MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Just sharing the woes of my latest ‘so cheap I’ll barely notice’ project/PITA.
Having recently gone ebike and donated my YT Wicked 160 Ltd to my lad as I’d been avoiding the inevitable road slog to any trails hereabouts, I decided that I might still want a human driven bike after all. With a box full of spares in the garage and all the bits from my old Giant Reign X, all I needed was a 26er frame and it’d be basically free…
Found a lovely (turned out to be new) classic BFe frame on eBay, and some nice carbon bars and it’s so nice decided I’d like to keep the whole build black. This meant I couldn’t use my white and gold superstar wheels so looked out for a cheap black set. When they turned up I discovered that not all wheels can just run tubeless and ghetto tubeless looks a right old mess, so again in keeping with the new frame, got some good condition Crossmax.
Having realised I had a mountain of tyres in my mates barn, I picked them up and not a single one is tubeless and they’re all heavy DH tyres like Wetscream, so back to eBay for a suitable pair.
My cassette was 9 speed, but I wanted to use the brand new X0 10 speed mech from my box, so had to find a compatible shifter.
As my other bikes are 1x, found a nice Hope Retainer ring in eBay for not much money.
My SLX crankset had too much silver in it so I found a cheap set of XT cranks on eBay - they arrived today and I had no idea that 104BCD is not some sort of defacto standard any more. Decided sense should prevail and found another Hope ring rather than a whole new crankset.
I’d been glad to find an almost new Hope headset in my box from an old Morewood I once built, at which point I discovered that not all head tubes are tapered - new top cup purchased.
When I bought the ebike the seat post was a bit twisty so I had bought a SDG Tellis on eBay to replace. My assumption at that point, without thinking very hard, that a big ebike MUST have a 31.6mm seatpost, was proved false so again I was glad that all I’d need to do was drill a hole in the hard tail and use it. The frame is too nice for that so I got a different one…
Brakes I’m good for. Surplus sets of brakes is a whole other embarrassing tale of impatience.
So far I’m happy to report no issues with the RS Revs that came off the Morewood either which is a bloody relief!
Hopefully I’ll get the thing finished at the weekend, but so far the build kit that was going to be free, actually comprises of a forks, stem, a derailleur, brakes and a red HT2 compression cap (and I had to go and buy a 12mm hex key to fit that as I’d lost mine)
Would have been easier - and possibly cheaper - to buy a complete bike.
I've got one which I could be tempted to sell...
Not a stealth ad.
I have a Wicked 160 ltd, I've never seen another one out in the wild! I recently upgraded to a Bird so it's sitting in the garage but I'm still using a few original bits that I swapped over
I just want to know what sets of brakes you have lying around, are any of them silver and would you sell them to me? That way the Bfe can be free again!
I had a 26” Bfe and it was a great bike. Enjoy
Tell me about it... so easy to trickle small amounts of cash away and forget the big picture. Trying to do stuff on the cheap is a false economy most of the time. Oh well. Be reyt eventually!
Apart from switching to 1x with a type 2 mech, mine is pretty much as it came... I wrecked my shoulder falling off my DH bike not long after it arrived so it's barely ridden. I expect I'll keep it forever now!
Ha! I did the same recently. Ended up with a far nicer frame than I originally wanted, so had to put nicer parts on it to justify it. Putting cheap, heavy bits on wouldn't have felt right.