mustard's projects...

Bare with me, another text heavy pic light post...

A coupe of conclusions I've drawn from running the Cotic for the last month or so:

• as much as I'll always think of myself as a mountain biker, I just don't ride much off road at the moment so, while I want some off road capability, this needs more of an on-road bias.
  
• I think I want rim brakes, although that feels like a bit of a retro grouch move. Discs are great but, with lots of commuting an riding around town, they squeal like crazy every time it's damp. The Spires have been a bit better since I cleaned the pads and rotors when I fitted the Ultegra and the BB7s I had on the GT rat commuter weren't so bad so I'm totally swaying back and forth on this one but leaning towards cantis.
  
  

What I've definitely decided on is a Waltly Ti frame with a cx fork and geometry pretty much based on my Synapse but with clearance for bigger tyres. I think I'll have to slacken(?) the headtube a touch to maintain the trail with a 45mm rake fork. I've been playing around in BikeCad today but, the free version at least, isn't much help in this regard.

I also want to keep the chain stays as short as I can while ideally still being able to put a double chainset on. Hopefully this can be managed with chain stay plate as is used on some mtbs, but we'll have to see. I'm not totally opposed to 1x.

Maybe give it a rattle can paint job to, hopefully make it look at bit less desirable to the theiving little scrotes.