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Cotic also say it will take 47mm 650b tyres, but I've had a few pedal strikes (170mm cranks) riding it off road in the peaks with 700x34, as it's got a fairly low BB (70mm drop). The 47mm 650bs would drop it a bit more and it seems that knobbly 650bs are more available in 42mm. So if you really wanted a 650b knobbly tyre bike you might be better looking for a frame with ~60mm BB drop.
My Arkose with 650b 48mm tyres have pedal strike, in the manner you described, worse even, the best solution I have found is simply changing how you ride.
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I also don't love the drop-in headset bearings.
Could you not just get another cartridge bearing and drop it in?
edscoble
@sb88
My Cotic Escapade. Rode it on a recent 'gravel' audax. Cept North Yorkshire gravel is predominantly boulders the size of babies heads.
Struggled on the off road bits, mainly due to tyre choice - I used 32mm file treads and got overtaken by an Arkose with 42mms, but caught up on the roads again. But it won't take tyres as wide as an Arkose. Cotic say 40mm max but 34mm small-knob knobblies don't leave a ton of room. The tubes are S-shaped, but not dimpled/crimped.
Cotic also say it will take 47mm 650b tyres, but I've had a few pedal strikes (170mm cranks) riding it off road in the peaks with 700x34, as it's got a fairly low BB (70mm drop). The 47mm 650bs would drop it a bit more and it seems that knobbly 650bs are more available in 42mm. So if you really wanted a 650b knobbly tyre bike you might be better looking for a frame with ~60mm BB drop.
It's surprisingly light - 1900gm in a Small made it the same weight as the OS 853 road frame I've had a problem with in another thread. They only had the full carbon fork option available, for £599.
One of the issues with the wide tyre drop bar thing is the myth of the short chainstay - the idea that a road-type bike has to have short chainstays as it's stiffer, better for climbing etc.
To get more tyre clearance - you either use MTB chainsets, longer chainstays or do funny things to the chainstays (yokes, or lots of crimping). If you just used longer chainstays (e.g. 440mm) you could avoid as much manipulation of the chainstays, fit wide tyres and still get away with road cranks.
The Cotic is good, but maybe not great. It uses 425mm chainstays and it it stretched to 435 or 440, it could probably squeeze in wider tyres without adversely affecting handling.
As it is, it feels a lot more like a road bike than it looks. It would make a super winter road bike, with 32mm tyres and guards.
I also don't love the drop-in headset bearings. Apart from the price (they cost as much as the equivalent model with cups), you just know that if you've had a gritty ride (such as a 166k off road torture ride in vile weather, with no mudguards) you need to clean them out, as any grit that's made it's way in there is touching the frame, not just a cup. I asked Cotic about this and they said the bearings used are the same size as the bearings used in the cups of their MTBs with tapered headsets, 'so why bother with cups'. I suspect it was a case of the available tubing and a cost-benefit choice. I bought one anyway, as it was the closest thing to what I needed, and partly to tell myself not to be such a grinch over modern features.
The benefit of the fork being full carbon and the frame being fairly light, is that it might be genuinely competitive in the CX season, should I fancy some masochism later this year.
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