New winter project: Lipstick on a Pig

[Sandwich]

gotcha.

while the MAG's were likely worth playing with, i would strongly suggest against spending any money outside tossing a bleed on the el caminos and seeing if they will work better.

Sounds fair. I'll explore my options if need be. With SLX @ $90 a side, and BB7s @ $130 a set, I think I'll have a solution if they don't work out. I can always throw the caminos on my jumper, or sell them off for a trail biker. I appreciate the heads up.

[-BB-]

I'd also like to get a flat crown, so I can slam the bars as low as possible.

the next step is to hopefully work on slacking it out.... I'm thinking of short shocking it, adding an angled reducer, and possibly a longer travel fork to get the head angle more respectable, and the bottom bracket right around 14" or less. .

I'm confused... Won't adding a flat crown bring the stantions UP (and bars lower) and do the opposite of what you stated lower about getting a longer travel fork to rake out the HT?

Seems like you have to choose one or the other. Either bring the bars (well HT more precisely) up to slacken it, or keep the bars lower and deal with the HT angle (aside from what the angleset will do).

[Sandwich]

I'm confused... Won't adding a flat crown bring the stantions UP (and bars lower) and do the opposite of what you stated lower about getting a longer travel fork to rake out the HT?

Seems like you have to choose one or the other. Either bring the bars (well HT more precisely) up to slacken it, or keep the bars lower and deal with the HT angle (aside from what the angleset will do).

Well, the priority is to get the bars lower, because riding with 2" riser bars and 2" of spacers is like riding a clown bike. Getting a flat crown will allow me to maintain appropriate distance between the clamps and get rid of any spacers below the crown, getting my bars to a normal height. The stanchions don't have to move. In fact, I have no room to move them up or down right now. The fork sits at about 170mm of exposed stanchion, and there's an upper limit line where the diameter of the stanchions changes. That won't move no matter what. A flat crown will only bring the top crown down, as I can eliminate a spacer beneath the crown and above the headset.

Adding an inch of travel in the front will, from that point, raise the front end by about an inch, which will slacken it a bit, but it'll also raise my handlebar height, yeah. The trick is that the ideal is getting a compact cockpit, and not getting the lowest cockpit possible. If you look at that photo, I have about 4 extra inches of height over where the bar should be with a flat crowned boxxer or something similar.

[Udi]

Are the stanchions tapered or only able to be clamped at certain points? I'd be inspecting the stanchion (comparing ID/OD at designated clamping vs. other areas if need be) to see if you can clamp it further up. It'd be nice if you could drop it in the crowns to slacken it out, assuming you can get the BB where you want it in other ways.

I think some 800s would be a good bet, but decide on how you are going to get the other numbers right first (HA and BB) - some combination of extended/taller fork, angled cups, shorter shock, offset bushings - that way you can get an appropriate bar rise to raise or lower your hands if needed.

[kidwoo]

You should be able to at least get 2 degrees out of an offset headset (probably more since I got that much out of a 44mm headtube on my trail bike).

And yeah, short shock that beyotch. A low 7x7 beats a tall 8x8 any day of the week.

That's the same catalog frame that KHS used to sell BTW. Flexy, heavy, kinda ****ty but they go downhill. You could certainly do worse.

[Sandwich]

That's the same catalog frame that KHS used to sell BTW. Flexy, heavy, kinda ****ty but they go downhill. You could certainly do worse.

For $300, that's what I'm banking on!

[Polandspring88]

Oh how I loved my old Monster T. If you can snag the upper crown from an 03+ you can go with a direct mount stem if that is preferred. And don't worry too much about the scratch resulting in oozing oil, they have like a gallon inside

[demonprec]

i,d be interested in the Monster

[htrdoug]

...I believe the frame has 9" of travel. It has a 8.75inx2.75in shock. My intention is to get a 8.5x2.5 shock to lower travel to 8.2 and drop the rear wheel 3/4in. I have toyed with the idea of going even lower, but I'm not sure that's realistic.

Don't spend money on a shock,first I'd just back off preload another 1/4",that would be the same as a 1/4" shorter shock,wouldn't it?
Can't imagine it would negatively affect quality of ride on anything but jumps,and I wouldn't be doing any big jumps on that old a bike anyway...if necessary tear down shock and add 1/4" internal spacer.
As far as where to redrill the link i'd remove the rear shock spring and bottom out the shock and see how much clearance you have between the back tire and any point of contact. Then remove the lower shock bolt and see just how much you can go before the tire hits,don't forget to compensate for the bottoming bumper but you should see where to drill to get the maximum drop out of the redrill,allow for flex as everything gives just a bit when you bottom out.I might go for a inch of clearance without compressing the bottom out bumper(difficult to squish it with the lower bolt out,measure how much wheel travel it gives before you pull the lower bolt out)

Cool project,I live too far from lifts and have too many other hobbies to drop even 2k on a bike to use 4-5 times a year,and all-mountain bikes just don't really get it for playing occasional downhill,I'd consider 1k to be OK sometime in the near future but would really like a 600bucker if I decide I need to return to downhill riding(zero jumping,54 years old and beat body!) Had a couple of Stinky's years ago and really liked them,wouldn't mind another but don't want something a 14 year old kid has hammered.

