Old Heckler
 

27 years ago (or so) I gave my son this Santa Cruz Heckler for Christmas. He replaced it with a new SC 29'er a few years ago, hadn't ridden it in a long time and repatriated it to me. Yesterday, I refurbished some parts and rode it up a local mountain. Buttery smooth descent especially since the shock and pivots are original. Needs a few more tweaks, but looks like a good second bike.

That is a 27 year old bike! I'm getting old. It seem modern to me. Thanks for posting. It is amazing what is C & V.

BTW, nice son you have there.

Is the steering twitchy with that CX fork? That's a substantially different axle to crown than the "long" travel suspension that came with that bike. Are you going to leave it like that or go with a suspension or suspension corrected fork? 26" forks are pretty cheap these days since the standard has fallen out of favor. Just gotta find them. You could even go disc fork and do a "mullet" build with Vs out back and disc out front. Probably depends on how rowdy you want to get.

Cool to see this getting repurposed! Ive never seen a vintage MTB conversion like this. Sounds like you had fun on it and that's what really matters. :)

Seems like a good name for a whiskey.

It had an old Rock Shox Judy with elastomers that possibly can be repurposed into a pogo stick :), so I tried the Ritchey carbon since it was languishing. Those old bikes had pretty short fronts, and by leaving a much wider Kenda tire on the front than back, seemed pretty normal to me. I'll leave it like that for a few rides, then decide. Thanks for asking.

C & V = Classic and Vintage. May not be old enough for this forum yet, but someday.... Thanks for mentioning it; my son is a great son, father and fireman. I always wanted my kids to be better than me (pretty easy) and thrive; he's done that.

I’ve been wondering when we’ll start discussing what to do with these old suspension bikes. They aren’t that old yet, but they certainly are obsolete in most cases. Some of them were beautifully engineered and fabricated, but you can’t find rebuild parts for the shocks, or forks with a specific offset, etc, etc, and why bother when the new stuff is so good. Once you’ve ridden 29” or 27.5“ wheels off road, 26” make you feel like you’re riding a bmx bike.

I’d love to see more creative re-purposing and conversions of these bikes. I’d never think to put a carbon cross fork on a Heckler, but there you go, and it sounds like it works!

If you or your son still has that Judy, you *MIGHT* be in for a new fork. There were several recalls on RockShox forks around that time. I got one replaced on recall recently, from an '01 HardRock, and the replacement was a definite upgrade, with lots more adjustments than the original had. Might be worth looking up.

Thanks; I'll investigate.

I've tried 27.5 and 29 and am a good height (6'1" with 34 inseam) for the bigger sizes, but prefer 26". You make a really good point about older suspension bikes. It's too bad that some are relegated to the scrap heap. Probably this one won't be for awhile since my son wants to hang it on his wall (garage, I assume) when its day is done.

I have full access a front suspension Rocky Mtn bike.
After buying it about 2 decades ago.
Son upgraded to full suspension.
Rocky Mtn is not original. Ridden hard. :thumb:
Money well spent on him.

My 2002 Cinelli NSC is Classic & Vintage, so yours certainly is.

Great condition.

"Um, yeah. Let me have ... ok, yeah, let me have a Three Musketeers, and a ball point pen, one of those combs there, a pint of Old [Heckler], couple flashlight batteries and some of this beef jerky."

You Tube

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Beat me to it.

:beer:

Beat me to it.

:beer:

Why was Henry Kissinger working behind the counter at a liquor store in 1962? :foo: