Long Termers: Matt’s Santa Cruz Blur LT

Blur LT

Price: £1699 frame only (painted), £1899 frame only (anodized)
From: www.santacruzbikes.co.uk

Yes, there she is; the lovely blue Santa Cruz Blur LT.
There seems to be a theme developing in this years long-termers and that is “all-roundness”.

Many of the Valleyaholics that live in Calderdale have ended up getting more and more specific bike suitable to the terrain where we live and making bikes that are more and more useless anywhere else. If not useless, then not as much fun as they could be. Big portly slack bikes are ace down steep things but take them, for instance, to most trail centres and they’re sluggish, want to run wide in the corners and are exhausting up hill.
So I want to build a Mountain Bike, one that pedals up stuff and can go down stuff in a dignified manner without sacrificing too much to either side of the hill.
I’m hoping that’s what I’m doing with this Santa Cruz Blur LT. As it currently stands it has 140mm of travel from the Fox Float RP23 rear shock and a Revelation Black Box Dual Air fork with 150mm of travel; so, although quite long in actual travel, with the steepish head-angle and the way the VPP design works under pedaling, I’m hoping for a more taut feeling bike than my current rides.

Weight weeniness.
Benji has been playing some cruel kind of mental torture against my mind regarding the weight of things and how my Blur is going to end up heavier than his Cannondale Prophet (his Cannondale is currently around 28 pounds).

So I’ve been doing things like this. Should I use the new Pace BB at 124 Grams?

The XT one at 94g?

The chainring has gone…

…but has been replaced by this…

…which is exactly the same weight.

The rest of the finishing kit currently on the bike is from Syncros in the form of black seatpost, headset and stem with a pair of gunmetal Answer bars on there for the moment (the colour coder in my mind will probably remove them before the bike leaves the office).

So there she is. Currently with cranks and rear mech on she’s coming in at 15.4lbs.

Brakes are going to be Magura Marta SLs.

Wheels will be made up of DT 240 hubs on Flow rims.

Tyres, not sure yet but something tubeless and with a decent volume.

So, what do you reckon the weight will be?

Matt

UPDATE :- With a pair of Specialized Traverse Wheels with Bontrager Big Earl tyres and tubes (’til the Flow rims and hubs are built) the weight is 27.94 without pedals.!!