metalpossum
Retro Newbie
Here's my current project which I thought I should share with you all. It's an early Santa Cruz Heckler, I believe the 1996 model due to the shape of the dropouts and pivot bracket (fixed at both the downtube and seat tube). Originally purchased directly from Santa Cruz, in Santa Cruz, and travelled around the world a few times. Belonging to a customer at my shop, he originally offered to loan it to the shop to be hung up, but was more than willing to trade it in for some new pedals, shoes, and a helmet instead, setting me back around $250 NZD. I don't put a price on things like this that I appreciate, I don't really care what it might actually be worth, and I made it clear to the guy before he agreed to pass it on that it was a cool bike and might fetch a lot of interest in the local market here.
The fork is an early Z1 Bomber with twin Formula disc mounts (a worthy upgrade at the time by the original owner) and the rear shock is a RockShox Super Deluxe, claimed to be at least the 2nd or 3rd replacement shock this particular frame got. Both stanchions on the Bombers were severely beaten on their back sides, and I wasn't able to find a decent pair of replacement stanchions (yet), so I bodged the old ones back into service by removing any burrs and doing my best to fill in any deeper chips/scratches, rebuilding them with a new pair of ugly looking Enduro seals. I know this method is usually only acceptable for one or two minor scratches but so far they're not leaking and I'm more than willing to rebuild them again at a later date if the correct parts are available to me.
The bike was also fitted with a White Industries chainset, mismatch wheels, Avid SD 1.9 brake levers, Tange headset, XT M737 Parallax rear hub, (my favourite Shimano hub so far due to how perfect the cups, cones, bearings, and seals were after 20+ years of abuse and neglect), and some cheap mismatch V-brakes that were probably fitted some many years later.
I'm currently in the middle of negotiations for a set of red Magura HS33s, and then it's a matter of buying a matching front hub and deciding what rims to lace onto them, followed by trims such as the saddle and hand grips. Any suggestions for these last three are welcome, I've been reading and researching as much as I can, looking for popular brands etc. of the era, but it's still a bit overwhelming with how much crap they shovelled too.
I'll get some more photos shared once I'm closer to completion, I'm still waiting on the replacement pivot bearings to show up before I can get the rear shock mounted again, and then the rest will happen over the next few months (winter, when the shop gets dead quiet and I need something to do). I'm definitely not trying to build the perfect bike here with new paint and graphics, I'm just building something that I or my older brothers would have appreciated back when I was on 20" wheels and observing all the oddities at the local mountain bike races (as a spectator).
The fork is an early Z1 Bomber with twin Formula disc mounts (a worthy upgrade at the time by the original owner) and the rear shock is a RockShox Super Deluxe, claimed to be at least the 2nd or 3rd replacement shock this particular frame got. Both stanchions on the Bombers were severely beaten on their back sides, and I wasn't able to find a decent pair of replacement stanchions (yet), so I bodged the old ones back into service by removing any burrs and doing my best to fill in any deeper chips/scratches, rebuilding them with a new pair of ugly looking Enduro seals. I know this method is usually only acceptable for one or two minor scratches but so far they're not leaking and I'm more than willing to rebuild them again at a later date if the correct parts are available to me.
The bike was also fitted with a White Industries chainset, mismatch wheels, Avid SD 1.9 brake levers, Tange headset, XT M737 Parallax rear hub, (my favourite Shimano hub so far due to how perfect the cups, cones, bearings, and seals were after 20+ years of abuse and neglect), and some cheap mismatch V-brakes that were probably fitted some many years later.
I'm currently in the middle of negotiations for a set of red Magura HS33s, and then it's a matter of buying a matching front hub and deciding what rims to lace onto them, followed by trims such as the saddle and hand grips. Any suggestions for these last three are welcome, I've been reading and researching as much as I can, looking for popular brands etc. of the era, but it's still a bit overwhelming with how much crap they shovelled too.
I'll get some more photos shared once I'm closer to completion, I'm still waiting on the replacement pivot bearings to show up before I can get the rear shock mounted again, and then the rest will happen over the next few months (winter, when the shop gets dead quiet and I need something to do). I'm definitely not trying to build the perfect bike here with new paint and graphics, I'm just building something that I or my older brothers would have appreciated back when I was on 20" wheels and observing all the oddities at the local mountain bike races (as a spectator).
