What was your 1st ever upgrade? What led you to this point?

[messiah]

I've always been tight fisted - the only upgrade I made on my first bike was tyres - and it's still the best performance upgrade out there. Specy Ground Controls were superb until the 2.1" Smoke came along.

When I changed my frame from the Rockhopper to a Trek 8900 Bonded Aluminium I was dumb enough to put a LO--------NG Flexstem and Brahma bars on it. I must have got about 2" travel when on the bar ends . Losing them was brilliant.

SPD's where the next true performance upgrade - and probably the one I would like to live without the least. I can and occasionaly do use flatties but my heart belongs to SPD's. I can't see me ever wanting to use clips and straps again, but we had to start somewhere. :roll:

 

[Augustus]

(replaced with Poo-Bahs before long!), and the pedals cost me £55, which again was a fortune for a 15yr-old back then! I actually sold all my Star Wars figures and ships to fund them (even the Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper dress with removeable helmet)..

LOL. Was your's a UK (white with sticker for engine) or US (grey with 3D moulded engine) X-Wing? (if you had an X-Wing.)

oh dear here come's a Star Wars toy discussion...('excited at the prospect really')

Found my Poo-Bar's last week, might wear them on saturday.

 

[Lid]

I took the Bullmoose bars off my 84 Norco (with quadruple butted tubes!) and put on a stem and bar. The Bullmoose bars just seemed so out of date with the modern MTB's.
The only difference was in my head of course.

 

[Kestonian]

Great thread (again) Wu-Tangled!

In this order, my Trek 7000 became the proud bearer of

Yellow onza bar-ends - 1992
Flexstem - 1992
SPDs - 1993

The bar ends and flexstem got sold on with the bike, but I still use the SPDs today, two bikes later. Bombproof. In fact, I only got rid of the shoes last year because they had finally given up

 

[kingroon]

I think it was a set of Shimano SIS thumbshifters [not even Deore] for my Peugeot Alpina.. Indexed the bike.. I forget how much, but it musta cost a few paper-rounds

Having just ridden my Psyclone, I thought that it might be the ultimate setup for me.. As in it didn't need [or even could have] an upgrade to any part.. :shock:

 

[scant]

my first race in pontypool park, event sponsored by then importer specialized importer carrati (sp). think it was 85. my friend andrew (on his mustang) was really intimidated by all the rockhoppers, stumpjumpers, overburys etc & didnt enter. on the start line rubber necking to take all the cool bikes & noticed I was the only person on the start line without toeclips & straps. after the race bought specialized clips & straps & some no name rat trap pedals. the stock plastic bear trap pedals didnt accept clips.

1 year later I was on a team stumpjumper

 

[Stick Legs]

Clips and Mt Christophe straps for my Shogun Trail Breaker II. Shortly followed by Tioga T Bone stem, 140mm x 10 rise, DX thumbies and Ritchey Logic brake levers (to replace 200GS rapidfire) and some 300LX cranks ('cos they looked like Deore ones) and round rings!

 

[gump]

MadCowKev- weird on the fork thing.. they were pretty twangy, and I managed to cause the paint to crack front/back near the bosses (start of bend) from being so hardcore Don't think they were bent, but was something to talk about!

 

[kona kid]

onza barends were the first main buy and then a bit later some old DX spds (525?), have done virtually all my mtbing on them and still got them on my main mtb and just bought a second pair as i love them so much (for no logical reason what so ever - like all retro stuff )

 

[john]

First upgrade was a GT Karakoram after I slammed my Raleigh Mirage into a tree. Upgraded the karakoram loads but that was all due to stuff breaking and wearing out..