Work has launched bike to work scheme up to £10k!!so sod it looking to treat myself. Wanting high end 29er hardtail. Thinking Stanton titanium elite. Any other thoughts heavyweight middle aged guy can do long distances but occasional twisty steep single-track descents as well. Nothing too slack or super lightweight. Titanium or steel. Current owned fave bikes are orange stage 4 and van Nicolas Chinook to give idea .

Indy Fab and Moots would be my start point.

Stay away from Ti, mine just cracked !

Scott spark…

Are Stanton available on the C2W schemes?

I don’t know to be honest just launched today so just started thinking about it

Yeti arc

2x £2k

Moots Womble is £4400 frame only.

https://www.shandcycles.com/shop/bikes/bahookie/

Curtis or Swarf would be my choice

Mate just tested my Signal To back to back with a a Yeti Arc and he’s getting a Signal.

Another mate ordered a Ti Sherpa from Stanton. Rolling “6 weeks” wait given from them for 11 months. I ordered my Signal frame and forks and was riding it 3 days later. 10 year warranty with v 2 with Stanton (don’t know if this has changed).

Interesting nedrapier

I wouldn’t want to stop anyone getting a new bike, but I changed my nice Cotic hardtail for a Stage 4 last year – and I think it does everything better.

Apart from carrying water bottles, obvs.

That signal looks good value, maybe more gravity focussed than xc?

I was out on the stage 4 last night chapaking and I forgot how good it is! Great bike only full suss I have ever got on with

Signal is a good all-rounder and the 10 year frame warranty is reassuring. You’d get a nice build for 4k.

It may have been interesting, but it was definitely terribly written. Sorry!

That was when Stanton were doing Ti frames in-house with plenty of teething problems, Covid didn’t help for the final few months, plus I think there was some unfortunate personal stuff complicating things as well. Things may a lot better now with orders going to TP manufacturer, but personally I’d still be wary unless I wasn’t in any kind of hurry at all for a frame.

Moots Womble, if you’re going to spend big, spend big ;o)

Stanton Sherpa steel 12-15 weeks quoted.

Morph cycles as well?

Four and a half grand for a frame! Cough splutter I think a moots womble won’t be in the basket

I’m not sure if he does cycle to work but I came across Smithy Frameworks a month or so ago and his stuff looks superb.

With regards the Stanton and any other Titanium frame with a head tube gusset, avoid if you can. I had a custom Kent Eriksen (the man that started Moots) built for me a good few years back and he refused to weld a gusset to the headtube. Said it created too many stress risers. Have a look at the top dollar titanium frames from the likes of Moots, Seven, Indy Fab, Firefly etc and see how many of them have them.

If it was my money i’d be going for top top quality steel instead of middle of the road titanium frame. You can get a fully custom boutique steel frame for the price of an off the peg, middle of the road titanium frame. You’ll have conversations with the builder and discuss exactly how you want the bike to be. It’s a nice experience and the bike will mean so much more to you. Plus we’re at a stage where I believe geometry has evolved so much you can choose the bike to do exactly what you want it to do……Enduro hardtail……xc racer…..trail slayer? Take your pick.

All of this hinges of course on if you can find a builder to accept cycle to work scheme. Have a look at the Bespoked website and the list of builders there. Am sure I’ve read of someone before finding a builder who was very helpful. Might need to pay a small premium on top of his normal prices but then you’re saving a chunk in tax anyway.

Curtis. Curtis. Curtis. 😉

^ That Shand Bahookie in a nice colour with CC Helm fork, full Deore with XTR shifters, Magura Sport brakes,  a nice wheel set with XR4 tyres, PNW dropper, Brooks Cambium…. Not that I’ve thought about it much.

What hardtail £4k, shocking how normal that question is these days, people outside of mountainbiking think we are nuts, maybe we are, last time I was in leisurelakes some guy popped in for new saddle, he nearly went into shock when he saw the prices, he quickly left with a few expletives thrown in for good measure. F#cking 90 basterd sh!tting quid was my favourite.

How are the Ribble hardtails? Whenever I see one I think how nice they look. Classy and understated.

Hi folks looking around I reckon its going to be steel, and has to be CTW scheme both Coitc and Stanton do this – so its Solaris MAX longshot, or Stanton Sherpa – votes below 🙂

Work has launched bike to work scheme up to £10k!!

Nice of them to allow the tax payer to fund a big chunk of its employees hobbies.

In the great tradition of recommending what you’ve got
https://pacecycles.com/pages/rc529steel-hardtail

Cotic

I’ve just built up an Airwolf T1000 carbon 29er hardtail.

I’ve been really impressed with it.

Bike weighs right on ten kilos with the pedals.

Frame was £300 plus £80 customs charges.

Get some nice carbon wheels from Hunt.

Seatpost, stem and bars from Toseek (ebay).

XT groupset.

£1000 for some top-end forks.

This isn’t what you’re going to do but I think it’s worth thinking about.

. . . . edit . . .probably won’t work with Cycle to Work!

Where did you find the XT Groupset??

What hardtail £4k, shocking how normal that question is these days, people outside of mountainbiking think we are nuts,

Some of us who are into cycling think £4k for a hardtail is nuts 🙂

I think my Marino owes me about £3k for a hardtail. It hasn’t wanted for much tbh – Pike Ultimates / Code R’s / GX Eagle with carbon cranks, carbon bars, DMR Deity stem / Oneup 180mm dropper / Erase components very light hubs / XM481 rims / Maxxis 2.6” Exo tyres. Rides lovely as I custom picked all my tube lengths / angles.

For that money I’d want a custom hardtail frame ideally – guess C2W is the potential barrier to that option with small builders.

Edit – the Marino frame with a custom metalflake paint job in the U.K. cost about £700 in total. For £1350 Curtis will hand build you a frame and polish it / clearcoat it. If it’s still the same arrangement they will change some of the angles you want from the standard frame you pick and any front triangle tube lengths. I think the chainstay length was fixed though. The Curtis frames in clearcoat are properly beautiful.

sooooo after much research and narrowing down a mate sent me marketing link to new special edition Cotic Jeht frames made in scotland, draped in Hope – so upped the budget and placed an order for that – oops!!

Oooh new special edition? Linky?

Ti Signal such a good bike!

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2k3GN4d]124027553_10159127420711474_8905569158335350775_o[/url] by Richard Munro, on Flickr

https://www.cotic.co.uk/news/2021/cotic-jeht-UK-batch

Saw that jeht at Ard rock and it it is stunning! Good pick!