The bike is an interesting piece of kit - it's the SM-500, the first mountain bike Cannondale released (1984). It's notable for having different sized wheels (26" on the front, 24" rears) and a high bottom bracket clearance. I did a bit of research and found its a classic and that good ones are pretty rare these days. It has an Al frame.
I was given the bike by an American transport consultant in the early 90s. She brought it out to work here for a while and we rode together a fair bit. When she left to go home, she gave me the bike. I was never really into mountain bikes, but I rode it locally, messing about on it. It had big wide bullmoose handlebars which I stupidly replaced with straight bars and then chucked the old ones away and a fat plastic seat with springs, which i replaced with a narrower racing-style saddle.
It's pretty tired and grimy now, perished tires etc and it needs a fair bit of work to get it back to rideable - I figured beyond my time or skills these days. However, after I had done some research on the bike, I decided I wanted to bring it back to original style as much as possible.
Consulting with the bike shop dudes (they really liked the bike - blown away by the 5-speed casette on the back!) they figured the tires will be the hardest things (I'll probably have slicks put on if they can find matching 26" and 24" ones), but the mechanic needs to look at it and get back to me.
I'm hoping to track down some bullmoose bars to put back on it, and keep all the original cranks, brakes, derailleurs etc (since they are certainly not worn out from my inspections).
I'll update this post when I know more, but I'm quite looking forward to getting back on the bike.
smiss
ps - this is how it looks now...pretty sad and neglected.
![Image](http://www.smithcorp.com.au/images/cannondale.jpg)
After I busted