Here’s my Giant Nutra refresh. She’s not too pretty, but a real smooth ride.
There are near zero steel frame classic hybrids with 700c wheels up for sale in west Georgia. I picked this one up on a trip to Savannah – felt I overpaid a bit at $50, given the rough finish, and no usable parts beyond the fork, handlebars and stem. Not sure if bars and stem are original; the fork is an old replacement. Someone apparently had stripped it, then made it barely ride-able, with old department-store grade parts. The wheels had worn brake tracks, and someone had changed tires with a square-shank screwdriver.
The Nutra is from around 1990. There’s very little about this model on the webs. No catalog pages, even, that show it. **If anyone has insights or literature scans to share, please do!**
I soon picked up an aluminum 2003 Giant Cypress LX that had barely been ridden, but had failed clear coat, and was hazy-ugly. With its lower mid-range components, it rode well. This became my donor bike.
My photos show some of the Nutra’s worst finish damage, but there’s plenty more. I held off on putting this bike together, until I decided I could live with the rough finish. So many beautiful bikes come through r/xbiking that ya kinda want to be one of them. I’m not good with paint, so prettying it up wasn’t appealing. Not even messing with the bare areas or rust. I’m with those that see rust as a protective coating. The frame will outlive me.
The bike weighs 27.8 lbs, down 3 lbs. from when I got it. I kept track because having a “light” steel framed bike was a novel idea for me, my last steel bike being a 70s Schwinn Varsity that was 40 lbs. The 1×9 gears provide for the range of leisure riding an old guy will be doing.
I used a Funn brand chain ring, mainly because it offsets the chain line inward by 1.5mm, just a bit of fine tuning. I also picked Funn brand grips, after I found that Oury purple is a poor match for RaceFace purple pedals. I picked the purple to bring out some of the purple in the emblems and paint. The paint has a pearlessence that makes it show as blue or violet, depending on the light and angle of view.
Unfinished: Cable housings are fine, and not a bad color, but I had to use black for the rear-most brake housing… not enough to motivate me to replace everything. I need to get rid of the canti stand-off under the stem nut, but have to find the right washer(s). It’s 1/8 in. thick. Or, 3/16 if I also replace the existing single washer with a fatter one. Ideas? I see a guy on Ebay and Amazon that makes custom stainless washers for about $20, but, that’s too much for what I need. Standard washers are about $8.50 on Ebay, but I’d need two of them, still too much.
PitifulStand4424 on
Looks good and clean. One of the all-time great Giant names in my opinion, along with the “Butte,” due to its resemblance to “Nutria.”
2 Comments
Here’s my Giant Nutra refresh. She’s not too pretty, but a real smooth ride.
There are near zero steel frame classic hybrids with 700c wheels up for sale in west Georgia. I picked this one up on a trip to Savannah – felt I overpaid a bit at $50, given the rough finish, and no usable parts beyond the fork, handlebars and stem. Not sure if bars and stem are original; the fork is an old replacement. Someone apparently had stripped it, then made it barely ride-able, with old department-store grade parts. The wheels had worn brake tracks, and someone had changed tires with a square-shank screwdriver.
The Nutra is from around 1990. There’s very little about this model on the webs. No catalog pages, even, that show it. **If anyone has insights or literature scans to share, please do!**
I soon picked up an aluminum 2003 Giant Cypress LX that had barely been ridden, but had failed clear coat, and was hazy-ugly. With its lower mid-range components, it rode well. This became my donor bike.
My photos show some of the Nutra’s worst finish damage, but there’s plenty more. I held off on putting this bike together, until I decided I could live with the rough finish. So many beautiful bikes come through r/xbiking that ya kinda want to be one of them. I’m not good with paint, so prettying it up wasn’t appealing. Not even messing with the bare areas or rust. I’m with those that see rust as a protective coating. The frame will outlive me.
The bike weighs 27.8 lbs, down 3 lbs. from when I got it. I kept track because having a “light” steel framed bike was a novel idea for me, my last steel bike being a 70s Schwinn Varsity that was 40 lbs. The 1×9 gears provide for the range of leisure riding an old guy will be doing.
I used a Funn brand chain ring, mainly because it offsets the chain line inward by 1.5mm, just a bit of fine tuning. I also picked Funn brand grips, after I found that Oury purple is a poor match for RaceFace purple pedals. I picked the purple to bring out some of the purple in the emblems and paint. The paint has a pearlessence that makes it show as blue or violet, depending on the light and angle of view.
Unfinished: Cable housings are fine, and not a bad color, but I had to use black for the rear-most brake housing… not enough to motivate me to replace everything. I need to get rid of the canti stand-off under the stem nut, but have to find the right washer(s). It’s 1/8 in. thick. Or, 3/16 if I also replace the existing single washer with a fatter one. Ideas? I see a guy on Ebay and Amazon that makes custom stainless washers for about $20, but, that’s too much for what I need. Standard washers are about $8.50 on Ebay, but I’d need two of them, still too much.
Looks good and clean. One of the all-time great Giant names in my opinion, along with the “Butte,” due to its resemblance to “Nutria.”