Aside from the rear dropouts ‘only’ taking ye old fashioned 142mm, i’m struggling to see a downside to a frame costing only £100 more than a Stanton steel one?
This is such a bargain, I mean a genuine bargain but the longer you leave it the more the price goes up, its £1099 in October, but still a good price even at that!
Sizing looks spot on to me, reach is only 7mm longer than a medium Stif Morf. Ideally I’d like a slightly shorter seat tube, but I’d still get a dropper in.
Looks an utter bargain. Modern geometry numbers, takes 29″ wheels and from a reasonably well known supplier who’ve produced some very good frames to date.
@bubs, I’m 189 cm tall with 89 cm inside leg. Chris said a L or XL would fit but better 170mm dropper fit with a large. The X2 geo is based on the Vendetta extra long and I’m not rad enough to be completely stretched out.
Chris said, if I understood right, that they were testing the market at a lower price point. I’d been looking at Chiti direct and this is cheaper once you take delivery into account ($800+150), and that’s not even worrying about tax and import duty and guarantee.
It’s an absolute steal. I was going to wait another year or two but couldn’t overlook this. Kingdom are limiting the first batch to 25 bikes all sizes told so I didn’t want to hang about.
@Alex, more specifically they’ve used standard parts rather than CNC for the head tube etc, which apparently cost a fortune. Another upside is the X2 frames are lighter than the dearer ones!
So nearly bought one. It’s the perfect hardtail imo. But by the time I’ve built it up it will be about £2200 which I just can’t afford at the moment – trying to buy a van to turn into a camper.
Actually – looking at the price of plus-sized stuff, I’d be struggling to get it fully built for £2200. Especially if I wanted shorter offset forks. Probably did the right thing (he says having come back to the checkout page a second time)
Chainstays are very short, I’ve ridden bikes with a similar geometry and they feel unbalanced IMO, so that I felt I couldn’t go as fast as the front of the bike wanted me to.
Others may love it, but I think that slackness & length warrants longer stays for stability.
Sorely tempted by this – very close to my Fast Forward – .2 degrees steeper SA, half a degree steeper HA, and 12mm extra reach – but the BB height is a full inch higher, which really puts me off.
One of my friends has just highlighted this thread to me. I run the UK demo program for Kingdom bikes, so if any of you fancied trying these bikes out just contact me directly.
The X2 is incredible value, and can be run with 150 forks with 29er wheels if you want. It is definetly 148 boost back end.
I put 29er wheels on the LAst recently, to try it out, and even though the increase over plus is pretty small, I felt higher up straight away. An inch is a lot.
Strange how little BB drop it has. My 27.5 (not plus) Bird has a 45mm BB drop so I’d expect another 8mm drop on a 27.5+ frame and 19mm more on a dedicated 29 frame (and somewhere in between for a 27.5+/29 bike.
Yeah I don’t get why it’s so high, was interested but my scout has 60mm with a 140mm fork and feels great. I was thinking of a Shan gt which has 58mm drop.