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The first real candidate for a used bike in my budget is a 2013 Kona Sutra that my friend has offered me relatively cheap. I'm thinking if I lop off a bit of that steerer, swap the brake calipers for something more modern, switch to my 2x10 groupset (have spare parts for either bar ends or STIs), maybe buy a 650b wheelset (depending on the clearance), it'll do as a gravel-thing...
Sadly the front rack and guards were destroyed in a fire at his flat.
It's 392mm reach, 581mm stack, which would let me get pretty low for road stuff. But the chainstays are pretty long at 440mm and the wheelbase is 1048mm. BB drop is 63mm which seems small.
Thoughts? Is it roady enough? Will it go up a gravel road with a 20% gradient or will the handling be too sluggish? Will it ride okay unladen, or like a Disc Trucker will it be pretty rubbish until it's got a load of gear on it? Can I do a 100 mile sportive or 200 km audax on it? How far off are we from a ghetto 650b Sutra LTD?
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Subbed. And I've got some unused DA bar-end shifters if you go down that route. Kona Sutra's a fabulous bikes but very much focused on touring, big miles. My father in law has a Dawes Galaxy which I've always thoughts would be better bones for quick and lighter weight touring.
And out of the left field is the Fuji Touring. I've always had a soft spot for these. I don't know why.
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Genesis - CDA or CDF.
This is a bargain if in your size. Sure eBay will come up trumps if your scour there.
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Stragglers on sale in france..
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@Lanterne_Rouge hmm, good to hear from someone who knows a bit more about the Kona. I'm thinking I'll go and test ride it anyway - he lives about 5 minutes away from me - and measure the clearances and have a think. One of my other friends thinks it's perfect and says he's going to buy it if I don't...
@r_mash @Tychom I do like the Straggler but lots of people say the dropouts are a pain and it's not as cheap as I'd like... That's a good price at BMX Avenue though, but a shame the mint has sold out! I prefer it and it's cheaper. I might be able to make that black one work; time for some research. There's a few other frames on that website that deserve a second look too.
@Scrabble looks good and I think the large would fit me. But I'd have to buy a new fork. More research! I've got a bunch of eBay alerts set up but you'd be surprised actually at how rarely CdFs show up considering how popular they are.
For future reference I'm looking for a 57-58cm frame, reach around 390-something mm, stack around 600 mm.
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There was a Dawes frame made of either Reynolds 723 or 725 on the Bay a few days ago.
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Ooh, didn't see that one. There was an 853 (or something) Ridgeback that went for £200 as well which looked like a bargain. The problem with curveballs like that is I spend so much time researching and prevaricating that it's sold before I make my mind up! And buying things without test-riding them is a bit concerning to me.
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56-58 cm, not sure which size Surly would be the right one yet. I need to check the geometry.
Edit: probably a 56cm? But Surly's geometry is so weird that I think I'd have to ride it before I was sure.
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Ooh, I'll check that out in a bit!
What sort of MTB are you after?
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It would be great with a second steel fork that I could swap out. Plenty fast on the road (compared to some of my other options like tourers). But the price of a new fork and the bike just pushes it a bit out of reach. And I don't think there actually are any 1 ½" to 1 ⅛" taper steel forks with rack mounts which means I'd have to use a reducer headset thing.
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I'm a massive fan of the Boardman MTBs, if you stack up the discounts you can get them absurdly cheap. All told my 29er was well under £500, and that's with SRAM GX 1x11, RockShox fork, Mavic rims, SRAM hydraulic disk brakes, about 12kg. If I had to change anything I'd get a dropper post and maybe an offset headset and a 140mm fork or something, but it rides really well as it is.
Definitely get the Rockhopper, neo-retro 26" MTB/dirt tourer/monstercross is the way! They're cheap and still ride so well. Is it a rigid fork?
