Hi all, just a quicky. I am trying to understand if it is possible, financially, for me to buy a Cotic Rocket frame and build it up. In an effort to get an answer quicker than trawling through masses of parts and adding it all up I thought I would ask the people who have probably done this before.

So, the frame costs around £1400 and this leaves me a maximum of £1600 for parts to make a complete bike. Is it possible without seriously cutting down n quality parts? I am guessing forks would be a huge lump of the cost!

My previous thread was asking you chaps t help me decide on a bike style, at least I now know I am going full suss, we are getting there slowly.

Cheers

J

If you buy everything secondhand you should be able to build up something nice, all brand new parts would be a real stretch unless you’re willing to wait a long time for bargains.

Easy –
XT group set inc brakes bikediscount.de less than £500
Hope hoops wheels Merlin about £300
Forks to choice look at On One say £500
Finishing kit what ever is left!

forks 400
wheels 200
brakes 200
seatpost saddle stem 100
gears 300
tyres, heasdset etc 300

leaves you 100 spare for ancillary items…..

easy

Just bu a canyon. I spent £4500 building my own orange alpine 160 and it is no better than a friends £1700 canyon or another’s £3000 canyon.

An xt groupset from somewhere German, a set of Hop Hoops (flows probably) a search around for a decent deal on a Revelation fork and some finishing kit from the classifieds – is have thought you should do that all for £1600 fairly comfortably without cutting too many corners.

I have wrestled with the canyon scenario and I don’t disagree that they are amazing value and great bikes. It’s just that When spending large amounts on anything I like to get something that little bit different and I feel the Cotic frame + build will fulfil this need. I have never had the opportunity to buy a decent bike Neil now and probably won’t again until the children are independent so I need to buy wisely.

Thinking about it, I have a set of RockShox Recon forks on my 2006 GT iDrive these would probably do fine after a service wouldn’t they?

When I built up my heckler a few years back I just bought a donor bike.
£500 for a stinky with a bunch of upgrades like fox forks, hope brakes and the rest was stuff I’d choose anyway. Sold the frame for £200 and spent that upgrading the hubs with still £50 left over.
So all in, built for less than the price of the forks new.

Genius idea! Well common sense actually but not something I had considered. Cheers timber.

another option is to fish around for a sale 2011 hardtail with a suitable travel forks etc then use that as your donor bike.

Ok so the frame has been purchased. Am now the proud owner of a Cotic Rocket, this I am happy about. The budget has gone down though and this I am not happy about. The latest question from me is this, am I being daft or is it actually cheaper to buy a brand new hardtail and take the parts off as suggested above, rather than sourcing the individual parts? If so, why? Obviously I am gong to have to sell the hardtail shocks and buy 150mm travel forks but that still brings me in about 300 quid cheaper than buying the individual bits. Madness!

Would this work, given you could get maybe £350ish for the frame?

http://www.on-one.co.uk/i/q/CBOOCAR456XT/on_one_carbon_456_xt_mountain_bike

Good call, Pretty close to budget YoKaiser just around 200 too much even if I did sell the frame for your suggested price. My budget has dropped due t some car issues and I now need to cobble together something for around 1100.

You could get a set of 150 Revs off Merlin for £315 at the moment… It’s what I did.

http://www.merlincycles.com/bike-shop/frame-forks/forks-shocks/rockshox-suspension-forks/2012-rockshox-revelation-rlt-15mm-axle.html

Just get everything from actionsports or bike discount. Surely much easier than buying a whole bike to strip for parts.

Personally I’d be building it from used bits but then I’m an ebay/classifieds predator 😆 What’s the remaining budget? YT Wicked 150 would make a good donor and would leave you with a sellable frame, but might take a while to arrive (and you’d need to pay slightly more up front then recoup it)

I have £1100 left after the frame has been paid for. Got some Hope hoops for 300 but didn’t find the suss as cheap as above so good call. It’s just amazing how all the small stuff adds up which is why the donor bike seems appealing.

One problem with looking for 2nd hand parts is the wheels are not your usual QR front and rear. Well your front could be QR depending on your fork but I would strongly recommend against a QR front on a Rocket!

This does make it harder. You could go with some Superstar Switch hubbed wheels – like Hope but not quite and won’t have the price tag.

Forks – either a Merlin deal or 2nd hand. Stem, seat post etc – hit the classifieds for some nice Thomson stuff. Bars – lots of bargains on CRC for something >700mm.

For drivetrain I am guessing you want 2×10 or maybe 1×10? Not sure what 10 speed stuff is hitting the classifieds but tbh I would go for one of the new shadow+ XT rear dérailleurs.

Brakes + rotors – definitely hit the classifieds.

Don’t forget to allow for cables etc.

