[Closed] Alternatives to a Kinesis Tripster?

Van Nicholas Amazon with a set of DC19 forks?

[img] [/img]

Still has v-brake mounts, but that's hardly a sin.

Or how about a Kona Jake the Snake or a Marin Lombard. Might have to buy a complete bike and ditch the build kit though.

Roadrat?

Genesis Crois de Fer
http://www.evanscycles.com/products/genesis/croix-de-fer-2010-hybrid-bike-ec021326?utm_source=froogle&utm_medium=froogle&utm_campaign=froogle
Would be my choice :O)

Thanks for the suggestions. The VN looks lovely but is most probably outside my budget for riding to work on!

As for the other suggestions, I've looked at them before but I really don't fancy anything in steel. I'd not seen the marin before. It's very unique looking isn't it!

We've done a few Lombards in the shop, plus a couple of the higher specced Toscana.

They are very nice in the flesh, especially with the carbon fork and the pearl white finish. Just a shame that Marin won't sell the frame on its own.

out of interest what didn't you like about the Tripster?
I'm similar would prefer an Ali' frame and looking to run 700c with discs as fed up with adjusting canti's and avoiding harsh braking on my cx stylee/fugly have all the parts so again looking for frame only

Cheers for posting this, I've been looking at the Tripster as a C2W commuter (on rough roads/some tracks), green laner / bigger roady days type bike. Whats up with it?
Plant X Uncle John frame has disc mounts.

Looked at the Crois de Fer but its too heavy.

Like others on here, the Tripster ticks all the boxes. However, when I fitted the frame to the forks with the supplied headset (it's an integrated headset, no races, bearings directly onto seats in the ehad tube) there was a massive gap of about 3mm. It wasn't just cosmetic. I could see the bearings without too much effort. I'd imagine that with a little salty road spray, the bearings will seize and then start damaging the headtube. On looking around the subject, I found that Cane Creek product a tech document that shows the bottom bore should be 7mm which it is. However, a similar document from Hope says it should be 9.5mm. That pretty much explains the gap I'm seeing.

I'm about to try a Cane Creek headset but if that's no better, I'll have to return the frame and look for something else. Seems no-one can answer why there seems to be two standards of integrated headset |(before you even start thinking about Campag and BMX).

Hi Onzadog, sorry you are still concerned about your headset. The bottom bore should be 7.2mm for an integrated 36/45 headset. 9.5mm would cause contact between crown and base of head tube. I understood that our warranty manager had sorted this for you and supplied a new headset? He has been talking to me about it a few times in the last wk or so. If you are happy with the rest of the frameset it would seem a shame to return it because of this problem, I'm sure we can get it sorted! The Tripster is pretty unique and as you say 'ticks all the boxes'.
Happy to re-look at the problem again for you, it's not one we have had before.

That seems pretty fair to me - Kinesis are helping you? What's the problem?

Nice one Dom 🙂

Hi Dom,
If you're still happy to look at the matter, perhaps we should go back to email rather than using the forum. I did say to Joel before he returned my frame that the gap was still greater than I'd like to see and I asked for comments on the two standards. I even sent links for the tech documents referenced above.

Is this the gap you are on about?

[img] [/img]

If so, that looks perfectly normal for an integrated headset.

Was in answer to his previous thread I tried to help with http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/internal-headset-and-a-gap-between-head-tube-and-forks and put my foot in it 🙂

Dom is a top guy - Just keep talking and I am sure he'll settle the problem with you 🙂

Onzadog, absolutely happy to keep looking at it until it's sorted. I'm pretty sure it's the fork rather than frame. I'll have a word with Joel now...

Ah looking at the original thread, I think you have the wrong crown race or as above an iffy fork crown.

What KT said. In any case mudguards will take care of it.

kingtut, the crown race was swapped out and save half a milimetre. You can still see the bearing from the outside world just like the pic on the other thread.

However, in fairness to Dom and Joel, I'm going to leave this thread along for a while and see what they come up with.

Al, they really ought to make a tounge in cheek smilie for comments like that!

Onzadog, what size frame is it?

54 cm

kingtut, the crown race was swapped out and save half a milimetre. You can still see the bearing from the outside world just like the pic on the other thread.

As I've said in the other thread, the lip of the crown race is either too tall or too to wide atit's widest point.

I should add that I had this problem myself when I used a campag standard internal crown race with an FSA bearings, funnily enough it was on a Kinesis Kic2 frame although that had no bearing (pun) on the problem.

Perfectly serious onzadog, the gap would not concern me but even if it did I wouldn't ever build up a commuter without mudguards (but then I live in the hard north 😉 )

KT, that makes sense but this is a neco bearing on a neco crown race on a headset supplied as part of the frame set.

KT, that makes sense but this is a neco bearing on a neco crown race on a headset supplied as part of the frame set.

Stranger things have happened, I'm going to bet 5 pence I'm right.

I hope you are. It's a reasonable assumption with an easy painless solution.

Hi Onzadog. Lets try these 2 races first...
[img] [/img]
They are both super slim and should lose you at least a mm. I've tried them with Tripster and DC19 fork and the gap is perfectly acceptable.
LHS one is split, so easy to try. RHS one is press fit, but has added bonus of seal around the outside! So will totally shield the brg.
Mail me your address, I'll get 'em posted straight out.

Cheers. Mail should be with you now.

Just in case anyone is following this story, the races turned up. I went with the one that has the rubber seal integrated into it. The seal recesses into the head tube. There's now a 1/16" gap which is just cosmetic.

Job done, case closed.

...unless anyone knows why there's so much variance in all these headsets.

Thread's not over until we abuse your patio/sofa/scenic random fencepost in the countryside. Get it built and get some pics up!

😆

1.5-3mm a big variance?

Cane Creek publish the specs for the head tube which this frame conforms to. They also spec the gap at 0.3 to 0.5mm. It looks like it's variances in hedsets that take this gap from 0.3mm to over 3mm. That's a big variance when you look at the tolerances specified on related components to the system.