Third hand American wonders

but i'm still determined to mess around with the dt swiss.

Totally fair. I like the shape of them. I went through a similar thought process when I built my inbred ATB, On one Carbon forks in the style of these DT Swiss vs. Surly Karate money forks.
Ultimately, I chose the Surly steel forks because they were easily colour matched and had all the mounts for a potential rasket or so.

The rolling chassis looks really slick already either way. Proper wheelset envy.

wheels are very cool, second the big amount of envy

thanks guys! first iteration hopefully very soon

i've waited for a sunny day but it's happening only when i'm on a ride without the dslr or when it's at the shop being adjusted. cloudy edits of the first and second iterations below.

i feel like the musician who's being interviewed for their debut lp having played the tracks back and forth so much they've lost the ability to judge whether it's good or bad. i don't hate it but i'm not sure the looks spark that much joy either. it does look a bit different, which is nice. certified atb energy. it's probably the short fork.

judging by a rather physical (to me) overnighter on south downs, it rides really well though and that's a huge positive.

first build the night before i set off to south downs, didn't have time to sort the reach and rode the whole thing on this very sunday townie stance.

second build after swapping the stem, cassette, saddle and skewers. might put the smp back on, just didn't have time to install the hobo pieces mount for the ride. still not ridden this setup much but reach feels pretty good. shifting with the garbaruk is good but not as exquisitely buttery as it was with the xt cassette. might need to get a 11-46 xt and shed some weenie's tears.

another post on the ride in a bit.

I really love that, styling is great, wheels are 🔥🔥🔥. It does however need a longer A2C fork, you can see the head angle and low bb etc..

Have you tried the salsa forks yet?

thanks m8! i think i’ll ride this fork for this season and have a 44mm headtube made for the next. could then upgrade into the enve mountain fork etc.

it feels okay ish now but the 600g penalty with the salsa would hurt a lot. i’ve also realised i won’t need the fork mounts as the full frame bag will house a lot of kit.

That Brooks it's gonna take off. The bike looks really good

Fyi that garbaruk typo on the casette is just a sticker

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i paid 100 quid for it so don’t mind 😅

dibs your all silver though if you ever selling

Yep, I feel you. I could get a black one for much cheaper, but just couldn’t do it.

the original GAATB influencer back with another GAATB

Launchpad saddle innit.
Forks looks great tho and it probably barspins

secretly hoped to be on the moodboard. industry bike styling watchdog test ride soon

thanks! let me get a gyro real quick and try this

Looks buff.

❤️

more plot twists:

had to take it off the seller's hands despite them being reluctant to reduce the price much.

The bike looks so good! Really burly.

attended a bikepacking overnighter, which was primarily meant to be a training ride to prep for the italy duro and the pennine rally. it was a bit ambitious of me to go after having ridden the bike only around the block to test saddles. i'm glad i did as it was a cracking ride and i got a lot of valuable feedback for further adjusting the bike.

if the bike was set up haphazardly, the bags were even more so. the frame bag is meant for another bike and doesn't fit. the other bags won't be used with this bike either, but made a passable temporary setup. i could've survived with much less kit as well. the witslingers full frame bag that's being designed as we speak will solve a lot of these issues. the front will likely change to this and i already have the wayward riders dropper post compatible butt rocket for the rear. the bike kind of necessitates switching from the tetsuo ehara style neo-retro bag setup to an ultra race style setup. a bit extra but weight savings are always welcome.

surprisingly, the only thing that caused trouble was the slipping seatpost clamp. i was quick to blame dkg for loose standards, but turned out the seat tube is just of an odd diameter, somewhere between the common 28.6 and 30.0. this explains the slipping and why the frame came with gunnar's own (boring black) clamp, which i, heart full of brain worms, stupidly swapped out. nothing worse than a couple extra tightening stops and slight marks on the saddle bag.

i didn't want to start brake wars earlier, but maybe i do now lol. i didn't expect much from the hybrid cable discs, but soon realised how laughably bad they actually are. i'm now in the process of upgrading to the 4-piston model juins and the yokozuna compressionless housing, but still not expecting them to brake nowhere near like my paul motolite rim brakes. the only upside i've noticed so far is that the performance isn't much diminished in wet conditions. my riding will mostly be in the dry though. verdict is not getting hydros unless there's a nicer looking lever alternative to the hope tech 3 duo, which oozes full face helmet energy.

despite of the above, the big picture is the bike slaps. it just bombs through everything. the rollover is clearly superior to the 650x48b i had earlier. no more slipping in the mud yet maintaining a decent rolling resistance on the road thanks to jan heine's magic knobs. it's also light enough to climb well. absolutely no problems even on the rockiest and steepest ones between shoreham-by- sea and midhurst. apart from having to hold up a bit due to the brakes, descents were happy days too. in contrast, i was struggling a lot on the stumpjumper with the said 650x48b on the same ground. the steel-carbon combo is obviously showing its damping characteristics here. the slightly longer 450mm stays can also be felt contributing to the stability.

thanks! burly looking yet light 😉

Just get hydros

first rows of the hydro choir are already singing, good!

just found out about this. 200 quid though, yikes. the joys of being an adaptive rider... anyway, i need to complete the full course of cable brain worms first before getting into this.

looks great!
seconded on hydros tho

thanks! jus received the gt-ps, hydros after these if there's still money on my bank account