DaiP
Dirt Disciple
I thought I’d add something onto this thread as I’ve completed a few little jobs over the last few weeks. The main one being a rebuild / refurbishment of the forks. They felt pretty bad on the descents so I bought some new elastomers. This improved them but the front end has always felt just slightly wonky and still did with the new elastomers. Also, the front wheel has always been really awkward to fit. Even though it wasn’t obvious by eye, to cut a long story short I found one of the dropouts was distorted.
I managed to get hold of some replacement fork legs on here which needed a good tidy up including removing the remnants of an old elastomer and replacing the RC36 decals that had been applied at some point in the past with correct RC35 decals as well as giving everything a bit of a clean and polish. I ended up only using the lowers as my existing stanchions were all good after checking they were straight by putting them on a set of v blocks on a surface plate and checking for run out with a DTI. With the forks rebuilt and new stickers applied I gave it all a test run up on the hillside behind my house this morning and the handling and my confidence in the bike on the way down is much improved. The wheel actually sits perfectly straight between the legs.
A couple of other little additions have been a Ringle bottle cage which I now use to store a spare tube and some tyre levers and fitting an old Zefal mini pump to the frame. Although, I have to admit I still carry a modern pump in my Camelback in case I actually need to re-inflate a tyre. I’ve also fitted an XT shark fin to the chainstay that needed to be fettled to fit around the cable guide at the rear end of the chainstay. There are a couple of other little things I’d like to do, such as some nice period correct early nineties grips but I’m getting worryingly close to running out of jobs on this bike and may have to get another project soon.
I managed to get hold of some replacement fork legs on here which needed a good tidy up including removing the remnants of an old elastomer and replacing the RC36 decals that had been applied at some point in the past with correct RC35 decals as well as giving everything a bit of a clean and polish. I ended up only using the lowers as my existing stanchions were all good after checking they were straight by putting them on a set of v blocks on a surface plate and checking for run out with a DTI. With the forks rebuilt and new stickers applied I gave it all a test run up on the hillside behind my house this morning and the handling and my confidence in the bike on the way down is much improved. The wheel actually sits perfectly straight between the legs.
A couple of other little additions have been a Ringle bottle cage which I now use to store a spare tube and some tyre levers and fitting an old Zefal mini pump to the frame. Although, I have to admit I still carry a modern pump in my Camelback in case I actually need to re-inflate a tyre. I’ve also fitted an XT shark fin to the chainstay that needed to be fettled to fit around the cable guide at the rear end of the chainstay. There are a couple of other little things I’d like to do, such as some nice period correct early nineties grips but I’m getting worryingly close to running out of jobs on this bike and may have to get another project soon.
