Varun's Bikes, Stayer, Cotic, that singlespeed Rockhopper....

I bought this Cascade frame to replace my old hardtail; I just wasn’t using a ‘serious’ MTB enough (especially not in the muddy fields of Warwickshire). Now, I tried it in a ‘standard’ drop bar rigid build on my tame AF local bridleways and trails and it was fine, but on some serious rocky off-road (Dales Divide - the Pennine Bridleway in peak winter mode) it was incredibly hard on my hands and shoulders. Now I’m contemplating keeping it in drop bar rigid more for 80% of my regular riding but having flat bars with foam grips and my sus fork from the hardtail for serious off-road adventures. I’ve tried it with the drops and sus fork and tbh, I don’t hate it but there’s a reason why flat bars are standard on hard tails IMO.

I’ve been looking at ways to do this quickly (like a 20-minute swap-out) and wanted to see what people have in mind! Here’s where I’ve got to so far:

• Gearing: probably easiest as I would just take the GRX mech off with the drop bars, and replace with a deore mech and shifters on the flat bars. The 11-46 cassette I have will work for both! Fully external cabling with full outers is my friend here.
  
• Brakes: I’ve currently got GRX hydro levers on MTB callipers, so I was thinking of adding an inline coupling to each brake hose and simply unscrewing and attaching the flat and drop bar hoses as needed. Any suggestions on how to do this without losing fluid are welcome!
  
• Dropper - probably most annoying as it’s currently cabled to my left shifter. This means I’d have to recable every time, a pain as the ST is quite tall too. Anyone have any experience with couplings for gear cables?
  
  

I think that’s it, apart from needing to change the saddle angle slightly every time as the rigid fork is only sus corrected to 100mm, whereas my sus fork is 130mm.

Thoughts on my totally unnecessary and painstaking attempts to make one aspect of my life easier are welcome.

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