All Things Bikes and Tacos! (...and every vehicle imaginable)

That Moxie is the sex!

In the spirit of "pipedream" hardtail builds, here's what I hope to build someday soon...

Vassago Optimus Ti 29+

 

Yea that thing is Dope!

 

Am I alone in thinking the SRAM NX Groupset is the scourge of the year? Seems like everything that had a GX now has an NX, and you have to buy up to the GX now!

 

Maybe I'll finally build this up to haul around in the new Taco. Only a handful of these made it out to consumers with the Tesla decals.

 

OK Guys: Thoughts on building a bike vs buying a bike?

 

The sad part is they do not even save a ton of money to do it. I will run GX all day, pass on the NX.

In years past I would mix and match shifters/derailleurs/cranksets and get the best of all worlds. You would use XO / XTR derailleurs before clutches were a big thing, and XT / XO cassette with an XT/X9 crankset and chain so you did not eat chainrings and chains too fast. Just walk the line of great performance, lower weight, and cost.

Now its just plain easier to have a complete groupset since the performance is so similar between levels and mainly a weight / longevity difference.

Seeing some pics of older 26” wheel rigs is also a good reason for me to remember my old Trek Fuel from a few years back, my old GF Hifi, and the first 29er I built in 2009/2010 (Niner Air 9)

 

http://www.bikepacking.com/gear/peoples-liberation-drivetrain/

 

I always build...locate the frame and then PB for all the used stuff. Sometimes I will get a new frame if the market doesnt have anything used worth chasing, but I dont like getting carbon frames anymore.

 

It does look like a great time! Not sure if I’ll be able to convince the Mrs.? Lol

 

Is it bad that I read this article, and my first thought was "I wanna hit that on my bike!"?

 

Thats a good platform to learn some rhythm thats for sure. My manual game needs work as we speak.

 

If you are looking for an awesome xc bike look no further! This 2018 Large Trek Procaliber 9.8 has Sram GX 12 speed drive tran, Rockshox Sid RL fork, Truvative Stylo carbon cranks, Bontrager carbon wheels. New the bike retails for $4200

$2500

 

I can't manual at all But I can rock a no pedal pumptrack challenge. The PBR trail in Fruita is great for that. My record for the 1.6 mile downhill portion (90% of it) is 7 pedal strokes.

 

That's a good looking bike!

But it isn't long, slack, and obnoxiously pink!

 

You're not wrong; however, the correct thought is: "that janky ass wood is too rough to flow on my skateboard. Where is the nearest painted curb?"

 

You can actually see the wood risers they strung cross for people like you. But a bike could make short work of that!

 

Interesting reading, as I’ve been pondering (and procrastinating) on upgrading my worn-out 2x10 setup. I especially like the Cinch crank options. But the flaw in the budget model for me is the need for an XD driver, since I’m all Shimano now.

 

I have cinch design cranks on 2/3 of my bikes...soon to be 3/4. I'm happy with them.

 

Many sets of wheels have swappable freehub bodies. Even my fairly budget Sun Ringle Mulefut 80 rear wheel even shipped with the Shimano freehub installed, but the xD was in the box and was easy to swap. Looking online, the freehub was a $80-90 stand alone part but the inner body / pawls etc were identical.


And to answer the question about build a bike vs buy a built model, that really depends on what you want. If I spent what I did on customs for a factory bike, it would probably have some better parts and be a higher end bike. But I like what I like, and swap almost the entire cockpit and brakes / tires to preferred units at a minimum, and when that’s a large portion of a bike, it’s dumb for me to buy most factory builds. Plus I have accumulated most of the bike related tools / stands and most of the stuff is bike shop level Park or equivelent, so building bikes is also fun and pretty easy.

On the topic of building bikes, I put myself into a strange jam for a change. The 29er fork I pulled off the Trek to put on the GF Mullet project had a short steer tube. Fox steer tubes are not replaceable, and even though I did the stack height math, it’s damn tight. I will have to grab a low stack height short length 50-70mm stem with a 30mm stack or less to pull this off, and even then the stem will be on the headset. I might even think of facing a few mil off the headtube, not sure I am ready for that yet. Lucky for me the lowest stack headset I could find was also stupid cheap.