I'm in the middle of building a sspd commuter out of a similar era mtb frame. Ditching the springs for a lighter rigid fork is worth it imo. Anyways, here's what I've learned. 1st, reread joejack's and norwood's posts, they are absolutely correct. 2nd, you may have issues with headset race/fork compatibility. I bought a new ritchey logic 1" headset and scrounged an old fork. The new race was too small for the old fork. I'm now waiting for a new fork from LBS. If you buy a new fork, you may have to buy a new headset as well. There's a thread on the subject here.