Cannondale fan from Texas

[JohnnyD]

Hey everyone, thought I would just introduce myself and the Cannondale's I own.
First off is my 1992 M700. I've owned this since it was new. It's mostly all original and still going strong.


Next is the used 2004 Jekyll 1000 frame I just picked up to restore. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.


Hope you all get out and ride safely!

 

[black lightning 1987]

Welcome. Good to see that M700. I was spending a lot of time at the local dealers in the early 1990s and purchased a new SM800 in 1990 and a new M900 in 1995. Later purchased a 1992 Delta V900, a 1992 R1000, and a 1993 M800, all used. Sadly only one of the dealers still exists, but I have all of the bikes.

 

[JohnnyD]

I wont part with the M700 for anything so I know the feeling. I had a M500 that was stolen before I got the M700 as a replacement. I've wanted a Jekyll ever since I saw one. Now I have two US made Cannondales. I'm working on getting a Super V 900 from a friend in Florida.

 

[black lightning 1987]

Super V or any other dual suspension frame has been on my want list for a while. Hard to justify for the amount of rough trail riding I do though.

 

[JohnnyD]

Super V or any other dual suspension frame has been on my want list for a while. Hard to justify for the amount of rough trail riding I do though.

I know what you mean. Besides if you wanted to you could take your M800 out for some rough trail rides. Lord know I did a few of those in the past on my M700 while living in southern NM near El Paso. The Sacramento and Franklin Mts. have a lot of nice trails..and a few wild game trails that are super FUN. It was on one of those that the M700 got the scratches on the top tube from..how nothing else got broken(including me) is still a miracle.

 

[black lightning 1987]

Sounds familiar. I have mostly ridden rigid MTBs. While we don't have a lot of steep terrain here, we do have a lot of tree roots, branches, fallen trees, and all too often mud. I guess that the mud is better than the road tar packed between the calipers and the tire on a "memorable" road ride...

 

[JohnnyD]

I hated the road grime I get on my Bianchi when riding in Italy during High School. I gave up riding road bikes then..but ask me to put 17 miles one way to the nearest LBS..yep I did that one on the M700 recently after a nearly 20 yr break in distance riding. The knees are still sore! LOL. I'll be doing a 40 mile ride next spring, just because I want to go spend the night with the parents..so wish me luck!

 

[black lightning 1987]

I'm sure you will be fine with 40 miles. I once rode my M800 twenty miles one way to a friend's house to pick up a pair of wheels. Rode home in the dark with a big wheel box strapped on the rack with 2" of snow on the roads at 25 degrees.

 

[JohnnyD]

I thought I was crazy delivering customers PC's to their homes in Oregon on the back of my M700 in the rain in the late 90's.

 

[black lightning 1987]

You probably were. Guessing you had traffic to deal with. It's not unusual to ride 20 miles in the country after dark here and never see another car.

 

[JohnnyD]

I think we all are/were a l little bit crazy in our youth.
Medford, OR is pretty nicely laid out with bike lanes and a really nice trail system that runs mostly N to S though the town so traffic wasn't that big a deal.

 

[JohnnyD]

Here's the latest update/s The Jekyll is almost finished...well as almost finished as I will get until I find a Lefty for it, so it will be finished soon with a regular suspension fork for the time being. See the thread I have in the restorations sub-forum to see what's been done and left for that bike.
My M700 got a little love as well recently. The drive-train was giving me fits so I purchased everything needed to update it. I went with a 12-32T SRAM 7 speed cassette, new chain and pulled the XT M760 crank I had on my Jekyll, swapped the chain rings from the NOS Deore M590 (its on the Jekyll) I picked up to the XT crank. So now the M700 has a 44/32/22 front with XT crank and BB52 bottom bracket. The old UN50 was shot, not to mention a PITA to remove thanks to 30 yrs of corrosion keeping it locked in place as well as some cross threading. I did have to have the LBS re-thread and face the BB shell since someone did a great job cross threading the non drive side of the original BB (as far as I know it had NEVER been removed since it was new, so unless one of the LBS I had it serviced at a long time ago did it during a basic tune-up it was someone from Cannondale who did it). I kept the original shifters and LX derailleurs. It is amazing how well everything works together. The bike has never felt so smooth to pedal since it was new and the shifting is so quiet I actually have to double check visually to see if it moves.
I am going to keep the original crankset. I am going to spend sometime looking for new(NOS preferably) chain rings for it and buy a new bottom bracket as well. One with a metal non drive side adjustable cup! Once I get all that done I will reinstall it on the bike. If all goes well a good friend in Fla. will send me his brothers old Killer V 500 I will use the XT crankset on that bike.

