ryanpg

I find spending a nice chunk of cash on a bike is a good motivator to ride so I set out to find a decent XC for under $1K. (Ok 1. I'm a teacher and for me $1K is a nice chunk, 2. I know there's not a lot of options for under 1k, read on).

I have a hardtail built around an old DB with nifty s-curve seat stays, unfortunately it just won't fit! So I decided to strip off all the carefully selected components and graft them onto an "entry level" bike with a good frame. This way I get to have two new bikes! Yay! So shortcut to the choices: to keep costs down I had to stick to the big names. Cannondale and Specialized were the two I settled in on. After almost getting a nice Cannondale F600, I found an 05 Specialized FSRxc on sale for $850 (yeah you can find em cheaper but I like to buy local). I wanted a project so read the reviews, liked the bike and took the plunge. One bank card transaction later I was wrenching on my new toy and... WOW they put craptastic components on that thing! And amazingly off the storeroom floor the sucker weighed in at 35lbs! (all weights rounded to the nearest .5) Here's what I did to make some love:

BEFORE:

Cockpit
1.Handlebars – cheap and heavy generic bars, in fact there's a sticker on them that says “this product is not intended for aggressive off-road use”, um... isn't this a mountain bike?
2.Stem – another no-name beauty. It's not horrible but it is heavy. No butting.
3.Headset – (this is the worst) it's an open bearing headset (like on the cheap bikes of my youth) the cups races and bearings are metal but the rest of the headset is PLASTIC! Plastic top cup and a plastic compression washer. Yikes.
4.Deore shifters and break levers

Fork - OEM Manitou Axel Comp

Drive train
1.Cranks/pedals – The website says “custom made” cranks. They appear to be about the quality of cranks/pedals you might find on your average Target or K-mart bike. They look like the alivio cranks on the Shimano site but I don't know if they make hollotech alivio cranks. Sprockets look fine I guess, alivio?
3.Front dérailleur – Shimano Deore
4.Cassette – yikes! Heavy all steel rings. Any decent cassette in production now uses a combination of aluminum and some steel for a weight/strength compromise. These things are saw blades.

Hubs
1.Front - heavy Specialized Hub. I found the rubber dust cover was pinched and tightened into the axle assembly resulting in a wheel that barely turns on it's axle. Unfortunately even after fixing that, spinning the axle feels like cranking a cheap ratchet wrench.
2.Rear – Deore Shimano Disk hub. Heavy.
6.Rear dérailleur – the big selling point: it's LX.
7.Bottom bracket – this is the bottom of the barrel square spline Shimano Alivio mtb bracket. It is amazingly heavy and the left side cup is PLASTIC.

AFTER RECYCLING UPGRADES:

Bars - Double butted aluminum
Stem - Bontrager 90mm
Cranks/Sprockets - Shimano LX cranks
Pedals - platform/clipless
Cassette - SRAM PG-980
Hubs - XT front/rear
BB - XT
Seatpost - Thomson Elite

The weight after all this? 28.5Lbs a difference of 6.5 Lbs, neat.

STILL TO CHANGE: Fork (going to get a cheap Manitou Skareb, 100mm travel, air shock, 3.5lbs), swap XT rear derailure, swap seat, bars and buy a new head set. I'm sure the fork, seat and bars will cut another 1.5Lbs so I'll be down to 27Lbs. Hopefully after some riding I'll shed about that amount from my fat lazy hide!

So by having some fun doing some creative recycling I've got a pretty nifty full suspension XC bike that I'm really keen on! And I'll have a decent beater hardtail to boot. My total cash expendature will be close to $1,100 after I order the fork. Anyway hope you enjoyed the tale.

Here's some (kinda crappy) pics
https://ruinaudio.com/media/00001.jpg
https://ruinaudio.com/media/00005.jpg
https://ruinaudio.com/media/c00001.jpg

-ry