Project MB-1 Begins, Mild Change to SUB

The "new" MB-1 arrived home this past Thursday. Excitedly, I opened up the shipping box to see what lay inside. Overall condition is good, the previous owner(s) seemed to have put miles on it. Many worn areas on the frame, scratches here and there on the components, replaced front hub and brake levers. Well, I did know it would be a project bike, haha.

After taking some baseline pictures it was time to tear it down, get an upclose look at things. Oh my, seems like a lot of internal coating of rust - was this dunked at one time? Headset bearings look good, looks like they were recently regreased, but wet, brown grease coated the stem and seat post. Hmm, what's a good paint job these days. And if I paint, do I keep it original or make it mine, all mine?

Gee, so many options and choices - wheels, handlebars, colors.

With the bike completely disassembled, the first thing I did was to remove any external rust spots, then totally WD-40 inside the frame, I mean I drenched it. No dents in the frame, though, that's good, just lot's of paint chips, no paint in big sections along the chain stay and bottom near the rear axle.

Well, while I decide on paint, and I have a few requests for quotes out in email, I figure I can clean up some things to get a better look at 'em. Let's start with the derailleurs. Suntour XC Pro - good stuff based on some internet research. That's cool, saves me some money.

Okay, front derailleur, pretty dirty, not a lot of maintenance done - at least relative to my OCD maintenace - lol. Pass 1, spray down with WD-40 (sorry, don't mean to plug a specific product). Let soak, wipe, wipe, wipe. Next, disassemble and clean up pivot points, in the nooks and crannies (yep, those are official terms, okay, my official terms) and more wipe, wipe, wipe. Cotton swabs work pretty good for the tight spaces.

Except for a few surface rust spots on the cage itself, they scrape off easily, the derailleur is in pretty good shape. Polish up the aluminum sections with rubbing compound, grease up the pivot points and reassemble. It's a keeper.

On to the rear derailleur. Some scratches, probably lay down scratches versus crash scratches. Same plan, spray and disassemble. Cool, roller bearing jockey wheels, hopefully they are still in good condition, though I noticed you can still find replacement bearings. Probably first time this has been super serviced.

Separate cage from main body, clean and waterproof grease it, clean, clean, clean everything. Mild polish, grease and reassemble. Good to go. Put both into plastic baggies, just waiting to be reunited with the frame.

Here's my Flikr set for Project MB-1. So far, only the pics of the bike as I received it. As I progress, I update the changes.

One crazy(?) idea I had was should I go from the MB-1's flat bars to a moustache bar. There seems to be only 2 schools, love 'em and hate 'em. Well, to see, I have put one on the SUB. I'm really a drop-bar girl, so the nice drop bars will go on the MB-1. The SUB, I figure, will be the short errand bike so the moustache bars should be fine there.

Well, there's the bar. The nice thing is most people have to convert their shifters to bar-ends. Since I  have my custom stem mount for them, I just had to install the brake levers. Cool. Oh, I did swap levers between the left and right lever mounts. The Tektro levers are assymetric and the curve did not feel right, so I switched them. Now the curved section is at the bottom and is a more comfortable, natural feel when using the brakes. Weird, since it was not a problem when the levers were in the standard vertical position.

I did a test ride today, maybe 3ish miles. I miss the "tops" of my drop bars. I would not want to do long rides with these, but for errands, I think they'll be fine. I can also probably survive commuting, just not as much fun and definitely not as many different  hand positions. We will see tomorrow, heh?