1986 Cannondale SM600 - Twin Vintage Mountain Bike Restoration

This is a slide show of photos I took while restoring these two Cannondale SM600’s for a client of mine in 2020. Him and his friend bought them brand new. He ended up inheriting his friend’s bike, and decided to have both of them restored so that he and his wife could ride them.
My client’s friend was a bicycle mechanic in the 1970’s. He made some interesting mods to his bike back in the day. He removed all of the decals from his bike. He also disconnected the front rollercam brake and replaced the stem (without cable stop) and bars. He was also using a road freewheel. Odd set up. The Stronglight Delta headset was over tightened and the cam for the front brake was missing completely.
I really regret not taking any video when I worked on these two great bikes. Time is money when you are doing customer work.
Both of these bikes originally came with complete SunTour XC gruppos. Which included freewheel hubs, both derailleurs, thumb shifters, pedals, stem and seat post. The client’s bike retained all of its original bits. I did remove the SunTour XC pedals with power straps from both bikes per customer request. Don’t worry, they didn’t get thrown out!
I could’ve created a mask and replicated the pad stamp logos on the derailleurs, but decided to have vinyl decals made. I’ve used Retrodecals on other projects, and I cannot recommend them enough. Gil had no template for the SunTour XC RD logos. He was kind enough to spend a ton of time going back and forth with me to get the font and sizing right. Killer job as always. You can find Retrodecals on Facebook and Instagram.

[@ReferenceBicycle]

I’ve made an updated video of this build. You can find it here: ruclips.net/video/nPm_xEWQpUc/видео.html

[@GoodTimeBikes]

The bike came out great! It be cool to see you take this out for a ride too! 👍🏼

[@ReferenceBicycle]

Thanks! Unfortunately these were built for a customer in NY a couple of years ago and I don’t have access to them. Beautiful bikes for sure.