Alright so back to me for a minute...
Well, back to my bike, anyway!
The first thing I noticed when pulling everything off and giving it all a good clean was that the lovely custom WTB/Suntour post was actually bent pretty significantly.
Which was definitely a bit of a bummer, but luckily there's no sign of any internal or external damage to the frame. I just went
very slowly and carefully getting it out.
Luckily the LBS has come to the rescue here, putting me in touch with a local frame builder,
Larkin Cycles, who has agreed to carefully bend it back into shape. It'll be significantly weakened as a result, but should be OK to ride, he thinks.
(Sidenote: Larkin is the same company that made the fork/stem combo on the Klein Pinnacle I mentioned in the Cruisers thread on the other forum. I like his work a lot, so I'm thrilled to be working with him in some small way, and hope to talk about other projects at some point in the future, too.)
Unfortunately he has a lot of things on the go at once right now, so I'm still waiting to get the post back. But in the meantime I purchased the cheapest, longest, least offensive Kalloy post I could find in a 31.8 size to keep the ball/bike rolling.
I also managed to find the perfect saddle to go on it:
This came from Gringineer Cycles, and was a very lucky find. An NOS condition WTB/Specialized co-branded Prolong in the (apparently) rare perforated grey colour. Joel has been a pleasure to deal with on a few things recently, and this was no exception. By complete fluke I actually saw that he was planning to post the saddle on his site right before he did, and he was good enough to make a deal with me before it even went up for general sale. I tried to hold off putting it on the bike right away (I had this idea I'd save it for whatever the final build looked like), but I couldn't resist once it came. It just belongs on there. And it's nice that the colour somewhat matches the grey of the XTR M950 bits too.
More on my M950 thoughts, as well as that's going on up there with the cockpit, tomorrow.
I'm tired and MOTD won't watch itself...