Originally Posted by
merida
This is an ATB, dont try to make it in to a road touring bike. It feels most at home on dirt and gravel roads. I would start with the wheels. A cassette hub from the early nineties paired with some modern rims with machined brake tracks will transform braking and gearing. The stock brakes may be brilliant, if not xt m732's are very good and easy to set up. New high quality pads, chain and cables. Keep the bullmoose bars, get some nice grips and put on the widest tyres that will fit. Done!
This of course will also open up the possibility for indexed gearing. I also have mixed experience shifting biopace rings, new ramped rings up front is a great upgrade.
I guess I don't understand why you'd want to upgrade 80% of the bike to "modern" parts, but it would still have an obsolete ATB geometry that was more suited to downhill and completely inefficient for climbing or anything that would be considered technical. In fact, the long and slack geometry has more in common with most any touring bike that it does with most any ATB/MTB built since the advent of the MB1.