 How does it ride with 8'' travel at the rear and 4'' at the front??
|
 |
 I was just thinking the same, well, that and "why are you pissing about with the brakes when you clearly need a decent fork?"
|
|
  What an unusual ride!!! indeed whats that retro rock shox doing on there!!!
|
|
back (no further than that) in the day i had a set of those forks on a hardtail.. Ah the versatility of the 4" triple clamps...! sigh... yes mate sod the brakes get some forks asap!
|
|
 well, it's a mildly retro frame, so retro forks are a nice match... except for the travel. Thing is, any fork with 8" travel is going to be rather heavy...
|
|
 A new niche is born - cross country front end, downhill rear - all he needs now is to singlespeed it 
|
|
...and maybe some bar ends with pink roadie tape on, and a girvin flexstem, or even better an allsop softride, and 24" rear wheel, and change the front wheel to a spin and stick a slick on it with some pauls cantis, and spokey dokeys and a seatpost mounted rack and panniers and a frame (corner) bag, and some biopace rings and a red z-max on the rear and some grafton cranks and maybe some ever ready lights (flat batteries, lights pointing up or down, front on the forks dangerously close to spokes) and a saddle cover and older sids will be going cheap now so... I'm all nostalgic now... No really even 6" forks would kinda help..! 
|
|
|
|
|
 Convert the rear to 4" travel and it'd have an almost-normal leverage ratio
|
|
 At least running a fork that is 2-4" too short will steepen up the head angle enough to give it XC geometry almost. Then the components on it at least match. Who'd have thunk there'd be a market for ten year old second hand downhill bikes.
|
|
 10 year old second hand DH bikes...... *shudders* Some '02 cherry red Boxxers would look lurvely on that.
|
|
 umm, it has square taper cranks?
|
|
 what's wrong with square tapered cranks? I have a few sets of them and they're fine, they last a lot longer than these new fangled offerings from Shimano My only concern is the forks and the wish to put 8" rotors on them. ker.....snap
|
|
I suppose if you ran 50% sag at the rear you could get the headangle to something sensible at least. Might be best to then ride the bike backwards for the long-travel hardtail feel 
|
|
 Needs a Tioga Disk Drive rear wheel to complet the look!
|
|
I have a 03 Bullit (essentially the same front end with shorter swing arm and a shorter stroke shock which changes the head angle) with a set of Lyriks on it and at 115mm it rides like a XC bike and then at 160mm at the front it hammers like a DH bike. This bike with a stable platform air shock and some new forks would be cool! Time to start looking for some bargain parts and forget the brakes (must say the image of the forks snapping under 8" disks seems pretty much on the money)
|
|
"what's wrong with square tapered cranks? I have a few sets of them and they're fine, they last a lot longer than these new fangled offerings from Shimano" i was going through square taper cranks on an almost monthly basis, they really aren't much good if you hammer the bike. since going to shimano saint, i've not had a problem i did break some x-type raceface evolve's though, and also i finished a set of isis cranks... hmm xt on the shelf waiting for a frame though
|
|
 square taper cranks...really aren't much good if you hammer the bike I'd have to disagree. I was going through splined BBs in months, and the BB-crank interface would never stop creaking. I'm just looking into Phil Woods/Royce square taper BBs for my custom frame-to-be.
|
|
"xt on the shelf waiting for a frame though"
Is there a torque wrench up there too?
If you're going through crank arms regularly, a torque wrench is probably going to save you a lot of money.
|
|
 going through BBs on a monthy basis does strike me as odd if they've been attached properly... people did fine with them before ISIS HT2 came along...
|
|
