Seat and Wheels

Well the original seat is akin to some sort of medieval torture device if you ask me. You could floss your arse with it, its that skinny.
Even the five hour journey home on the beast highlighted that shortcomming so it was high on my list to sort.
Afterall i cant journey across the barren plain of Dakar with a numb bum now can i?

I ended up using P and P Seating in the UK. Very unpatriotic of me to farm it out across the water but there were two reason why.
1. They were at the rds bike show so i could discuss face to face the ins and outs (bad adjectives/verbs re a seat) of what i wanted and could see colour charts first hands which is a bonus.
2. I wanted to reshape the foam somehat and a gel insert was a must too.
Whilst a good looking job could be made of it here in Eire i was just not terribly sure of getting the reprofiling and gel insert done right. P and P are round ages and yawn at my requests with a yeah no worries we can do that whilst i was getting chin stroking over here so...

Here it is

All vinyl

Blue on the sides and black basket weave on top.
Font and sizing is a bit off but hey that was something i couldnt even seem to track down over here.
I hope my arse like it.

A seat is well and good but it wont get me to Dakar, il need wheels for that!
The original wheels were somewhat furry and corroded but not bad at all. Despite this i wanted to start a fresh so ordered stainless spokes from Hagon in the UK. Wernt cheap! But i suppose its done and done right with them.

Wheels were stripped by Leo O'Reillys in Dublin.
I gave the rims a clean and filled down any burrs or nicks and had them dipped, blasted and coated by Barelle.

They do a lovely satin black thats almost got a silvery basecoat appearance to it.

Meanwhile i hung onto the hubs and had them soda blasted as i wanted to paint them due to spoke hole sizes being made narrower due to the thicker coating of powder.

Ready for matt black aerosol after being sanded and etch primed.

And the finished product

I think the look ace, kinda meaner than the old chrome look.
I chose anakee 2's as they perform well on road.
To be honest this whole deal with the wheels was expensive and at times messy.
I had to bring the wheels to Dublin to have the offset measured and be stripped by the builder.
Then off with the rims to the powder coater with the rims and go home.
Back up to Dublin the next week to collect the coated rims, whilst having sorted the blasting and painting of the hubs during the week myself.
Then back to the builder to have them, well...built. And then battle across Dublin friday avo traffic to the shop to have my tyres fitted where upon they didnt have my correct sized rear lol.
Bike refurbishment, it tests your commitment to sparkle motion thats for sure! But im delighted with the results in the end.

Shock

Managed to scrimp and save and sell a kidney for a wilbers shock.
Paul in vmtek.ie was the agent i used and he took all my details. You have to wonder does all the detail simply amount to a spring roughly equivalent to your weight or perhaps something more??
By all accounts something more, the valving is set up for a lean towards on road and its delivered with preload set to what they reckon should be the correct sag and likewise the damping set to optimum.

Have high hopes for this as it wasnt cheap and they have a great rep it seems. Paid the extra for the ride height adjuster at the bottom of the shock.
If the damping is as tasty as the milling il be a very happy lad.
Have a gawk

Added some extra height to sharpen things up a tad.
Makes no bones about it, this bike will be higher than Charlie Sheen. The wilbers fork springs and and the reprofiled seat will make her a daunting prospect.

Bought one of these cool thrust washers off simplybearings.co.uk

I really like that site, makes for easy ordering of an at times confusing product.
The idea with this is it rides above the spring and below the preload collars. No more skinned knuckles, simply un nip the rings and turn by hand!

So there she is all buttonbed up, mostly