ORRat - Crap mountainbike build

Mmmm... don't want to misconstrue ... all this talk of an SS MTB (".)

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Oops, well spotted , will add a 3rd lightening bolt to spare the blushes

Ha! An old friend of mine had to do some careful explaining to someone who spotted a BNP card in their wallet and didn't know that during the year they'd just spent in Paris they'd opened an account with the Banque Nationale de Paris.

Fair enough - my 90's steel rigid mtb was used in the superG nationals, XC racing, club runs, touring, commuting and riding vert in the park - I even moved house on it once

Good effort. I don't do so much dirt now (not that I did that much in Oz anyway). I moved house using all the bikes at the time :) Helped it was only a km or so down the road. I can't see any GT photos so it may have been in the shop at the time.

I stuck a wanted ad on Singletrack forum for ratty forks dead or alive.
These forks had a run-in with a pierced rattlecan so they're an excellent match for the build - Revelation 426 u-turns and best of all, they are indeed adjustable from 100-130mm travel.

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Proper 'do it all' bike eh

riding vert in the park

Please say you have footage of this

I found a crown race on an old pair of kaffenback forks in the shed
It looks like an OK-fit with the cups and bearings that came pressed into the frame (40 x 30.2 x 45 deg), I also found a compression ring that seems to do the trick so I'm just short of a top cover but it won't stop me assembling the bike and I chucked on the stem and bars from the GT

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probably some 35mm photos but it was a long time ago - I'll see what I can find!

Back when I was building the Rockhopper I picked up a Howitzer BB & cranks for a tenner on ebay - they look to be bombproof and are just right for the bike.
Unfortunately the BB only has a single 2.5mm spacer and as far as I can see it's designed to have adjustable chainline on 73mm and this frame has a 68mm BB.
This meant that when I tightened the cups into the frame the axle pushed the bearings/dust covers off...

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Early in a build I like to do a mock up to double check that I'm not being a dick and that it'll all look OK in the end - so I stuck on the wheels, saddle pedals and seatpost from the GT...
I'm not au fait with mountainbike style but It's pretty much what I had in mind...
@downhillsquirrel - you'll note the addition of a 3rd bolt of lightning on the ST

All doodlings have been clear-coated with some Wilco clearcoat

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Now I need to print a couple of spacers, cos I'm lazy I'll just lift them off Thingverse
I've also got to come up with some solution for a load spreading washer on the cranks, get hold of a dust cover for the headset, crank bolts, chainring bolts and a rear mech hanger would be handy too.

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Interested to see where this goes, subbed

found a couple of shots of the aforementioned housemove & do it all bike
The first one shows the bike loaded up at Schwieberdingen station and the second is somewhere on the street outside Gare de l'Est.
That would have been the summer of 98 when the World Cup was in Paris

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26" wheels on vert (Victoria Park, Bath) were a bit harder to find...
Here's one of my mate Ben - first outing on a brand new Santa Cruz chameleon in 1998 or early 99

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The only one I could find of me is so deeply unflattering it's funny
What can I say, it was a long time ago and I was young.... I'm not sure quite what I was doing or indeed what happened afterward, I can't imagine it ended comfortably. I don't know what bike it was, who took the photo or why, but it's definitely me at the Victoria Park halfpipe in the late 90's

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Not much progress to report today.
I printed the bb spacers in ABS - in the end I decided to model them from scratch at Ø40.7 / 34.9 mm - 2.5mm thick

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These arrived in the post too
Set me back a tenner so they’d better be good...

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Gotta be done -

Strong look.

Oh it's green, bonus points!

The best colour they offered. Looked great with the red forks (RST mozo pro)

Green and red is my colour combo for the bmx. Love it

Always lusted after one of those first gen Chameleons. Great picture.

Me too, such a classic (especially in green).
A few years ago I bought an early Commencal Absolut in the hope of itching that scratch but life got in the way and I ended up selling the unfinished build.

No progress on the biek but I did get out on the Saracen yesterday. 45 miles off road with my 73 year old father.

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