Far Rider

Didn't want to put that much dough into obsolete parts. The headset is actually a threaded headset with one of those threadless stem adapters, upon which I mounted a Nashbar threadless stem. I am sure you could still find a threaded suspension fork somewhere but the bike is heavy enough as it is. As far as the brakes go, the rear brake (as I mentioned) is a U-brake. For the uninitiated, the U-brake mounts on the chainstays instead of the seatstays (hard to see in the picture) so updating brakes on the rear is a not an option unless I get another U-brake. So, when I went to get brakes for the front I just got whatever I could buy for a front only setup.

The wheelset is a Nashbar bargain bin set that I couldn't have built for what I paid for it. It has Mavic rims with some version of Deore hubs (can't keep track of them anymore) with a nutted axle from Wheels Manufacturing in the rear hub to keep it from slipping. I had a quick release in there for a while but I had the rear wheel slip while climbing out of the saddle once and the chain came off. I fell and trashed my knee so bad I thought it was never going to heal and went with the nutted axle.

The crank is an RX-100 road crank with a Salsa 42 tooth chainring held in place by those Problem Solver chainring bolts. The rear cog setup is a spacer and loose single cog setup. It makes it a lot easier to change gears and doesn't look that bad. Right now it has one of those cheap steel cogs in place until I make up my mind what gear I am going to use - the hard core SS guys think the gear I am using is too tall. I will probably replace this gear with a Surly cog.

For the record, I will never do this again! If I ever own another SS it's going to be one that was built to be one - this has been a headache. Most learning experiences are, I suppose, but the cool thing is that I have gotten to ride this old GT in several configurations, and for an old GT fan that's cool.