Hello

Since yesterday we are the owners of a yellow ol Cannondale MT800 from 2001. It cost us far less than most of the other similar Cannondales that are sold in our area, but we hope to get it up and running as soon as possible. It has seen good use, and from what I've noticed so far, the following things need work.

- De-seizing wedge type eccentric BB
- replacing rear sealed cartridge BB
- Renewing timing chain and chainrings
- New cassette,chain, middle 32 t chainring
- New headset
- New rims (currently in progress at LBS)
- New tyres

A fair bit of work, and this brings me to some questions for which I hope to find an answer here.

- Can I simply use a 32t Shimano middle chainring with 64 mm inner diameter on the timing chain?
- As i inspected the bike, I noticed the headset was loose. Back at home, i took off stem and top cap and saw that the upper bearing cartridge had burst open and a couple of bearing balls were sitting between the headset cup and the steerer. They bike should have been used like this for a while, as these balls have removed a bit of material from both the steerer and headset cup. As for now, the headset cup is still in place, I filed down the high bits where the material had been pushed in and upwards from the pressure of these balls, I managed to repack the bearing cartridge and fill it with some new bearing balls I had and it steers rather smoothly, without play. The bearing race nor the balls are damaged and the seal even clicked in place. However I'm more worried about the fork/steerer assembly. As you can see from the photos i uploaded, there's some damage to the steerer around the height of the upper headset bearings. Now, with everything properly assembled, it doesn't touch any part of the headset because of the centering spacer that makes it sit in the middle of the bearings. Some material has worn away and has been pushed outwards. You can see it has formed some sort of circular indentation because the bike was ridden and the steering wheel turned. This 'rail' runs around about a third of the circumference of the steerer. I estimate it to be worn about half a mm (a fingernail's thickness) into the steerer. Total steerer thickness about 2mm. The fork is a cannondale Fatty R fork and quite possibly the beefiest fork I've ever seen. Is this safe to ride this fork? Is this a place where a fork is likely to endure a big load? Could it snap? I'm asking because with forks, I don't want to take any risks.

Thanks!

Bart