Graecross Jackaroo MTB

 

2 mystery bosses here closest to the seat. What do they do? Mystery solved, they are for a portage strap as described in this Redit Thread and this bike description. Quite glad to have picked this frame up now, this sort of detail makes it more interesting. Thanks to Ben Kampschoer for the tip about the strap.

Hi

Last week I was at a tip shop and as well as dropping off stuff, just could not help myself and bought a bicycle for the grand sum of $10. It is a vintage mountain bike, and they are popular in the city of Melbourne these days - even one that's tidied up still costs less than a new bike, and they can be quite stylish with interesting parts.

This one worked fine straight from the shop - I needed to pump up the tyres but there was a slow leak in the back.  Anyway, I thought I'd post a few "before" pics to show its original state. I had no luck cleaning rust from the handlebars, and a handlebar swap is all I've done except buy new tyres and tubes at more than 10 times the cost of the whole bike!

There is a police identification number written enthusiastically into the stem, frame, seatpost and cranks, and this is an Aussie made bike: with a name like Jackaroo how could it not be?

A few others have found it worthwhile mentioning Graecrosses including https://mtbtimeline.com/wiki/grae/start which seems to list almost every early mountainbike brand. "A New Recyclist" talks about fixing up a Graecross racing bike here, https://rustybikebell.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/a-garden-gate-graecross-the-pro-ten/ . A passing reference is made in Suzi's blog here https://www.suzyj.net/2014/02/ . I'd never come across this Australian blog before which is long running and seems to have morphed from making bicycles to coding and computers.

Anyway, the parts on this one seem to be very nice and durable. The covers on the shifters are missing, but what the heck, they still work! Will report more as things are cleaned and fixed up.