traded my old frame for a chinese carbon frame. hoping to just swap the parts over i ran into a few snags. first, my bottom bracket is a bb-m950 116mm. as you can see in the pics there is a pretty large gap. is that much gap with spacers acceptable or do i need a 112.5 bottom bracket. second and the most frustrating is the way the frame slopes from the seat tube to the down tube i cannot get my front derailleur down low enough. is there another option for this? thanks. i'm usually working on steel road bikes. haven't built a mountain bike since 98. thanks in advance.

go ahead and put down the chinese frame.

I'm thinking the 116mm is the spindle length while what you have is a 73mm bottom bracket and the frame uses a 68mm just guessing. You need a bb spacer. I know over on mtbr.com there is a huge thread about the 29er chines carbon frames but I assume there is one for the 26er too. You may want to head over there and look around.

Thanks. I think the route I'm going to try is to use spacers on the bottom bracket and remove the front derailleur and use a single chainring

What about using a bottom swing (high clamp) front derailleur? It looks to me like the top swing derailleur clamp you've got is bottomed out on the seat tube where it flares out. Something like this should work: https://www.universalcycles.com/shopp...99&category=76

on your bb, make sure you space both sides evenly, after spacing check distance between chain stay and crank arms to see if there the same. some times you can space bb's and it offset it one side. and like ^^ he said, try another style derailleur like a top swing style, they sit lower...aka the clamp is even or above the derailleur body..