Ever since the days of Dave Hemmings downhilling on a Roberts with a set of prototype alloy ones I have been after some Pace RC35 forks.
Fast forward 15 years and I finally have a project worthy of a pair, so I set about hunting them down. My key desire was as old as possible and as original as possible. Pre AB would have been the unicorn, but chances are most people retro-fitted their originals to AB as soon as they could so I'm sure there aren't too many of those.
In the end I had to buy two pairs to get the original look I was after, one set of RC35s and one set of RC30s.
The RC30s were the very early ones with the welded legs, the original Pace decals and the gold crown. The RC35s were very original AB ones with a slightly newer silver crown and even had a set of Stage 2 upgrade bolts. Mix the two together and I had a perfect set of forks (and a beautiful set of rigids for the winter months).
Now the problems started. When the forks arrived they were missing a few bits, the elastomers had turned to chewing gum, the steerer was the wrong size and on and on..... In steps Justbackdated (Tim), a man with an enormous knowledge of Pace forks and an equally large supply of the parts - what he doesn't know just isn't worth it, what he can't source doesn't exist - he'll even service the things and replace bushes and seals. He managed to source every part I needed, even down to the brake rocker and original decals. Massive thanks to Tim, without whom these would just be a pretty shelf decoration
4 hours after the parts arrived I had had my fix of fettling and my forks were ready:
Fast forward 15 years and I finally have a project worthy of a pair, so I set about hunting them down. My key desire was as old as possible and as original as possible. Pre AB would have been the unicorn, but chances are most people retro-fitted their originals to AB as soon as they could so I'm sure there aren't too many of those.
In the end I had to buy two pairs to get the original look I was after, one set of RC35s and one set of RC30s.
The RC30s were the very early ones with the welded legs, the original Pace decals and the gold crown. The RC35s were very original AB ones with a slightly newer silver crown and even had a set of Stage 2 upgrade bolts. Mix the two together and I had a perfect set of forks (and a beautiful set of rigids for the winter months).
Now the problems started. When the forks arrived they were missing a few bits, the elastomers had turned to chewing gum, the steerer was the wrong size and on and on..... In steps Justbackdated (Tim), a man with an enormous knowledge of Pace forks and an equally large supply of the parts - what he doesn't know just isn't worth it, what he can't source doesn't exist - he'll even service the things and replace bushes and seals. He managed to source every part I needed, even down to the brake rocker and original decals. Massive thanks to Tim, without whom these would just be a pretty shelf decoration
4 hours after the parts arrived I had had my fix of fettling and my forks were ready:
