Third hand American wonders

the procurement process has taken months, but as we know it's nicer to follow a thread with regular updates. isn't the zeitgeist all about short attention span and instant gratification? this is why i try to publicize things when there's hope for somewhat reasonable completion time.

besides the salsa firestarter steel fork, the braking and the wheelset are covered. well, i still need to swallow the price of son 28 and click the button on sjs. shifting and headset will be butchered from the stumpjumper. i even took the supernova dyno lights off the holiday bike and brought them home during the festive period. have various stems and bars but they may not work for this. pretty much everything else, especially the cranks are still out in the open.

like a good noob i went to bikepacking.com and figured the best of both worlds juin techs could work for me. maybe someone else said good things about them too. the anxiety of not being able to fully service the bike myself on trail is already there and the risk of a wild hydro maintenance appearing didn't feel too tempting. babby's first disc brake bike, not at all embarrassed and reluctant to start any kind of brake wars. if they stop like paul motolites it's fine. anything more is a plus.

the wheels i'm obviously more enthusiastic about. silver rims are scarce in the divide rig category. as this is the boring pdf bike without compromises or quirks, i wanted to get the internal width as close to ideal as possible for setting the lael pro model tyres (fleecer ridges) tubeless. velocity blunt ss seemed to be the only light and wide enough silver option. it might sound short-shighted to put xc rims on a touring bike, but when the rider weight is 65kg and hole count 32, it starts to make more sense. don't think i'll reach the 80kg weight limit even with a full weekender load. the polished versions are currently on their way to the uk courtesy of woods cyclery. they'll be laced to a chris king iso rear and a son 28 front. not sure about which spokes to go with yet, likely the stronger kind.

i spied from the other thread that it might be feasible to futureproof the wheels by using the thru axle version of the son and putting a TA to QR adapter for the firestarter. not quite sure would i be more likely to encounter a used straight steerer carbon fork in 12mm or 15mm? leaning to the 12mm currently as my clearance preference is more wide gravel than mtb and sjs has son's own adapter in stock.

the microshift thumbie paired to 11-speed xt rd and cassette have been faultless on the stumpjumper and i'm reluctant to change this workhorse setup. an all silver garbaruk cassette may come into question whenever available second hand to save weight.

a hollow axle and strictly silver arms was a starting point for the crankset. @Maj specifically opined against the meme cranks and recommended a shimano alternative. i just think the shimano grey isn't quite vivid enough for this kind of a neo-retro build. when researching the q factor, i found a serious contender to the meme cranks from middleburn r02. similarly to the meme cranks (a30) these can be set up with their mountain axle. according to a very responsive middleburn rep the q factor comes up as 162mm, which is actually a tad better than the a30's 163.5mm. it's just the only way to make the middleburns all silver is through a spider, which i don't find particularly beautiful. this particular spider that is, not the idea of using a spider.

eventually this got so frustrating that i even emailed engin cycles regarding their obscenely expensive port royal ti crankset. luckily i've yet to hear back. if anyone has ideas on silver cranks with a hollow axle that work with a 73mm bb, please get involved before i order the memes and ruin the build.