Preparation for Red Marley started with my forks. As much as I love the Mullins trees, the rigid forks were hardly suitable for a hill climb. To be honest they are hardly suitable for anything but I had to do them after spending so much time thinking about it. Realising your ideas is important, even if you just realise they're shit.
I got a nice set of K-model forks. It took me a whole day to rebuild them and install the triple trees. The stem and fork tubes had too much chrome so the tubes would fit in the trees and the stem nut wouldn't fit on the stem. I was sweating everywhere by the end of it, when you're too unfit to force a front end together then maybe it's time to go for a jog.
Took another day to make a new axle
Finally I had some bizarre luck - the front hub fit so perfectly between the forks that, with the brake plate right up against the left fork, the wheel alignment was off by only 0.030", so I didn't bother making a spacer. And one of the spacers I made for my rigid forks was only 0.012" too long for the other side which took only 0.35 seconds to adapt.
The forks are too long, have too much play in the bushings and the preload is too high but they still make for a 1000% improvement over what I had before.
Next weekend - practice.
