"That's a lot of frame"

AND a spicy meat-a-ball!  Got the Y11 all stripped down and cleaned up last night and daaaaayyyyyyuuuum is it looking good.

mike you will appreciate or hate that I took these pics with HDR, no epic landscape but doesn't that Trek just pop?!

Upon closer inspection everything is indeed in great shape.  No hidden cracks, dings or other show stoppers.  Even the old Judy fork is actually still working quite well and I stripped the decals so unless you look close you might think its a SID race.  And really all that matters when you are riding a bike is that people THINK you are on really expensive weight weenie parts.

After cleaning it up and giving it some thought I have my plan at least for version 1.0 and based on what I've come up with I think it removes the eventual need for a 2.0, I think the end product will actually be pretty awesome and hopefully very rideable.  I will be retiring the Redline for the season and stealing a few parts that are due for replacement anyway.  The cranks/BB/pedals will come over (with a newer/used chainring I found in the shed).  That BB is pretty whupped but will work just fine for this ride.  I'm also stealing the stem because I want to use the old aluminum flat bars from the Redline from before my carbon upgrade and I need the oversize clamp diameter.  I would just use the bars it came with but Naro, in true mid/late 90's form, rode his bars incredibly narrow (PUN INTENDED).

For some reason the rear canti studs and brakes were missing when I got the bike but luckily when you work on bikes long enough you amass tons of random tidbits that you keep in a bin.  Including a few sets of canti studs and heaps of old V-brakes.  Only real thing left was some sort of tensioner.  Designs have evolved quite a bit from when I first converted and I had to do some tech vs. cost balancing.

I was very intrigued by the Yess ETR/V but the price point was just a tad too high and it actually seems a bit overbuilt for what I really need.  But that vid demonstrating how it works with actual current full suspension designs is pretty impressive.  I wanted to stay away from any spring actuated stuff because those never seem to hold up and almost always end in zipties.  So I went with one of the simpler designs that I could find at a pretty reasonable price somewhat locally.

 DMR STS (Simple Tension Seeker)

Slap it on, dial it in and then tighten it down.  Changing rear flats will not be enjoyable but I really don't flat that often (knock on internet wood).  Should have it in about a week and then the bike will be ready to ride for anything I get in before the real snow starts to fly.  Showing up at the Turkey Burner on this thing could be real funny and if/when I do the winter race at Fort Rock this could actually be a good implement for that.  Gina wants to call it 'HoneyBee', thoughts?