One Sentimental Sekine
Many year's ago, my partner was gifted a MR300 Sekine from someone at her Dad's work. He used to race for Manitoba, and passed along this vintage stead. My partner used this bike to tour from Vancouver Island down to Oregon, a pannier full of books in towe. She loves it. The drivetrain, bottom bracket, headset, and nearly every other component were operating on borrowed time, so one rainy day spring 2021 I decided to pop it in the bike stand and start a rebuild.
Taking apart a bike is easy, and the budding bike mechanic is always awarded a few surprises. In this case, the vintage suntour race parts provided a whole new suite of standards I wasn't prepared for. I thought a simple clean, some new bar tape, a new cassette and chain would have this Sekine back on the road in now time. Nope!
Once I got the frame stripped down, I brought it into my local bike shop to replace the bottom bracket and headset. Both were worn to the point of indexing, so replacing with cartridge BB and new headset had things running smoothly.
The biggest crux of this rebuild was the vintage Shimano Uni-glide freehub. Popular in the 1980s, this standard was replaced with the Shimano's Hyper-glide. I scanned Ebay for a few weeks trying to cost out a NOS (new old stock) Uni-glide cassette. But ultimately decided that for the price, I might was well try to find a donor road bike in which I could swap all the parts over to freshen up this Sekine. To me, this felt like the most efficient, and cost effective way to spruce up my partner's bike, without spending a fortune on Ebay or hours at the local bike co-op picking parts.
Weeks went by as a passively scanned our local buy & sell for a suitable donor. I didn't want to go too modern, as wanted parts to appear relatively period-correct. I also didn't want to go too cheap, as I wanted to the end product to be a respectable build.
Along came the perfect candidate: a Limited Edition, 1991 Marin road bike. Complete with Shimano 105, this bike provided a more modern, and pretty much brand new drivetrain for me to swap over to the Sekine.
Given the state of this bike, I felt a bit guilty stripping it down. The frame is nice to look at though, so perhaps it will find a place on our mantel someday!
With the donor in hand, it really took an afternoon and a few Smiths albums to get everything swapped over. By dinner my partner was left with a somewhat brand new Sekine MR300 with a full Shimano 105 drivetrain.
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