deleted

[fennec]

gonna re-do this in a cleaner format and just link to it later, there were a few too many pictures of my house and such i dont want online the more i think about it

 

[novocaine]

welcome back gamers, ive been absent as i do less internet and more real net
you know how rad it is to not see youtube period? its great, bike people on the youtube suck

anyway i live in a place with two total downhill trails so i wanted a downhill bike, except i wanted one made of random 20 year old nonsense so heres what im doing

i bought this here 2006 morewood shova ST off of ebay, being sold as just "a morewood" because it has no decals and looking these things up is like trying to find a needle in a moderately small haystack but i dont want to go into the haystack because im wearing mint colored clothes today and dont want to get them dirty
fedex managed to whingdangle the derailleur hanger so i had to spend money on a new one, turns out thats actually easy to find

heres how it was ootb:
View attachment 974308

its got that "champagne" paint which im sorry, to the morewood people who designed this a long time ago, i think is a terrible color for an aluminum bike, like wow how original it looks a slightly different metal color, really shows off that cool milling pattern in the rear triangle
that shock is a manitou swinger 4 way spv, the sticker on it was just covering the original sticker and it came right off, it works perfectly fine and i didnt really touch it beyond ripping this frame apart to clean and prep everything

heres how its supposed to look
View attachment 974312

so seeing that and then seeing that i cant find those decals anywhere and id need to get custom ones, i said screw that and screw this lame paint, lets ruin this for 12$ worth of bootleg posca markers and dollar store clear coat
after all this is a downhill bike, its going to be slammed into the ground at speed, the paint might as well be disposable

i lost the rest of the pictures of the teardown but its not interesting, its single pivot, all the bearings feel fine, if they dont feel fine in the future ill replace them with a hammer and a second hammer
View attachment 974314

so anyway i got to work ruining a really nice handmade frame from south africa
View attachment 974315

i want to say its intentionally a bit scuffed but its really just that i did this while zoinked out of my gourd on the finest of offerings that the glorious state of michigan has to offer while blasting the chemical brothers so loud the subwoofer rattled my park tool stand
after a while it looked like this
View attachment 974316

yes i did this initially in the bedroom
and yes i had to deep clean the entire bedroom because i got little fleks of bike grime all over the sheets
i wrote morewood on it wrong, twice, not in spelling but in color the first time and spacing the second time
i used a healthy-piss colored posca marker initially because i have warm yellow pissbulbs in my bedroom and didnt realize it wasnt white, that was fixed before clear coating

View attachment 974318

it doesnt need to be pretty it just needs to be not boring as hell

er, yer, I love that.
got a grateful dead feel to it to be fair.

 

[Imlach]

Phwoar. What a return. I splooged and splat.

I'm away for a fag.

 

[novocaine]

and then it was fork time, and i was like, i want a dual crown fork because it looks cool, but dont want to spend 2 grand on a fox 40
and then realized i needed a 150-180mm travel fork which just doesnt exist in dual crown anymore so i rolled with the bike made of random garbage vibes and got this mediocre marzocchi drop off triple 170 from 2006
View attachment 974330

i paid too much money for this and way over estimated the amount of steerer tube i was going to need because i was expecting to use a normal stem at first, so i spent ages searching for a suitable fork and ended up with a tolerable fork at best that needs work
its like a mid tier 20 year old downhill fork, most of these were take-offs from people who bought nice bikes with lame forks and replaced them with better forks, but it still works and despite the cracked 20 year old seals it actually doesnt leak or weep any oil, and it still has oils, i can hear it in there
the axel nuts are both stripped because its a weird head and it looks like someone just shoved a 5mm hex wrench in there and went to town at some point, but whatever, i only had to spend $80 to have some replacements shipped from germany
i also posca markered the mangled stickers
View attachment 974333
poorly.

and then cleaned it all up a little, car finishing compound on everything to make it shinier than it was
View attachment 974332
notice something about that crown?
i didnt

until this point here
View attachment 974331
answer direct mount stem, looked cool, was inexpensive, its built like a brick, it looks ultra rad in person
its expecting a threaded crown, this crown is not threaded
i dont know what its supposed to be, searching this is nonsense "direct mount stem non threaded" obviously doesnt help with this
after trying to figure out how to resolve this i was about to fill the holes with weld, drill and tap it as m6, and realized the top crown is cast/stamped aluminum and i would ruin it forever

so how does one resolve this with 14$ and zero care
View attachment 974329

in true generic white guy fashion i smacked it and went "yeah thats not going anywhere"
its m6x25 in the front upside down with lock nuts and blue locktite, at some overly tight torque spec, i didnt measure
and the back is m6x35 with spacers, lock nuts and blue locktite
theres a reason for that, thats the only way it fits, the bottom of the crown being curved means you cant get a nut much closer and you cant flip em because the top part is inset
and for the front you cant flip them the right way around because only a 20mm long bolt fits into that little triangle to get it in there

top hats would have been my fix.

 

[novocaine]

Put on your safety squints nerds were getting mildly dangerous

View attachment 975519
Drill meet spacer meet bolt meet dremel
View attachment 975520
That looks less suspiciously dangerous

You cut always custom make (dremal) the bolts to fit in the recess on top. Then use the cap head from the bottom.

 

[Fatguyonabike]

I love this build and it instantly made me think of...

 

[The History Man]

Gorgeous paint job.

 

[pictonroad]

This is excellent content.

Splendid amount of effort for the what will, surely be, minimal acclaim and no reward.

It's EXACTLY why I'm here.

Keep it up.

 

[The History Man]

That is joyous. I care not a jot for the build. It appears purposeful. The colour scheme is everything!


Chapeau!

 

[Duggee]

Glorious bike. Pink flamingos are very fitting.