My Smuggler took about 4 hours including shortening and bleeding the brakes and Reverb post.
About 45 minutes of that was trying to figure out which Reverb post I had and how I needed to shorten it, and what the little red connector was for.
Only when I did it did I realise how stupidly easy it was: cut the hose, thread it back on and push some oil in from the seat post end.
Part of the build was an XT goupset from CRC. When they start using boxed stuff and OE stuff in bubble wrap?
Well started with a frame and a box of parts today.
Took me about 2.5 hours to get this far today:
[img] 
[/img]
That included cutting steerer, setting up tubeless and trying to find a couple of mislaid items and having a copious amounts of tea.
Done a frame-swap in about an hour and half if that counts? No compatibility issues (oh, those were the days), wheels already built, brake hoses the right length by sheer chance, well the front one would be with the same forks/bars, but got lucky with the rear, so no bleeding required.
The actual construction doesn't take long, but you can't hurry the brewing of tea, and biscuits don't eat themselves....
Hunting for the correct parts, waiting for some "sales" takes time. I try to buy most of the parts in winter time. February has crazy deals...
Putting an hardtail together: couple hours
Assembled my first full suspension bike last spring. Took 2 days. It's an 150/150 all mountain bike with 2,6 inch rubber. All new parts, new frame, new fork - total budget 1.5 k
Challenge for me: to get started. The piles of boxes with the parts are scaring. Have the custom wheels and the frame normally sitting a couple of weeks (or more) in the living room before I make the decision to move on to the basement...
Depends on the bike, but generally a couple of hours. As said before though, it’s the unexpected bodges that take the time, like realising you’ve got the wrong disc mounts or whatever.
Putting it together doesn't take long, it's all the little bits to finish it off that take the longest time I find.
Shortening brake hoses and cables and getting them tidy, setting up the brakes, bleeding the brakes, setting up the gears, and so on.
Took another 1.5 hours to get to the finished article including indexing gears, bleeding the brakes and setting the forks.
[img] 
[/img]
So 4 hours - which is about the same as it took to build my lads HT.
