraileur (STX-RC)
• Headset (Tioga Alchemy)
• Bar-ends (Tioga?)
• Front hub (STX-RC) (now on my "road" wheelset)
• Front rim (Araya) (now rear rim of my "road" wheelset)
• Front spokes (all 32 of them, 14g stainless)...I rebuilt my "road" front wheel with the same spokes
• Saddle (Selle Bassano, leather with Mn alloy rails

Of course, I've also gone through lots of cables, bearings and tubes. I killed my old rear wheel when I pinch-flatted on a fast rocky downhill, but I rebuilt and rehabilitated it, and it lives on, on Bec's bike. I tend to wear things out rather than break them. I guess I got sick of having to fix my bike when I broke it when I was little, so I learnt to be gentle.