Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Jean

The outdoor light sucked, so this was the best I could do:

Blends right in with the garage door...
Here's the rundown:
-650b wheels or 700c (with road tires) in touring mode. This is a dual-purpose bike for both XC mountain biking and scenic winecountry (or beercountry, or teetotalcountry/Utah) touring with panniers.
-71 head and 73 seat angles. Jean will run a 26" fork (can't say what!) with 38mm offset so the trail number will be around 82mm. With road tires/wheels that will drop to about 77mm.
-11.75" BB height (about 11" with road tires). Jean will run 165 or 170 cranks.
-61.1cm front center, 103.1cm (40.6") wheelbase. Effective toptube length is 57cm/22.4".
-42.5cm chainstays. I'd normally go shorter for this wheel size and rider size (not especially big, to say the least) but we need to make sure her heels will clear the panniers so this was as short as I was willing to go, and even then it's only because the rack mounts on the low mount dropouts sit pretty far back.
-For a full 3x10 drivetrain. No XX1 silliness here, Jean needs to have both really low gears for the trails in Aspen, and also have higher gears for touring on the road. No way around it; a triple is the way to go.
-1 1/8 steerer. The tapered thing is awesome but I draw the line when the rider is under 120 pounds. No taper for you!
-Tubing is mostly Verus HT (toptube, downtube, chainstays) with and OX platinum head tube as well as some 4130 (seatstays, seat tube, BB shell). The downtube, chainstays, and seatstays are a bit beefier than I would normally use for such a small rider because of the potential need to carry rear mounted loads. I wanted things a little stiffer than normal for that scenario. This also means the frame is heavier than I'd normally build for a small rider - it'll probably break 4 pounds with powdercoat.

I must say, it's almost weird not to be doing... anything weird. It seems sometimes like I spend all my time building 36ers, or long-travel short chainstay FS bikes, or Stupidmobiles (yes, that's the new name, like it?) This was a nice, normal, hardtail mountain bike. The only "weird" thing about it really is the dual-purpose and that's not really that weird. Just some rack mounts and a little thinking about where the panniers need to go. Easy. But it can't last. I expect an email any minute asking for a dual-suspension short chainstay 36er tandem...

4 comments:

Jonathan Stanley said...

I've believed I've asked for said silliness... excluding the bouncy-bouncy bit. ;)

Devin said...

I'm guessing a FOX fork...? Cause they clear but FOX doesn't want to sign off on that fact. I'm doing the same on my "conversion"

steve garro said...

I have that same door - glue some 2" foam to the squares inside & it's much warmer!

Devin said...

So did you design around the slightly shorter axle to crown length of a saide 26er fork? Approx 15mm shorter?