'92 Mountain Cycle San Andreas resurrection

[foxb13]

A nice FC-M900 175mm crankset and NOS CN-7401 chain were located in a reasonable time.




So were front FD-M900 31.8mm and rear RD-M900 derailleurs. But after months of unsuccessful hunting trying to gather the remaining bits, it became obvious to me that finding a Syncros bottom bracket in correct size, an uncut 7075 T78 Syncros Flatbar handlebar, a 2nd gen. Syncros Propost Ti seatpost and an Odyssey SveLte Hi-Performance saddle with titanium rails won't be easy. Not even talking about finding a pair of rideable onZa Racing Porc's Kevlar tyres...

 

[foxb13]

I thus decided to depart from my initial plan to rebuild my Sanny like the advertised Team Elite bike for some parts, nevertheless trying to be as close as possible or falling back to @Baulz San Andreas whenever possible.

 

[foxb13]

Since plan has changed, putting back the Cook's Quality Products (CQP) crankset, a popular choice among the racers BITD (with its Cook Bros. counterpart), was considered.



On the one side, it's a cool no-more-seen-that-often bit of hardware. On the other side, with its roots into the BMX scene of the late 80's, it already was an outdated component in 1992, featuring e.g. a strange notch in the drive side crank to accommodate for the front derailleur clearance, something clearly revealing overlooked engineering.



Additionally, the shape of the drive side crank doesn't allow installing a big ring with an anti-chainsuck pin.

Lastly, it requires a spindle with a particular longer square taper, not conforming to neither "standard JIS" nor ISO spindle (below picture taken from [1], no more available online).



Sure, you can fit it on a shorter "standard JIS" or even ISO spindle, but the spindle/crank interface is then far from ideal. Believe me, I had the opportunity to fit my crankset on a genuine (but unfortunately too short in 122mm length) Cook Bros. spindle with the correct longer square taper, and the difference at the spindle/crank interface was obvious. Plus I've heard horror stories of people having cracked their Cook Bros. cranksets, probably because they were fitted to unsuitable spindles and over-tightened. All this made me stick with the XTR crankset, more geared towards the future, as was the San Andreas BTW.

 

[foxb13]

Securing a suitable BB-UN90 73 x 113mm bottom bracket to achieve 50mm chainline, as spec'd in Mountain Cycle 97-98 Product Collection catalogue [1], was time-consuming. Sure, 97-98 may seem too recent w.r.t. my '92 San Andreas. But (i) I couldn't find an older Mountain Cycle catalogue with this information and (ii) the San Andreas frame remained largely unchanged over the years.






I nevertheless tried a shorter 73 x 107mm bottom bracket and the chain was noisily rattling when set on the granny gear and the biggest sprocket of the installed CS-M900-8Q 12-28 cogs cassette.

 

[foxb13]

As on @Baulz bike, I was able to put my hands on an uncut Answer Hyperlite 5 degree handlebar.






However, I didn't like how the Syncros stem was partly covering the Answer Hyperlite writing, due to the large clamping area.

 

[foxb13]

It didn't took me that much time to find a matching Answer A-Tac, 1 1/4" 150mm 0° rise, stem.

 

[foxb13]

I was also lucky enough sourcing a 2nd gen. Syncros Propost in 31.6mm x 330mm. Not the titanium flavor though, but at least the correct size and generation.

 

[foxb13]

A pair of period-correct (well, I thought...) NOS WTB Velociraptor completed the initial rebuild.






At the time, I wasn't aware that the Hyperlite handlebar had to be installed the "reversed" way in order to be able to read the 5 degree writing from the cockpit .

 

[foxb13]

A set of ST-M900 shifters/brake levers combos in great condition shortly followed, accompanied with a pair of used (and unfortunately cut at the ends) black onZa Porcipaws handlebar grips I had lying around.

 

[foxb13]

Matching the red anodized Ringlé Ti-Stix seatpost binder, a set of Camtwist QR skewers were found. Sure, only the rear one was of interest to me, as the Posi-Lock through-axle prevents from inserting a QR at the front. But they were sold together, so... Replacement rubber O-rings have been fitted since then.