Okay, lot's the catch up on...
Here goes:
Front mech, look for M953 for a traditional front mech, M950 brought in the era of the top-swing mech.
Useful for various suspension bikes at the time and later.
Also great if you like to collect stones and mud in Yorkshire ffs.
M737/738 will also be a great match front mech.
M900 is of the older style but will work, as will many others newer and older.
Thanks for the advice on those. Will look into all mentioned (plus the M953) today. But sleeping on it a bit last night, I may end up just using the M950 I have, or else an XT or M900 in the parts bin, and then later figuring out exactly what I want to do before buying anything else. Silly to spend any money when I don't need to before I know exactly what I want to do!
Is this a Manitou or something? Otherwise it's 135mm at the rear.
You can spacer a 7 speed onto 8sp+ cassette, but just stay at 8 speed (or 9).
7speed is really late 80s and turn of the 90s.
Or budget bike for later on.
It's not.
But it is 140mm!
Says so right there on the chainstay (that should give it away!)
And yeah it would be silly to go all the way back to 7-speed, especially on a bike from 1996. But I do have a flawless XC Pro group on hand right now (it was destined for the Team Issue, but...) So that's one of the tempting replacement solutions. Especially with the link between Suntour and the bike (now that REALLY should give it away!)
Why would you want to use m900 shifters? M950 are far superior. I don't know how Shimano got away with the m900 shifters as almost everything else out at the time was better. Plus m900 only sold as brifters for canti brakes, so you'd also be taking a step backwards in terms of braking with the shifting, unless you are talking about running m900 as separate pods, which then come with the added baggage of finding mounts.
I would go suntour 8sp thumbies over m900 shifters all day. You could also use Shimano thumbies, 7sp with what people refer to as a secret 8th click. It isn't really, there is just room for a further push after the last index point so you can make 7sp an 8sp. I ran this using xt m739 and it worked really well, but I have heard people talk about indexing issues. Maybe I was lucky? Maybe I'm just awesome at setting up indexing, who knows?
As fluffy said, the FD m953 is a normal looking mech rather than the uglier m950 cousin.
As Fluffy mentioned, because I have a set of M900 shifters here I bought for spares on the S-Works. And as Matty said, because I actually really like them! I would still need to buy another set of perches to use them though, so that definitely makes them a less likely option. The canti side of things is a none issue, as I do actually need canti levers for this bike.
If I wasn't so broke I'd be tempted to take the M900 combos
@Matttymm recently posted off his hands, and just bang those on!
Still, the M950 shifters will most likely go on for the time being too, along with everything else, providing I can find this bottom bracket.
Oh, and speaking of...
For a road bb search for BB-5500, this is the 105 model. Still readily available new.
As
@ishaw said the axles are not quite the same lengths but should work.
Actually I have a lightly used 109.5 x 68mm you can have for the cost of postage, although with you being on the other side of the world a new one might make more sense.
PM incoming mate!
All I'm wanting to do is get this bike in ridable shape, using most of what it came with, before making any bigger decisions.
Which will please Peachy!
M950+ ? My favourite. Proper sorted.
I know you said you didn’t like the look of it, but ride it first, it’s lovely
https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/2000-porsche-s-bike.428102/page-4
Planning on it!
