An update. Actually, three and a half years after I first posted about my Preston, and having now owned 3 of them, it's an ever-so-slightly-overdue update... :facepalm:
To all intents and purposes, it's finished. I'd still like to finish the graphics properly, and having located all the painstakingly re-drawn graphics files that I thought had been lost to the perils of Windows Vista, I might just get them printed and stuck on at some point.
So, as you can see, I didn't go down the nut and bolt authentic retro build route that most members like to do, but instead went for a comprehensive modernisation.
The original paint was pretty rough, so I didn't feel the slightest pang of guilt about stripping it and having it powder coated instead. Maldon Shotblasting did the honours, chosen because they take very particular care with bicycles, and as usual it's a stunningly good finish. It's a pale blue with a sparkle lacquer, not everyone's cup of tea, but I like it.
I threw it all together last year for a charity bike ride, but haven't used it since, so I've just stripped and rebuilt it properly so I can actually get some proper use out of it.
The build was a little more involved than usual due to the sheer number of bearings, pivots, bolts and shafts involved in these frames. In all 19 new aircraft bearings had to be pressed into in the suspension system (8 in the rear swing arm, 6 in the front linkage, 4 in the shocks, and 1 spherical bearing in the steering) which makes it very time consuming and a bit of a wallet basher if you're going for a full restoration. (A PRST-1 would be marginally easier, with only 2 bearings in the rear swing arm)
The rest of the bits;
Full XTR M980 3x9 transmission,
Hope Mono 4 brakes on floating discs,
Crank Brothers Cobalt SL headset (ridiculously light but famously fragile headset from the states, but chosen here because it carries a fraction of the loads on a PRST that it does on a "normal" frame)
Easton carbon bars,
Crank brothers carbon stem,
Fox RP23 platform shocks that were rebuilt and tuned for the frame by TFTuned.
Lastly, and perhaps most noticeably it wears a set of Crank Brothers twinspoke wheels. I love these wheels, so much that I seem to have acquired 3 sets of them. They're really light, spin up ridiculously quickly, and are a doddle to run tubeless. They also look very unusual, and suit the all round oddity of the PRST. It has a choice of two wheelsets, 26" wheels for general roughstuff and mud plugging, and the set it's wearing in these shots, which were the result of a drunken eBay session and an "I wonder if..." moment. They're 650B (27.5") wheels, shod with 2.0" rubber of a type more suited to the hard-pack and gravel trails I normally ride since I'm definitely a fair weather biker.
They fit, just... :shock: There's piles of room in the rear, where I suspect a 2.3" tyre would fit without any clearance issues at all. The front required a bit of fettling to get some much needed clearance at the crown, which involved offsetting the 'big gripper' bobbins on the axle to move the wheel down and forward, and then machining a new low profile fixing for the steering. I did think the bigger wheels might make it ride like a bag of bolts and ruin the bike, so I didn't want to change anything permanent.
So far though, it's all working fine. Even with my size 12's I don't get any wheel rub on my toes, and it rolls really easily over rough stuff and smooth tarmac alike, so it's so far so good as far as running wheels the bike was never designed for. I've yet to run it in 27.5" rear/ 26" front, which I'm hopeful might replicate the success of the 26"/24" combo that worked well on these bikes when racing, without my looking like a very tall man riding around on polo mints.
