1996 GT Xizang

Well I've been wanting one of these for a good long while but haven't had the spare cash to get one till now. Big thanks to CCMdoc over at mtbr, well and here as well, for hooking me up with this one.
Happy day when it turned up...fine effort in packaging, took me half an hour to get down to the frame...








No there was a small problem: (yes I knew about it before buying)



this cause me loads of issues as it was a M950 BB that had some super hard bearing surface in it that was hacksaw resistant... anyway







Yay!!




spare BB to see if I didn't screw it up too much...




SO now to a build... I will strip down my yet that has mostly late 90's early 00's XT on it and see how it goes...I know a Judy SL would be perfect, but I have a Manitou Mars to go on it as a) I like Manitlou stuff, b) it has a lockout. Then will decide if I go new stuff or try to track down some 95x XTR (NOT a bloody 950 BB thats for sure), all depends on how much I am riding it...

But must say today is a happy day now I have the BB out and can start on the build.

Very cool!!

Good luck with the rest of your build, go GT!!!

nice one! it must have been very rewarding to get that bottom bracket out! you did a great job. how did you do it? i can see the file? in the pictures or is that a small saw

Yeah, well most of the bracket was gone due to the unhappy removal before I got it. Started out with a hacksaw, witch was fine cutting through the aluminium, until I hit the hardend steel (or whatever) bearing face... then it just blunted a pile of hacksaws which only barely made a mark... so today went and bought a dremel and used a grinding bit...woosh straight through, then taped out the hard race and carefully used a triangle shaped file to get through the rest (and a teeny bit of thread , GF was going your through to the thread...na its still the cup... but was actually through. Then it started to crack, so used a punch to knock it out of round . Then tap it till there was enough threat to grab with pliers and rotate it out.

Was damn horrible.

what an ordeal! nice to have the support of the GF though. that's not too common an occurance!

Looking forward to the stages in the build, manitous will be an interesting and good break from the norm.

FYI you can get a cartridge octalink V1 BB (shimano 105) which will suit XTR M95* cranks.

If you end up going external BB I found my (92) Xizang's BB shell was 0.5mm out of square and had to get it faced by a frame builder as all the LBS' refused as they were scared of Ti. One said I don't want to mess up my £700 tool

lovely job.....i find anything is possible if you want the frame that much

Blooming great job on the Bottom bracket.
Look forward to the progress shots

Great stuff, nice work on the BB shell, if that's a 16" frame i'll be REALLY REALLY JEALOUS

Looking forward to the build pics

Likewise. The Xizang always struck me as a very dynamic, nimble bike - I'd love to test ride someday.