Mountain Cycle Shockwave 9.5 revamp

[synchronicity]

Picked up these new old stock crank arms for a reasonable price online from... Malaysia of all places.
The only problem now is, all my 2 or 3 existing chainrings are all 104mm and these have a 94mm spider.

 

[Mikey08]

You can take the spider off and fit a direct mount chainring

 

[synchronicity]

Well it is lighter and cheaper, yes.
The thing is though, I don't really like the look of it.
I miss the spider that wraps around the crank arms.

I might get a new 104mm spider from North Shore Billet. Expensive though.
Either than or 94mm chainring.

 

[synchronicity]

I got a nice price on a few lightweight nos headsets, KCNC & crank brothers (like 30 to 40 euros).
So I may or may not fit one of those.

May as well go for an attempt at the title of "world's lightest mountain cycle shockwave 9.5".

 

[synchronicity]

This has been ordered.
Reasonably expensive for what it is, but such is life.

I might just hang on to the 94mm spider in case I want to downsize the front chainring one day.

Also thought about getting a direct mount chainring instead, which would have been cheaper and no doubt lighter, but as previously stated, don't really like the look of them (or how they attach, I like the more sculpted/moulded look where they blend into the crank arms a bit). So too new for my liking.

 

[synchronicity]

This arrived today.
Just some cheapy SRAM/truvativ GXP cups (only £25).
Was not able to find a black version in 83mm width, only silver.
So went with a black 100mm fat version instead.

Seeing as the BB shell does not seem to have any open entry points, I will forgo the centre sleeve, bugger it.
Well it won't fit anyway. Of course, that was the plan.
I'm now selling that separately here.

The new crank/BB combination looks to save around 300 grams of weight (well, mass) overall.
I thought it would be somewhat more than that actually. Oh well.

 

[Lacuna]

direct mount chainring would have saved more weight

 

[synchronicity]

Well, it appears I ballsed up.

I took off the existing crankset + BB. Nothing untoward.

Then as I was inspecting/cleaning the old BB in order to photograph and sell,
I noticed that it looked shorter than I expected. Or rather, normal size.
Then reading "73mm" on the shell (centre sleeve) I was like "funny, shouldn't that read 83mm?"

Dashed over to measure the shell width and it is indeed 73mm not 83mm.
I could have sworn it was 83mm.

Lesson learned kids, don't trust your memory to these things.
I thought I could remember all the sizes of all the bits on all my bikes. Apparently not.
Oh well.

I might be able to put some spacers on either side (or something).

 

[rigidftw]

Bummer. Been following your thread for a while.

5mm each side might be a bit much for the BB cups.

Kinda saw that one coming, but I figured you'd know the width the BB shell better than me...

 

[Lacuna]

You could just buy a 73mm centre tube? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303139898304