Saturday, February 11, 2012

Wheels And Deals

I like wheels. I like to build bicycle wheels too. Good thing too, because this weekend I have to get a couple wheels built using some parts that I got in for a Twenty Nine Inches project.

These will be built using WTB's latest 29"er rims called "Frequency i23 Team" rims. They are sort of a Stan's Flow competitor, weighing about the same amount as Flow's, and the WTB rims are also tubeless compatible with a tape and valve stem that are very reminiscent of Stan's products. (They supposedly were made with Stan's help, as I understand it)

WTB lists these as "Trail/ All Mountain" type rims and that's exactly how they'll be tested. Hopefully they will make the trip to El Paso, Texas with me in March. The tires that will go on these, some WTB Bronson 2.2"ers, should be just the ticket for the rocky craziness down there too.

Imagine this in "Root Beer"
Black Mountain Cycles is a bicycle shop run by the inimitable Mike Varley, and he designed my "Orange Crush" gravel slayer. You can see the frame and fork here in my image of it just after I got it.

I'm tellin' ya, this frame and fork are pretty sweet. While you can no longer get an orange one like mine, Black Mountain Cycles has all sizes in "Root Beer" of this frame. Why I mention this now is due to the special deal on these right now. Buy a BMC "Monster Cross" and get a free set of tires to go with it. Pretty sweet deal, if I say so myself, (which I do!) Go here to check it out.

And by the way, I paid for my own frame and fork from BMC and they have not asked me, nor have they greased my palms to put this out there. I really like this frame and fork, and that is why I mention this. It's a smartly designed frame and fork that will easily take up to 1.8" tires and just kills it on gravel. You could do far worse than one of these.

By the way, I did get the Retroshift levers and my 9 speed shift levers mounted up to the "Orange Crush" last night. Hopefully Sunday, (when it is supposed to warm up a tad), I'll get to try them out!

4 comments:

Collin Massey said...

Hey GT. I'd love to have something like your Orange Crush, but I'm not into the root beer color BMC has available. Do you know of any other companies that make a good grinder frameset?

Guitar Ted said...

@Radiotanzania; Surly, All City, Salsa Cycles, Cotic Cycles, On One, Planet X, Rawland, Co-Motion, and I could go on.

Those are all steel frame choices, I haven't even begun to get into aluminum and titanium.

These are all "good" choices depending upon what you are looking for. I like the BMC better than all of those, and if you don't like brown, there is always powder coating. ;>)

RGB Nameless said...

GT, maybe you had a chance to compare surly cross check and your orange crush ? They seem identical to me, except orange crush does not have typical surly's micro sized headtube problem.
Also, maybee I'm just seeing things, but orange crush may have more tire clearance in the rear, than crosscheck.

Guitar Ted said...

RGB Nameless: I did a big run down on all the numbers for a Cross Check and the BMC back before I got the Orange Crush last year. Essentially, there are little differences that I felt swayed the decision toward the BMC, and yes, it has a bit more tire clearance.