I'm building a Ridgeback 603 for some reason

[dirttorpedo]

Its always cool when someone finds a bike that is meaningful to them and plays around with it. Im looking forward to seeing what you do with the pedals

 

[Muirwoods94]

Awesome. I did almost the same thing. Found a replica of my childhood Marin in such good original shape I can't bring myself to upgrade it. So it's stuck in time warp spec which means I don't really want to ride it.

My solution came when I saw another (higher spec) Marin from the same year for sale locally. As I have no personal attachment to that one, it's going to get a proper update and get ridden. And I can keep the other one secret and keep it safe.

TLDR : the solution to all your problems is to buy more bikes.

 

[lewisflex]

Im looking forward to seeing what you do with the pedals

Funny you should say that. I just got indoors after spending four hours in the workshop, doing things to pedals.

Here are some sad-looking DMR V12s. I got them for £22 on eBay.



I loved this style of pedal back then, and I still do. And I also love a project within a project, so I bought some ugly ones in order to spend far too much time making them nice.

Stripping them down showed they were perfect internally; they just needed a clean-up and a re-grease. As you can see, on the outside they needed a lot of love, and by love I mean mild abrasives.



I could have just put any old pins in here and they would look great, because these pedals always do. But this one is for teenage me, and that means multicoloured anodised studs because it's the mid 1990s.



I'm giving most of the credit to a friend here; I showed her a photo of my other DMRs and said "what stud layout would you do if you had 40 studs in 5 different colours" and she came back with this. I think it looks fantastic, and way better than anything I could think of.

 

[lewisflex]

FINALLY the last of the parts (which I ordered two weeks ago) have arrived. That meant I could hastily throw the controls together tonight.



Here we have:

* Club Roost Go Fast bars, slightly tatty (I might get these vapour blasted at some point), with NOS Club Roost brace
* Azonic Shorty stem (late 90s I think, but either way definitely in the genre of "mad CNC stuff" we all loved back then) plus 1 1/8 shim. Dunno, this might actually make the bike too short for me, but if that happens it'll look great for the entire day I have it on there. ;D
* The only reasonably-priced pair of NOS Onza Porcipaws on the planet. Don't be mad at me.
* XT thumbshifters. I loved these back in the day. I even had a pair, back when they sold for £3, but I think I broke mine because that bike ended up with RapidFire shifters later in life. This bike is staying 7 speed so this is the obvious choice. (A thing I knew back then but then forgot until today: XT thumbshifters are slightly heavier-damped in the opposite direction to the spring tension in the mech. That means upshifts feel similar to downshifts.)
* Avid Speed Dial 5s. These are actually early 2000s, but meh, they're similar enough to the earlier ones that I'll take it, and I already had them kicking around. They were on my Proflex before I swapped them for a pair of 90s ones I found on here from @shepp.

And the fork has returned! But I've got the arch to replace on that and I ran out of time this evening.