Yesterday, I was going to post all about how excited I was to get my new hardtail frame from Cysco in the next couple of weeks, but I had to do some important wrenching instead (details on that in just a second). The Cysco is loosely based on the small Niner Air9 Carbon CYA frame, but with some important changes:
– A spot for a bottle on the seat tube
Dear manufacturers… STOP GIVING A F*#^ ABOUT TONS OF STANDOVER AND GIVE ME A 2ND FREAKING CAGE. When was the last time that someone wrecked and landed straddling the top tube with both feet on the ground? When was the last time that anyone who had been riding a bike for more than a week needed to be able to stand in that same position in order to function? Just because you’re afraid that a part of your bike is anywhere near your precious man-bits, you’re going to deny anyone under 5’6″ the ability to carry an extra bottle?!? Give me a freaking break.
-A spot for a bottle under the downtube
Hey… why not? Another reason why I’ll likely ride this bike (with a rigid fork and some 2.0 Maxxis Ikons) at Dirty Kanza.
-1cm more reach
Being slightly long of torso/arm, I wanted to bump the reach out a tiny bit and use a slightly shorter stem. Aesthetics.
-A 27.2 seatpost
The combination of Ti frame + skinnier post is gonna be cozy. I did, however, run into a small issue with the nice, flexy carbon posts in that size- the ones I was looking at (Niner RDO and Syntace Hi-flex) don’t come in a setback model. Sure, there are some great Ti ones out there, but I’m a sucker for the 2-bolt clamp style. In my experience, it’s the most reliable and very easy to adjust.
Solution? It’s a custom frame… make that seat tube angle slacker and use my desired zero-offset post.
-It’ll be a PF30 BB shell, which will allow for a 2″ downtube. The pedaling stiffness should be very close to the Air9 frame, but with the previously mentioned cozy features. I’ll be using this EBB in order to make it easy to swap back and fourth between geared (1×11) and Singlespeed.
-Along the same “pedals as stiffly as the AIR9” vein, it’s going to use this chainstay yoke:
Not because I’m terribly concerned with being able to run 3″ tires, but because it will allow for the use of oversized chainstays.
– Polishing it off, a 142×12 rear end. Icing on the cake? A press-in headset. I despise the integrated, “drop in” style that Niner (and plenty of other manufacturers) started using. They make no sense for a mountain bike (about as smart as not setting a frame up for full-run housing), and I’ve had to constantly replace bearings because they’re so easily fouled/grenaded from things like “sweating,” “riding in dirt,” and “washing my bike.”
It should be very versatile and fun to ride. I’m pretty stoked.
As or the work I did yesterday… I needed to finish building Ryan’s (2nd) warranty Jet9 Carbon and rebuild my SID WC fork that’s on my Air9 RDO. The Jet had been waiting on a Wheels Manufacturing PF30 to GXP adapter BB:
I’m hoping it works a lot better than the crappy plastic SRAM one that was constantly walking out of the frame. I also took the rebuild as an opportunity to route the rear derailleur housing outside the frame (as seen in the photo). I used my infamous “Superfly” technique… I claim that as my own since I started doing it to customers’ Superfly 100s back when I worked at Outdoors. Turns out, a 4″ piece of housing that jumps over the bottom bracket area behind a crank is a terrible idea, and I figured out that a full length piece of housing could be cleanly run along the rear brake line in order to get to the rear of the bike.
After that was together, I overhauled the fork from my hardtail. Exactly 1 month out of warranty, the damper broke. SRAM gave me the middle finger because of the age of the fork as well as their placing the breakage blame on me for “taking a big hit with the fork locked out.” I’m assuming such a hit would be memorable, seeing as it’d be hard enough to bypass the floodgate action of the lockout. I must have been daydreaming about armbars or something.
Hopefully I don’t get the same crap when Kenny calls in about the new SID RCT3 that I installed about a month ago on my jet and ceased locking out after about 4 rides. Being on my full suspension, it’s always unlocked when I’m on the trail, so there’s no way in hell that a “big hit with it locked out” could have happened.
I replaced the seals and all the o-rings on the oil/rebound side. It’s now back to feeling nice & buttery. Hopefully that’ll be a bonus selling point for the complete bike when I sell it next month following the arrival of my Ti Supersteed.
