It's been 12 years now... (FSR content)

.. and still I did not manage to finish my FSR-Project. 12 years!



This is the frame that started it all. I got it on ebay. 10Euros, large dent in the top tube, but wtf I thought, its steel, has not to be pretty. And I never had a rear suspension before. So I got the frame, tried to build it, but at that time I had close to no tools, no parts and no knowledge about suspension. I did a crappy build, rode something like 2km, the old Fox Alps souped out all the oil that it had left and lost all air. I was so disappointed I threw the thing into a corner and did not touch it again for a loong time..
Children were born, continents moved a few centimetres..
And one day some 3 years ago I stumbled across an add of an old Scott team racing. 50Euros. Really? I bought it. And man! That lit my spark again.



Back in the mountain bike world and lusting for all those once unreachable now cheap and rather easy to get frames and bits I remembered the old FSR sitting in my basement. I did a few searches on the interwebs, saw quite a few awesome builds and decided to give it a go, once again. I thought with that shot frame I cant do anything wrong, it's too late for that one anyhow.



I was thinking about making a rat kind of build, only using parts that were heavily used and I imagined I would polish or paint them so they become shiny again.
Like these pedals for example:

After hours of fiddling:



Or those Magura race lines that were really ugly when I got them:


Polished a crank:


I had to buy all the polishing equipment to get there.


Got into serious money to buy a bike that had this nice little fork on it that would suit my FSR so well. And managed to totally redo it so it works like new:


I even managed to build my own sand blasting box to get rid of the paint:




Then I bought a few spray cans of primer, red colour and lacquer.






And this is where it started to go wrong.


To be continued...


(nice cliffhanger, isn't it? )

You don't mess around once started!
How did you build a blasting booth??

I used to watch a lot of McGiver as a kid, so I used some wood, tape and a swiss army knife

No, seriously. Thats not too complicated. Its basically a wooden box with a hopper shaped bottom and a hinged top. Some plexiglass window ( from an old picture frame) and 2 old sleeves. Because my woodwork was not too precise, I made a plastic "bag" to fit inside, so the sand stays in. And not to forget a vent hole with some sort of filter (those old wool socks that scratch so bad... ), so the air can escape somewhere.
Another problem was the compressor. It needs to have quite some output performance and mine was not powerful enough. Luckily I found another one on the tip. And connected both of them together with a Y-hose-adapter.
Oh - in the end I actually had to buy something for it to work. The actual sandblaster tool and - also very important - a water trap to go in between the compressors and the box. There is quite a lot of water condensing in the pressurized air. And after very short time the sand would start sticking together.

The hopper shape of the box allowes the used sand to gather at the bottom where it is sucked up again and does not get wasted.

While the frame was hanging in the sun and I was waiting for the paint to dry and harden, I took apart the old Alps.
Some self made tool was needed to undo everything...


Those are so plain simple, compared to the modern stuff I was repairing recently...


But on closer inspection I found this:

This dampener is not going to work any more. The air will always go past this defect and put pressure on the oil chamber.
Searching the net for a replacement 140mm dampener prooved to be quite hard. I did not know the CaneCreek AD-10 at the time. And the Risse units seemed a tad too pricey for that kind of project. (600 something new plus shippement to Europe - no way!)
Bummer.
Back to the frame after some 5 hours of sun - not dry yet. Put it inside my garage. And waited. And waited. 2 months later (yes. 2 effin' months) paint still not really hardened. I was able to press markings in with my fingernail. So that did not work out. I was really disappointed.
Started to remove the paint - again. Was a mess with that darn paint sticking onto the sand paper.
After a few days of scratching and cursing I stopped, threw on a few ridiculous parts to take a fun pic to post on the German forum. My comment was "Its nearly finished!"

Ha,ha, very funny.
I gave up on this.

Then I found some other projects. I had a lot of fun with my then newly acquired Mantra, an RTS, an Ibis Szasbo, RM Cirrus. I did a rebuild of my first MTB, my beloved Hercules Titanal. Last came my Biketech Hikari team
Along with all the bikes came more and more parts and bits. I became a regular reader of IBC and retrobike forum, learned a lot, saw many bikes. Saw my taste switching from month to month. Every now and then I saw someone showing off his FSR. Always gave me a little sting.
Would be soo nice to have mine finished...

To be continued...

This thread started so promising, I was so happy to see another nice project restored to its former glory...

What will you do now with it?

Wait for it I am going for an arc of suspense here. This is real life after all
(That last "fun" pic was taken in 2013..)

Well you got me curious

Love the work on the magura's I got a grubby set I'm gonna use on one of my builds.

All I can say is: Don't try to polish the levers housing. It will look horrible. The cast metal is somewhat changing and uneven. And after polishing you can see waves and layers from the casting process. I tried to make a picture, but its hard to see the effect.

3 Weeks ago I was sitting in my Office, reading some rbuk, the topic of markpattenden to be exact, when a post popped up in the german forum, linking to a local add. Someone offered a FSR frame set. Kind of "in the mood" I clicked.

The guy's asking price was 350 Euro and with Christmas just over and the bank account rather low I thought I am safe (not to do anything stupid) and might as well take a closer look.
It was a rather battered looking red team fsr with .... a FSX fork. The Judy type. Titanium stem. *sting* in the back of my head. Damn. 350 Euro? No. That's too much. But you don't see fsr's that often. And FSX-forks even less.
So I wrote a message to the guy. He wouldn't want to post the frame anyhow, I thought. Somebody would have contacted him before me. And I shure would not pay 350 Euro. Phew. Still safe. I wont buy it and my wife is not going to kill me.

Half an hour later, my phone rang. It was the seller telling me, that the frame had seen hard use. And that I was right with my theory about the forks bridge had its overarm chopped off. I told him that I was interested, but only offered 200. He said he would think about it and maybe call me later. - Puh. That was close.

Two hours later I got an email from the homepage that provided the add. "The add you were interested in was deleted by the seller.... bla bla..." So someone else got the frame.
But a few minutes later, my phone rang and again the seller on the other side. He's like "I was searching my basement, found a second frame, its blue and may have some bushings missing. I'll post it over all together if you want. So. 230 Euro all inclusive. What do you say?" - Guess what!

Christmas is very early this year.