1993 Hardrock dropout conversion

Here’s a pet project we had hanging in the rafters all summer! It’s about time we pulled this old mountain bike out and did that thing we’ve been threatening to do.

This was a pretty basic 1990’s bike, nothing too fancy in its own day. Pretty standard fare for its time, the Specialized Hardrock was a nicely made bike, with high quality Chromoly tubing and all of the things you would need to get started out on the trail. But we had a dream for this bike… we wanted it to spend its later years as a sweet vintage commuter that could be belt drive, or singlespeed, or both! The solution: Paragon Machine Works sliding dropout with a split stay kit.

Here’s the process: Remove the old dropouts, do some magical cutting, bending, and melting… and BAM! This bike has a new life. It actually went a little smoother than expected and everything shaped up as we saw in our heads, even the crazy bend in the driveside seatstay so we could install the split kit backwards. PMW usually has the fixing bolt on the inside and it lends itself to cleaner lines, but we wanted that gosh darn bolt facing outwards at all costs. We aligned things to have it our way!

It was already a challenging proposition, as you can see the dropouts are quite different. But it wasn’t anything a little creative thinking and on-the-fly problem solving couldn’t overcome. The next step in its life comes when we get around to assembling it into rideable bicycle again!