Round 7. I made some improvements and adjustments before outing #7. I added a vintage Rock Shox Mag 21 front suspension fork (shown installed on my bike in the picture above). An ebay snag. Got it for $15. It's barely used. Basically no scratches and no oil or air leaks. It seems to function perfectly. I had a major hurdle to jump over to get it working on my bike though. The auction had been advertised as the fork having a 1.1/8 head stem and it turned out to be a 1.1/4 stem instead. What that means is that it would not fit my bike. Major bummer. But for those that know me, my mind was set to reviewing options. I really wanted the fork to work on my bike so that is the option I pursued. I found a tree on ebay that had the correct stem size but that was going to be another $25.00, and I didn't like that option very much. I went down to one of my fav bike shops here in Durango and asked what junk forks they had laying around. They sent me to one of the back rooms to look around for myself. Wooohooo! I found an old stripped down fork with a long 1.1/8 stem! I took it back up front and the guy told me I could just have it. Cool. Those guys at 2nd Ave. are great.
Now, I'm sure some of you are wondering how I was going to get the 1.1/8 tube to fit with a 1.1/4 stem tree? Well, It worked like this. I sawed off the 1.1/4 stem at the top of the tree. I removed the 1.1/8 stem from the old stripped fork that had been given to me. I sawed off a bit of the lower end of the 1.1/8 stem where the diameter was greater. I left a lip at the bottom. Now. I took the 1.1/8 stem and the mag 21 fork to my press. It just so happens that the 1.1/8 stem fits very snugly into the 1.1/4 stem with the encouragement of a 10 ton press. Although it did not take ten tons to get the two stems to slide together. I was encouraged that as I pressed the stem in further, the resistance grew to a nice tight fit when it bottomed out. That's how I converted the 1.1/4 to 1.1/8. Some will say I was crazy for doing that, but it's tight and I believe, structurally sound.
The next adjustment I made was removing the front and rear brake pads and filing them down a bit to get rid of the hard rubber on the braking surface. Spent a great deal of time readjusting the brakes.
So, this morning, I took the bike out for its maiden voyage with the "new" front shock. About one minute into the ride there is a small irrigation ditch, muddy bottom, steep slope on both sides. I slowed way down as I always do so as not to get all muddy and wet by making a big splash. As my shock drops into the ditch, it gives way as shocks do, as compared to my rigid fork, and I am not used to this since I have been riding with a rigid fork and I jump off the front of the bike as it flips over and lands in the mud! Haha. The rest of the ride a as a bit more cautious until my body and mind could readjust to having some suspension up front. The rest of my ride went great. I did almost have a bad wreck when I was coming back down on blowout ridge. (I talked about that section of the trail in a previous posting.) As I was descending and putting a great deal of load on the front shock, it bottomed out and dragged on the front tire for just a short instance. Fortunately, not long enough to lock up the front wheel and send me careening down the edge of the ridge. This was a bit of the 1.1/8 stem that I left sticking out at the bottom of the fork tree right above the tire. I will have to trim that down just a bit more so that doesn't happen again.
All in all a great ride. I'm very pleased with my old mag 21 shock. The stiffness dials on top of each shock work very nicely adjusting from soft response to nice and stiff with movement only under harder impacts.
Have a great day!
James
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