Karate Monkey: an MTB experiment

Well timed, Sir!

Just got the frame back from the painters this morning. There's been a delay of a week or so on the shifter and the fork, so things will be slow for a little while, unfortunately.

Not unwrapped it yet, but the colour is exactly what I wanted.

that sure is looking sweet! Can't wait to see it built up!

Not having much look with powder coating at the moment. It's been applied too thin on the top tube, and is mottled grey where the steel shows through, so it'll have to be done again.

In brighter news, the fork I wanted is on it's way. A RockShox 30 Gold TK with 100mm of travel. It's a new model for 2014, like the well-regarded Recon but a fair bit lighter.

They have a habit of doing that, in my experience- next time I use them I'll unwrap the frame in the shop before I pay.

Looks great - even though there were issues with the coating - can you reccomend where you had it done? Looking do do the same to one of my rides

I had it done at Armourtex in Hackney.

I would recommend them, in that although I've had a couple of issues, any problems have been resolved with no hassle.

There's a couple of threads on here that shows their work if you want to see samples.

http://www.lfgss.com/thread9267-27.html for one.

Hopefully I can pick up the frame this weekend and start making some progress. Still waiting for the shifter and cog from SJS, but that order is due for dispatch next week.

Finally getting into some sort of shape for putting it together. The frame is painted, I have most of the major components, although the shifter still isn't here. I'm being promised next week.

I've just treated it with frame saver, so I'll probably start putting it back together tomorrow.

i have a km mountain bike and its awesome. fully rigid though. id love to put suspension on it but the forks for 29er are still super expensive

The model I went for is the RockShox TK 30 Gold, which is a replacement for the Recon Silver, but is a lot lighter.

£209 from Merlin http://www.merlincycles.com/rockshox-30-gold-tk-forks-29er-2014-65859.html which I thought was pretty good. I'm not after anything fancy, so this seemed to fit the bill.

It's tricky because nothing fancy has to compete with rigid - a battle it will probably just about win, but with its victory comes the down-side of having to be looked after.

Having said that, there are Rebas here for £200 -

Yeah, this is the reason I went for the KM really - it felt like the sort of frame that you can really play around with in terms of setup.

100mm of travel is going to feel so plush after the CX racing. But, if I want to go for something a bit different I can swap the fork out for the rigid one.

It's not a bike, it's a platform :-)

Hi thanks for getting back to me - will defo look to use these guys for some work on one of my frames. Looks great!

Things are moving through treacle as I wait, and wait, for confirmation of the arrival of the bar end shifter.

However, I have done the stickers, put the headset back in and got a few parts attached. I'm liking the orange and black.

It's taken weeks, but I've got the last part I need to get the full build under way.

Hopefully I can make some progress on the weekend.

Finished up the build yesterday, after a few minor frustrations and a couple of trips out to bike shops.

First up was the fact that the Shimano center lock rotors I'd bought clash on the back of the brake pads in the Avid BB7s. I picked up a centre lock to 6 bolt adapter set from Evans, of all places, and a couple of Avid rotors.

Next was the fact that a lack of barrel adjusters was going to make setting up the calipers and the Alfine hub tricky, so I needed to get them sorted too.

Lastly, the Alfine setup instructions aren't great. There's a nut that you clamp onto the shifter cable, but the measurement described in the install guide is completely wrong, so you need to use trial and error. Fundamentally you want the cable to have no slack when you have the lowest gear selected. Once I'd twigged that then it wasn't too hard. The custom cable run I brazed on works well, so that was worth doing.

Here it is. Not really put it through its paces yet, but I like the ride position and the gearing range is pretty broad. It feels like a really oversized, plushy, cross bike.

For the moment I'm running 33t on the chainset and a 21t Nexus sprocket. The sprocket is dished, so you can run it pushed outwards, which gives a pretty much dead-on chainline.

The Jtek shifter is great, the feel of the shifts is crisp and there's no noticeable lag in the transmission.

Now I've just got to go and get it filthy.

I really really want one of these.

nice one. reminds me of my stolen kona though.

Looks like a really fun bike.

Looks like the perfect bike for riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. Just lovely.

I love the fact surly sell the decal sets aftermarket! I got some for my powdercoated 'roller. It makes all the difference

Are you able to ride on the hoods with those dirt-drops, or are you in the drops all the time? Looks like a lot of saddle-bar drop to sustain.

Are you able to ride on the hoods with those dirt-drops, or are you in the drops all the time? Looks like a lot of saddle-bar drop to sustain.

Good question, I've tried to get a bar position that gives me options.

My regular road bikes are set up with about 8-9 cm of saddle to bar drop. The saddle to hoods position on the KM puts my hands/back in about the same position as the top of the hoods on my road bike. I ran the bike as a single-speed for a while before going for the renovation to check it was OK.

I've also set the bar up with the top section reasonably flat, so you can ride the hoods on this too. The Woodchipper bar is really flared, so the hoods are about 42cm apart, but in the drops it's more like 50-55cm wide.