Okay, so where was I?
That first ride.
So with a new tire needed and ordered, I took a few minutes to assess everything else.
The fork needed a refresh, so I had a quick poke around inside...
This side looked decent:
This side however looked just a
little bit off...
Hmmm. Seems to be missing something...
All that dusty looking stuff? That was what was left of the rest of the elastomers.
Which means the fork will need a refurb, which is fine. I'm talking to
@kokies about that, and will look to get everything sorted with the fork in the next little while.
In the meantime, I figured I'd take a look at that front brake, which wasn't as responsive as I would have liked on that first ride. Well, turns out the spring was a little stretched out of alignment, and that my dumbass wasn't as careful as I should have been; snapping it clean in half as I tried to bend it back into the correct shape.
So now I'd also need either a random Speedmaster spring to replace the broken one (anyone?), or a new pair of the cantilevers themselves for the front.
Right now Black Mountain Cycles actually has three pairs for sale on their website, so I may well grab a spare set from there.
In the meantime, I had a long think about what I had on hand and what I wanted to do. It didn't make sense to me to have this wonderful Phoenix sitting here ready to ride, and not use what I had available to make that a reality. Which unfortunately meant I had to make some tough decisions.
In the end, the S-Works was sacrificed to the alter of superior steel**, and the FSX's along with the Tri-Align attached to them (now fitted with a gently used set of WTB Gripmaster pads) made the transfer over to the new red love of my life:
A fresh pair of Terra One's were added front and rear, along with a spare NOS American Classic cage, and the random grey XTR outers I had on hand. Basically, anything I had lying about the place that would help get the bike out of the stand!
The aforementioned Suntour/Ringle mashup:
And, always a nice touch: the original shop decal from Mesa Cycles in St. Louis, Missouri.
I talked about them, but hadn't shown a photo of the pedals yet:
They came with a very off-putting white screw-in plug, so looking around in the bins, I figured I could cut down some bar plugs for something a little less jarring. I quite like the touch, so will be trying to find some old WTB bar plugs to replace the random ODI ones at some point.
As you can see above, the M950 kit is far from aesthetically perfect, but performance-wise, several weeks and plenty of miles later, I really have no complaints. So much so, I now think it will end up staying on the final build. It just rides so well and is dead-on date-wise for frame, as it was first introduced in 1996, the same year the frame was built by Steve's magic hands.
I'll share a few more photos from out and about in my next post, but I'll be saving full bike shots of this first version build until the rear wheel has been rebuilt and fresh cables and a few other bits have been added.
____
**I already have some ideas and plans to bring the S-Works back to life, ones I'm quite excited about. But more on that some time later in the year. I have about three other builds to get through first!