EDIT: I'll update the gallery pics of the M700 soon.

 

[black lightning 1987]

Shimano 6/7/8 works so well - it's too bad that they had to move on. I particularly like thumbshifters. One of the reasons I bought my 1989 SM800 instead of the newer bikes on the shop floor was that it had SunTour thumbshifters and most of the newer models had Rapidfire.

 

[JohnnyD]

I love the fact my 30 yr old thumbshifters work like a charm. I still have nice audible clicks on each up or down shift on the rear. I only wish the front was indexed like the rear though. That is MY ONLY complaint about them. The logo's are still a little bit visible even, talk about durability. Granted I have kept them clean and the bike has spent a lot of years in storage..but I do not plan on changing them anytime soon. So unless a NOS/excellent condition Deore XT set from the same time period comes up for sale, I'll be using the LX setup for a very long time to come.

BTW: I have a question for you about the headset on your 93 M800. Do you happen to know the sizes for the external cups. It's more for FYI than anything, but I am trying to see if they are the same size from 92-93 or not. I know the M500's had the same headset between the 2 years. So I am guessing that same thing holds true with the bearings on the M800/M700 frames in 92/93. According to the catalogs they used the same headsets in each year. I trying to figure out if it was the same size between the 2 years
(92)FOVP-5000 oversize; (93) FOVP-ST.

 

[black lightning 1987]

The 1993 rigid frames with the Pepperoni fork used 1 1/4" threaded steerer tubes. The cup OD is 37 mm, the crown race ID is 33 mm, and the stem quill OD is 28.6 mm. In 1992 the M700 also had the all-aluminum Pepperoni fork so I'm pretty sure it was 1 1/4". The 1992 M500 had a steel Tange fork. It would have been either 1" or 1 1/8". Easiest way to check on a built bike is to measure the quill OD. 22.2 mm (7/8") is a 1" fork, 25.4 mm (1") is a 1 1/8" fork, and 28.6 mm (1 1/8") is a 1 1/4" fork.

 

[JohnnyD]

Thanks a bunch for the information. I just needed to make sure of the cup and an crown race dimensions so I can find replacement bearings. My 1992 has the 1 1/4 in threaded fork and I don't want to change it but I am sure it could use some new bearings to really smooth things out.

 

[black lightning 1987]

I've owned my M800 for over 20 (25?) years and have never touched the headset. It gets ridden regularly - I rode it a couple of days ago. Pretty sure that those headsets are traditional type with caged ball bearings. Really all you need to do is pull the fork and measure the ball diameter. Upper and lower may be different, I know that's the case with Ritchey headsets. If you can't find caged bearings of the right ball diameter and number you can pry the old balls out of the original cages and replace them.

 

[JohnnyD]

You are correct on the headset so far. I'll pull the bearings out on my next day off, clean and degrease them like crazy and relube them too see if that improves anything. The steering has always been really smooth, it's just that ever since I swapped the Hollowtech II crankset into the bike I've noticed other little noises it makes now that the bottom bracket is nearly silent. I'm also going to pull the ball bearing out of the hubs and clean up everything there too. I re-lubed them in June, but didn't go all out and super clean and degrease everything, just a quick clean and check of the cups/cones to make sure nothing was wrong. I figure I might as well do all that on the M700 now since the Jekyll will be done this weekend after the final parts arrive on Friday.

 

[black lightning 1987]

I think that a pretty good book could be written about noises that bikes make and the various causes and cures. My guess is that headsets (properly adjusted and in good condition) are unlikely to make any noise. Stems, seatposts, and bottom brackets on the other hand....

 

[JohnnyD]

I am starting to believe that all the little noises are there to remind us to just SHUT UP and ride...we are just too stubborn to listen!