Hello,
I have a GT avalanche that I have been using as a commuter for a while. It does the job very well! However I really fancy a hardtail to generally mis-behave on. I have always fancied a Santa Cruz Chameleon, however finances are a bit limited so I was thinking of maybe using the Avalanche frame and select bits and making something with that.
The biggest question is will be frame cope with a lot of abuse? I don't know anything about the frame, I believe it is a 2002-03 model, but not sure.
Any views would be gratefully recieved.
Ta
Rhid
I've got an Avalanche 0.0 frame (medium) from maybe a year or so later (is blue/white/black) that i've built hoping it'd be a bit of a muck-around on bike, has got Ronin 110 forks on it.
But TBH, i'm not convinced.
I'm starting to play around with different stem/bar/seatpost combos to try & improve it, but i'm not sure it was designed for pratting around on as much as more modern alternatives.
Although the medium is a bit big for me so that doesn't help! 🙁
My current ploy is to use the cycle-to-work scheme that we've managed to convince work to start, to buy an Orange P7!
define "a lot of abuse"
It's a bike for riding around on, you know? It'd probably cope with "XC wheels mostly on the ground, riding around in a big circle in the woods" as well as any other generic Ali frame. If you're asking can I jump on it? It's gonna break sooner rather than later. Can I do repeated DH runs that involve big ole gaps and stuff? See previous answer. Will I rip it's headtube off if I stick big forks on it? Yes you will...
It'll be fine Rhid. Stick those triple clamps of Chris's on it and see what happens 😉
The frame is fine but comes down to choice of headset, wheels and forks. I ahd an avalanche and put it through it's paces although it's a bit of a farm gate and didn't have the same feel of my dh bike when dropping 3-4ft north shore!!!!