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I had an 500se (Still do in boxes)
Took 2 years of massive abuse, hit 55 mph on it, off road on 23s, got my 1st 100km ride in since my huge accident in 03, stuck 25s in it and had to lose the guards which was annoying.
Killed the standard wheels using the edge of a pothole as a berm (late spotting it) and killed the mavics/rear mech/39t when the chain seized mid shift.
Im hoping to gather the bits needed to build it up again but maybe file a bit off the bridge to squeeze 28s in when I do. -
Saw this and thought of you @frankenbike
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F292432681237
Probably more audax than tourer but look good bones.
Lanterne_Rouge
r_mash
Scrabble
Tychom
russmeyer
LeChef
Heldring
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About
Arkose by any other frame
Posted by
@frankenbike
I've been constantly annoying the people in the gravel bike thread looking for a new frame to replace my current road frame, and rather than post yet more questions I decided to create a thread. I do have a post up in the Wanted section but this one will hopefully encourage more of a discussion and will eventually turn into the build thread.
TLDR: I'm looking for a cheap gravel/road/week-long-touring frame in that order.
I bought my road bike new in around 2014 shortly before an upcoming tour. I knew next to nothing about bikes; I thought I could go touring on a crap old 26" GT Aggressor, which I swear weighed well over 20kg. On the first warm-up ride it became immediately clear that that thing was absolutely no good - I was dropped within about a minute - so I pretty much immediately went off and bought the BTwin 500 SE.
(Sorry for the photos. I had no idea what I was doing.)
It's served me well since then. It was great on the first tour from Glasgow around Arran and up to Mull, though with so much weight on the back the front wheel was constantly lifting off the ground:
It did pretty well on a second tour of the Outer Hebrides and Skye:
...even with an 18h radial front wheel and 18h radial/1x rear.
And it did 3 years of commuting, a few 100 km and 100 mile sportives and a whole bunch of day rides. It really is a fantastic bike, especially at today's absolutely insane price (<£250!!!). Because I'm an aspiring #buyer, I gradually upgraded various parts as time went on: I got a nicer wheelset after falling off the bike and crumpling one rim (practising my bunny hops... I rebuilt it with a new rim later); I hated the triple chainset pretty much from day 1 - I finally swapped the groupset for SRAM 2x10 Rival/Apex last September; the saddle was uncomfortable in the drops and is now on my frankenbike - check my posts if you want to see that. It's way under the initial 10kg now, but I don't know by how much.
The thing that's holding me back now is the frame:
and so on.
So, I'm looking for a frame that can take bigger tyres - around 40mm would be nice - handle a bit of gravel and mud, and take a rack on the fork (or at least a few bottle cages and a handlebar bag). Disk brakes are obviously a given (#DBAND). The ideal frame would also have these bonus features (although they're not required):
I am intending to either:
a. buy a frameset, (buy or build) a wheelset and cable disk calipers, transplant as many parts as possible from my current road bike (and buy any incompatible parts like the seatpost) and sell what's leftover.
b. buy a whole bike, strip off the groupset and replace it with my SRAM 2x10, put the second groupset on my road bike and sell it on as a complete bike.
Both will probably work out about the same in terms of cost. Speaking of cost, I've been on a pitiful PhD salary for the last few years and will be unpaid for the next 5/6 months. So price is a priority here. I'm thinking something like £300 for a new frameset, £500 for a used bike. If I have to stretch I probably can. (Side note: will I regret selling my first real road bike, even though it's nothing especially fancy? I'd love to keep it, but I'm already pushing it with 3 bikes in a small flat! And the extra cash will probably cover any new parts I need to buy.)
Good candidates are looking like the Sonder Camino Al (currently sold out in my size), Jamis Renegade, Salsa Marrakesh, and other such things in that vein. The go to do-it-all gravel/light-touring bike (for the people in the gravel bike thread) seems to be the Arkose, and many people in the thread tried to convince me that it'll do the job. But I'm just not willing to give up on the front luggage... hence the thread title, which hopefully riles some of them up.