Considering a winter project of taking my my old 96 Caloi frame and making a Hard tail SS out of the old girl. Priority one of the project is stay super cheap. So i have a few Questions I have seen most around here seen to run 45-55 gear inches. So looking at gear inches you have 22/11 at 52 and 34/17 at 52. Part of me likes the thought of the 22 and a high clearance drive train but i seem to see mostly 34ish on the trail why would you chose one over the other. Second i figure there is at least a 50% chance that i will need a chain Tensioner with my vertical dropouts if so I would like to build one rather than buy and I don't feel like using the old XTR rear derailleur as the tensioner so have any of you built a tensioner that you liked and do you have pics. Lastly I have a Torra to replace the old Judy that was on her but was wondering if there was a cheap rigid fork that would hold up to my 275lbs. I remember my first stumpy and the raleigh that replaced it both died of bent/broken forks and that's when i weighed a whole 175LBS and had better bike handling skills.
Thanks for any help
Jones
Thanks for any help
Jones