Getting more hardcore.

My Trance is becoming a little more hardcore this week. I sold my double (22/32/bash) crankset a couple weeks ago when I thought I was going to sell the Trance in order to cut costs on repairing the fork (which I am now completely rebuilding). So I decided to take the opportunity to put a single with a chainguide on th it. I bought a RaceFace Evolve DH crank, E 13 chainguide and also decided to get rid of the Saint derailleur and put on SRAM X9. Getting everything all set up was very frustrating but hopefully will be worth it in the end.
Here is the BB with the ISCG adapter going on. Got to love that Gold, baby! I ended up having to put the adapter (which acts like a BB spacer on 68mm BB shells) on the inside of the other spacer in order to get the chainline. This made for some clearance issues with the linkage and I had to file down the backside of the adapter. All of this by trial and error of course...RaceFace's downhill cranksets have extra 1mm spacer that go on the spindle, which you can move from one side to another in order to line up the chainring and the chainguide. This was frustrating, because the spindle fit into the BB cups like... well, it didn't fit. It needed some love taps to get in. And out. And in again. And out and in over and over. Anyway, the white guide and bashguard look sweet with the white frame, much better than the "black hole" look I had going before.

Ahh!!! SRAM... I love it. After riding my bro-in-laws SX with SRAM X0 I was sold. I got the X9 stuff and it shifts better than my Saint stuff ever did... thank goodness, since the Saint stuff shifted like crap! You'll notice that there is still part of the old Saint RD holding the wheel on. The Saint derailleur mounted to the axle and held the wheel tight. The threaded nuts needed to replace this upper part are impossible to find, so this fat piece will have to do... until my DT RMS quick release comes in.
Here's the back end view. The derailleur was easy to brake apart but the upper piece still needed some "machining" (hacksaw and file) to clear the SRAM derailleur. Yes, that's an 11-21t cassette. Only for die-hard roadies. I think I'll end up with an 11-26 on here.

As you can see in the top photo, there is a rag sticking out of the top right of the fork. That is where the damper goes, which is still awaiting it's rebuild. Looks simple enough, but the guys at Fox told me it was almost impossible to do well. Well, after that chainguide mess, I'm feeling pretty invinsible, so we'll see how it goes. To bad I'm gonna have to wait for winter to end to test ride this all....