Rocky gets a bath.

Cleaned, polished, touched up and taped and ready for parts and another 22 years of use. If you can get away with it, I say never repaint a classic frame.

From the side, note the frost-wasted pepper plant in the box just beyond the screen. Poor plant...I even covered it.

Tange MTB tubes. The pride of any Toyo built contracted frame. The welds are typical Toyo clean. Aint that yellow pretty?...makes me feel bad for all the negative things I've ever said about anything... OK not really, but it is a nice color.

Looking down the flank. Note freshly wrapped chainstay and twin bottle braze-ons on the downtube. This is a size large frame.

And underneath that nice clean wrapped chainstay, hides one of these mud-grabbing little devils. I put this little boat anchor together from parts, picking the cleanest from a big bag of bits. I contemplated polishing a set for this bike, but the patina appeals to me. I've got most of the goodies for completion in my tonnage of worthless old crap stockpiles, including three other sets of U-brakes and a huge bag of 986 cantilevers (nobody liked them back int the day, save for maybe Grant Peterson and me.) I picked up a couple front derailleurs off the old Fleabay for very cheap, so that fills the last parts gap...I'll use the cleanest of the lot when they get here. And now a little more elbow grease on the old beast, including a full breakdown and clean of the rear brake, and some serious polishing and scrubbing to clean that Dia Compe 986 brake on the front, and I'll be set.

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Old bikes are neat-o.