Thanks for the comments chaps
I'll attempt to answer the questions here:
It does have a familiar Nuke Proof 'look' as compared to Defiant's Ti Nuke, especially around the seat cluster, but this one is definately aluminium!
I was initially concerned about it's rarity and possible fragility/parts availability, garage queens aren't really my thing, but having played around with it a bit...........first off, it's aluminium and lots of it, the headtube measures in at 57mm at the top and 74mm at the bottom :shock: , the top-tube at 45mm dwarfs the 34.9mm seat-tube so as you can imagine frame rigidity is not an issue, no flex or speed wobbles on this thing......it just goes where I point it
Fortunately it's not overly unforgiving at the rear end, solid but tolerable, I've ridden far worse!
The forks.....what would I find there? Thankfully it's all good, the shock is a standard easily replaceable Rock-Shox Coupe Deluxe coil over unit and all the pivots are cartridge roller bearings, no problem there either........the headset, despite it's enormity runs on cartridge bearings too so these should be available if needed but I'm guessing that due to it's size the bearings within are relatively lightly loaded compared to a standard headset, so should last a while! They ride about how I expected....a bit like an amp fork, there is very little 'fork bob' during out of the saddle bar-end efforts which is nice........however I'm still experimenting, i've found that the characteristics of the forks can be changed quite dramatically by inverting the top linkage mount (the threads on it are slightly offset) it varies from quite firm to very push by flipping the mount......somewhere in the middle by messing around with the spring preload I should find a happy medium!
The back end of the frame is relatively normal.....as a non-biking friend of mine said "it's as if they'd run out of ideas once they got past the front!"
.....no problem, the welding is uber-tidy and it works........fine by me
here's a couple more pics of the fork linkage......more to follow.