Interesting fact: you probably could have done nothing except clean and polish the bike, told him you had done the rebuild, and he would have said the same thing.
I've been biting my tongue again as I read over these serious discussions of things that affect the "feel" and "ride" of a bike. Missing from this discussion, however, is the one largest factor: human expectations. It is well known that humans are poor judges of subjective experiences, and will perceive whatever they expect or want to perceive. This is why research that involves any component of human bias is done "blind": sometimes double blind (experimenter and subject are in the dark) or even triple blind (the guy who crunches the data also doesn't know things that could bias the results).
Many people look at this as an academic nicety, or get offended, thinking that they are being called stupid or self-delusional. That's not the case--it is a simple fact that human perception is colored by expectation and personal desire, and that fact applies to all of us,whether we realize it or not. So, subjective assessments of "ride," stiffness, "feel," handling characteristics, and similar things are immediately suspect. Especially, since objective measurements of such differences repeatedly fail to show any substantial difference.
For example, the following address the issue of frame stiffness:
http://draco.acs.uci.edu/
http://technology.open.ac.uk/
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/
(I'm amused by Rinard, who buys into the subjective conventional wisdom without a hint of skepticism, then shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong!)
I have some problems with all of these measurements, but they generally show that there is very little difference between frames and forks, even of different types and materials. Deflections are so small that they bring into question the whole idea that they are perceptible at all, to say nothing of the differences being perceptible. In the final analysis, before I buy into the conventional wisdom, someone really needs to explain to me, in a credible and quantitative way, why two bicycles made of virtually identical materials to virtually identical dimensions can have any perceptible differences.
Again, these are extremely simple structures that obey the laws of physics. There is no magic in them. People, however, are another story, entirely.
Steve Maas
Dublin, Ireland
>A racer friend of mine gave me his Peugeot PY 10 CP team bike after he
\r?\n>raced it a couple of years because it had "gone soft" and he'd ordered a
\r?\n>Reynolds 753 Peugeot PRO 10 team bike. This was twenty or so years ago.
\r?\n> I completely disassembled the bike down to the last bearing and
\r?\n>overhauled everything including rebuilding the wheels. When it was done
\r?\n>and polished I had him ride the bike and he couldn't believe the
\r?\n>difference. Said it rode like when he first bought it. IT WAS NO
\r?\n>LONGER SOFT!!!
\r?\n>
\r?\n>Chuck Schmidt
\r?\n>South Pasadena, Southern California
\r?\n>
\r?\n>.