[Sandwich]

Don't spend money on a shock,first I'd just back off preload another 1/4",that would be the same as a 1/4" shorter shock,wouldn't it?
Can't imagine it would negatively affect quality of ride on anything but jumps,and I wouldn't be doing any big jumps on that old a bike anyway...if necessary tear down shock and add 1/4" internal spacer.
As far as where to redrill the link i'd remove the rear shock spring and bottom out the shock and see how much clearance you have between the back tire and any point of contact. Then remove the lower shock bolt and see just how much you can go before the tire hits,don't forget to compensate for the bottoming bumper but you should see where to drill to get the maximum drop out of the redrill,allow for flex as everything gives just a bit when you bottom out.I might go for a inch of clearance without compressing the bottom out bumper(difficult to squish it with the lower bolt out,measure how much wheel travel it gives before you pull the lower bolt out)

Cool project,I live too far from lifts and have too many other hobbies to drop even 2k on a bike to use 4-5 times a year,and all-mountain bikes just don't really get it for playing occasional downhill,I'd consider 1k to be OK sometime in the near future but would really like a 600bucker if I decide I need to return to downhill riding(zero jumping,54 years old and beat body!) Had a couple of Stinky's years ago and really liked them,wouldn't mind another but don't want something a 14 year old kid has hammered.

um, well preload is already pretty close to zero, as I don't like running any more preload than enough to keep the spring spinning, if possible...and if you backed it off a quarter inch, yes you'd have a shorter shock, but you'd also have a loose spring, top out issues, and, well, it's just a terrible idea. For geometry uses, yeah, I can do that to test it out, and maybe ride around the yard, but I wouldn't ever want to ride with a loose spring.

[htrdoug]

Yea,don't run a spring w/o any preload,didn't know,must be a fairly stiff spring? Anyway,just have your present shock shortened. I used to run extra sag in my Stinky's to get the geometry good but the spring was soft enough to require plenty of preload even at 40% sag,It was 2004,static head angles were pretty steep on "freeride" bikes.

[Jm_]

I remember making 3/4" (20mm) internal spacers on my old Monster T so I could run it as an interim/backup fork with modern axle-to-crown on my bike a few years back. With the dynamic bushing, I wasn't worried about the overlap.

[Sandwich]

ohhh, so you lengthened the damper, sort of? made the stanchions sit further out of the lowers? Just trying to wrap my head around what you did.

[demonprec]

ohhh, so you lengthened the damper, sort of? made the stanchions sit further out of the lowers? Just trying to wrap my head around what you did.

back in the day when the Monster 1st hit the scene there was a big tire rage , Nokian had the 3" Gazzaloti and Michelin tire the 2.8" these tire would hit the lower crown as the fork was designed around a 2.4/2.5 tire , a cure for this was to put a spacer in the bottom of the lower fork this increased the axle to lower crown clearance , Marz built a kit as well that included a different arch for mud clearance with the big tires

[Jm_]

I lengthened the damper rods, although it didn't net any more travel. I simply added a coupler to the bottom of the damper rod *that's where the 20mm or so comes from*, then got some threaded rod the same size and thread pitch as the damper threads, sawed off an appropriate amount of the threaded rod to be left with just the size I needed (necessary for attaching to the footnut) and then joined the coupler and threaded rod. Make sure to chamfer/round the threaded ends so the footnuts will screw on easy. Made it as tight as I could and used some red locktite or epoxy or something in there to help ensure it held (tricky to tighten). Then attached this to the fork damper rod (easy to tighten using coupler) and then put it back together like normal.

Kinda like what's explained above. I did it first back in the day with my Stratos MX6 to get more clamping area for the crown so it'd work with my enormous headtube K2 I think (smooth stanchions with no taper).

Again, the whole point with the Monster was just to have a viable back-up fork and have semi-normal geometry at the same time. It worked just fine, but especially due to the dynamic bushing IMO. The end of the stanchion tube has a bushing fitted to it, that means that as the fork progresses through the travel, the bushing is further and further from the static bushing, which means that it gets much stiffer as it goes through the travel (kind of like how they claim is the case for an inverted fork, except unless it also has a dynamic bushing, like the shiver SC, it's not seeing anywhere near the benefit that it could be seeing in this way).