Kelly's "New" Bike

Sometimes you get lucky... the frame you see above was a lucky find on eBay. Steve, if you're reading this, thanks again! What you see above is Kelly's "new" ride. Two things came together to make this possible. One, my eBay notifies me when Gary Fisher Sugar 29ers come up for sale... I guess I'm curious to watch them come up on the auction block since I have one myself. So one day a clean Sugar 293 frame showed up and I started watching the auction. The second thing was that Kelly would probably prefer a full suspension bike, if only for the cushy ride compared to her hardtail. No, her old bike, silly - the Fisher Cobia she was riding for the last few years. Most of you out there in blogville know that new full suspension 29ers don't come cheap. So somehow I won the auction. The frame showed up packaged beautifully, and to be honest this bike is cleaner than my '06 293 even though it's older. It's an '04, but it must be a late '04 as it has the beefier rear shock mount gusseting. Kelly's Cobia went onto the workstand and off came all the donor parts - darn near everything. Components on Cobias aren't quite as high up the food chain as what would be on a 293 but everything just plain works.

• The RockShox Tora fork is solid, albeit a tad heftier than it's Reba big sister. On it went to the new frame, held in position by a new Cane Creek C1 headset. The C1 is not fancy but it's got the right lineage and at $10.50 was certainly the right price.
• Race X-Lite stem, Bontrager bar, and Ergons went right on.
• The Avid BB5 brakes went from Cobia to 293. They aren't as easily adjusted as the venerable BB7s, but I'm used to fiddling with them and when set up right they work as well as the BB7s.
• Oh yeah, the rear triangle needed a Trek 210648 disc brake adapter. Interestingly, adapters are sold on eBay for $38, but the real McCoys are available from your friendly Trek/Fisher LBS for half that. Go figure. Two bolts and you can remove the v-brake posts!
• A new Titec Pluto setback post went into the seat tube. The 293s employ a bigger tube than the Cobias, and the post I had in inventory didn't have the setback I was looking for. The seat was a carryover.
• The stock Shimano LX front derailleur from my 293 was mounted on this 293, and the stock rear derailleur from the Cobia found its way to the back of this 293.
• New brake and derailleur cables - SRAM Flak Jackets - were fitted.
• Wheels and tires are Cobia carryovers.
• The big change: a RaceFace Turbine compact crankset. The granny ring is a 20 tooth and the middle ring is a 30 tooth... very, very desirable gears for 29ers as it results in the same gear inches as a conventional 26er mountain bike. Another eBay score, of course. The Turbines (and other 58x94 compact cranksets) are no longer in production so when they show up on eBay they inevitably draw a lot of attention. Luckily you can still get chainrings for these things. At this point, the new SRAM 991 chain is not slipping on the rings, so new rings can wait. The only thing I'd change would be to install a 40 tooth or 42 tooth big ring.

So there you have it - Kelly's new ride. Now we've got a medium Cobia frame just waiting for our daughter to grow into it (grammar -5). She's got an X-small Trek right now but really should be on a small. Unfortunately, in no time she'll be ready for a medium...