Bianchi Thomisus 1992
The 90s were a different time in term of bicycle design. Mountain biking was a hot topic and every manufacturer tried to be “unique”.
And of course Bianchi had to do it. They released a series of MTBs called “Ragno”, italian for spider, clearly inspired by the famous triple triangle iconic from GT design. But they pushed it a bit further :
img catalogue
There is 6 models ranging from the lowest quality to the highest quality:
- Meta
- Thomisus
- Pholcus
- Theridion
- Migale
- Araneus
I was browsing leboncoin.fr (our version of craiglist) when I saw a Bianchi Thomisus, to be honest my goal was to find a quality steel 90s mtb for a new build. But seeing this frame I never saw before I had to get it.
It was not the quality I was expecting but the weirdness of the frame made me call the seller, 2 days later I got the bike.
(It has been a long time since I rebuilt the bike so I don’t have all the original parts in mind, will update it)
The Thomisus is equipped with : (link velobase)
- Shimano Exage Long Cage Rear Derailleur
- Shimano Exage Front Derailleur
- A Biopace triple chainring
- Shimano hubs
- Shimano rims
- Shimano U brake
- Shimano front cantilever
Warning : It comes with a 21.1mm steerer tube fork, so you need to either keep the original stem (mine was in a bad visual shape so I changed it) or look into some old BMX stem matching this size. Exactly what I did.
Goal was to make it my daily driver, something confortable, relatively fast and useful for carrying things. I started by removing the triple crankset, the mtb tires and all the useless things for my usage.
I changed the crankset for a Shimano 600 I converted to single I had laying around. Changed the cassette for something with more range to compensate the single chainring.
I put Maxxis DTH 2.15” tires, with those lovely beige sidewalls, it looks so great on vintage MTB !
First iteration of the build was something like this :
I quickly realized that due to the old setup with triple, the chain was not very straight and I got a lot of chain jumps. So I put back the front derailleur, just acting as a chain guard to prevent it from skipping. Works like a charm.
I then removed the leather saddle and added a front rack later on, for more carrying capacity and because I needed that saddle.
And then I got a trailer for it, still need to transform it to a proper bicycle trailer with a wood plank and some metal railing to carry and attach things.
With the trailer came another problem, the ratio on the front was too much and I was only using my lowest gear on the back. So I switched for a new chainring, changing the crankset in the process because the BCD was not matching with my new chainring.