Old bikes can be great fun and a relatively inexpensive way to get into the tinkering/upgrading game.
My intro to mountain bikes a few years back was a ~10 year old Cannondale Prophet with a Lefty fork. I slapped a 760mm bar on there and rebuilt the wheels to 27.5" from the original 26". Kept the 3x drivetrain and lived with the QR seatpost.
Aside from taking a healthy ribbing from lots of riders about riding a a "crack-n-fail" and being told bluntly that my bike looked ****ing stupid--thanks to the Lefty fork, It got me up and down loads of trails and looking back, I probably had more FUN on that rig than any of the newer, more capable bikes I've owned since then.
I still think about trying to find an XL frame (mine was a medium and wayyy to small) in the "MX" build that had the bolt through axles and additional gusseting. The oversized head-tube allows for different fork and angle-set options and the adjustable geometry that was relatively forward thinking in 2008 could make for a fun "friend" bike to keep in the garage.
March 28, 2022, 11:44 a.m. - Andrew Cotter
Old bikes can be great fun and a relatively inexpensive way to get into the tinkering/upgrading game. My intro to mountain bikes a few years back was a ~10 year old Cannondale Prophet with a Lefty fork. I slapped a 760mm bar on there and rebuilt the wheels to 27.5" from the original 26". Kept the 3x drivetrain and lived with the QR seatpost. Aside from taking a healthy ribbing from lots of riders about riding a a "crack-n-fail" and being told bluntly that my bike looked ****ing stupid--thanks to the Lefty fork, It got me up and down loads of trails and looking back, I probably had more FUN on that rig than any of the newer, more capable bikes I've owned since then. I still think about trying to find an XL frame (mine was a medium and wayyy to small) in the "MX" build that had the bolt through axles and additional gusseting. The oversized head-tube allows for different fork and angle-set options and the adjustable geometry that was relatively forward thinking in 2008 could make for a fun "friend" bike to keep in the garage.