Headset – it’s 44mm isnt it so again quite rare for used ones. Either check out CRC etc for a clearance bargain, opt for the default Hope (I would) or look at superstar (mine has been fine and they stock spares which is nice to know you can get them)

For 1600 I’d expect you to be getting full XT drivechain and brakes (or X9), hope hoop/stans wheels (they are hella deal most of the time), very decent current spec forks in the £350-500 region, and plenty of cash for all the other bits you’ll need.

Its entirely possible even if you buy stuff at not so great prices. IF you spend days of your life on the internets and are willing to give it 3months to wait for all the deals to come your way, you could shave £500 off that, OR end up with even nicer stuff. But frankly, its a generous budget and you’ll get what you want.

he has £1100 left for the build.

Shop around – try to get discount vouchers, look at parts on offer – Rose, dikediscount.de, Merlin, on-one + classifieds. Do you have any parts kicking around that you could use temporarily?

I built my Solaris from all new parts + a few bits I had for ~£2000. Take away the cost of the frame and that is ~ £1500 but I got brand new fox 29er forks, Thomson, King heeadset, niner bars etc. I’m sure you could manage a good build on your budget…

Don’t forget that the Rocket has a 142×12 syntace bolt through on the rear.

If you go for hope hoops remember and specify this!

You can get conversion kits for pro II’s though (this is what I did…) but make sure it’s the right one (evo’s are different)

RockShox RLT purchased from Merlin thanks metal heart good find. Now I have a frame and forks lol. Getting there.

Buy the new Deore Brakes from Rose for £70!!! They won best brake in MBR recently. They have all the performance of SLX/XT without tool-free adjust and a little heavier.

Also, for seat/saddle/grips try second hand website flatoutcycles.com

Ive built 2 new bikes in the last 6 months. There are definitely places to spend/places to save.

Are you talking just the Levers or does that include the disks and everything dantsw13?

Discs/calipers/hoses. No adapters or rotors. Superstar won’t cost a lot for those if you need them. I’ve been really happy with mine since fitting. They are on my Heckler for an Alps trip this week!

I got some of those LX hydraulic brifters in CRC sale earlier in the year, 3x9spd + shimano compatible brakes for £19.99 posted!

That said, not many people get on with brifters, but still, for £20 you’d struggle to even buy 1x single v brake lever, let alone a single disc lever

Is your frame orange? Wiggle have Charge Spoon’s with orange stitching and Charge in orange for £14.99.

And you can get some orange Superstar grips for £7.99

Yes it’s Orange, I am off to wiggle for a look, thank you.

I m hoping to pick up my small, bright orange Rocket on Sat. keeping the build within budget was a challenge as I wanted certain parts which just cost lots. I don’t think i have made any daft compromises and will let you all know what it’s like to fall off one soon. Thanks to you all for the advice on the parts, ended up with hope hoops and RockShox rev as the parts I wouldn’t compromise on. SLX brakes, mechs etc and XT cassette rather than XT all round to reduce cost.
Have to admit to being a bit anal about the colour scheme and have gone with white seat with orange stitch, white stem, white grips with orange ends, and orangeish seat post. The black bars, wheels, tyres, and crankset will hopefully offset the gaudiness of the white and orange 🙂 can’t wait to see it on Sat.

Enjoy your bike John, it’s fun seeing someone so excited and enthusiastic.

(The kids will never be independent).

So it’s here, how the hell do I post a pic???

STW help bit above
But I personally use Tinypic website – very eat to use, simply paste in the address given after you download the pic.

I’ve just built a rocket for 3.5, I got the rp23 with a hope headset for £1550, save a hundred by getting the float

I could have saved money on each of the following parts without it effecting performance
Reverb £200 (I think you need this)
Sram xo rear mech £150 (could save £50 here)
Hope M4 brakes (special edition paint job) £270 (get slx and save £130)
wheels £300 (proabably save a £100 here)
XT crank £160 (Save £50 here)

100+50+130+100+50= 430
so can be done for about 3 grand with a reverb.

I got a £400 marzocchi fork from winstanleys, very good it is too

You could easily build one for 3 grand without compromising.

It’s built now and is sitting gleaming in my garage :-). Need to get some let up in the shite weather to ride it now. I managed to stay within my 2.5k budget by taking SLX kit instead of XT. RockShox Revelation for the forks and as you say the float for the rear.

Have you managed to ride yours in anger yet or has the weather scuppered things for you?

Right, lets see if this works Rocket Pics

yes ridden it in the mud about 5 times, the glossy black paint is getting scoured by my long muddy shorts, I recommend lycra shorts to avoid this!!! Youve got to use it regardless of the weather though. I’m already looking for a good powdercoater!
Get some helicopter tape for the cable rub. I missed a couple of spots and it rubbed right through the paint in one ride.

That is a purty bike!!