Piece by piece

So, a bit of a catch-up required...

Since disassembling the bike at the end of August, I have been gradually accumulating the parts to put it back together.

There were a few key decisions along the way, some of which were driven by the old (obsolete) frame spacing. The original forks were 95mm and the rear drop-outs 125mm over lock-nuts (compared with today's 100mm and 130mm). Flexing the frame to squeeze an extra 5mm at the rear is easy enough, but I wasn't happy about the idea of spreading the forks. That leaves 2 options: rebuild the front wheel on the original hub or replace the forks. I chose the latter - it seemed by far the better option to update to modern hubs. Having decided to replace the forks, I also elected to switch from threaded to unthreaded headset, to bring the bike more up to date.

So to eBay to pick up the first few items:

• ITM Visia carbon forks
• M-Part 1" headset
• ITM Big One stem