Bike Stuff

Gravel bike. What is a 'gravel bike'? It's lots of things. And I already had a pretty great one in the Salsa Cutthroat . The Cutthroat is at the hardcore adventure end of the gravel scene, bordering on a drop bar MTB. In fact, if you look at the bottom of the down tube, you'll see a map of the Tour Divide for which it was designed. Over the couple of years I've had it, I've set it up to do anything short of full MTB riding (including an hour-long bomb run descent down at the Grizzly Gravel ). It wears mountain bike 2.25" race tires some of the time. But for other rides, I've had a set of 38m, gentle knobby tires for more champaign gravel, sporty, or touring use.  But there's the trick:. I've also evolved the setup as a whole for good performance on rugged trails with a Redshift suspension stem and an PNW Coast suspension/dropper post and those MTB tires at the expense of a more nimble configuration. It is a great setup that can be used for so...

A restomod (restoration and modernization) mashup of a 1990 Ti frame, 2007 Campagnolo carbon/Ti group set, 2015 wheelset, and a few modern parts reassembled in 2023. Like many bike nerds, I've long wanted a titanium-framed bike. It has a reputation for a 'magical' ride feel, is light and just looks super cool. Purchased new, they are really, really  expensive. But, they are also known as 'forever frames' for a reason. Ti has a very high fatigue life and doesn't rust. If the frame was made correctly in the first place, it can last a lifetime. So I started looking for an older Ti frameset to rebuild. After searching for a while, I found a Litespeed (one of the early brands famous for Ti) frame in my size for a good price on eBay. Thanks to a cooperative seller and Litespeed still keeping serial number records, I was able to determine that it was a 1991 (actually built in 1990) model called "Classic Road". The frame had survived 32 years structurally s...

I had a 2019 Salsa Cutthroat with a SRAM Force 1×11 setup that I wanted to get a bit lower gearing for steep hills around here. Not worried about increasing the top end. Didn’t want to replace the rear wheel which has the HG style freehub used for the last 20+ years on 8, 9, and 10 and some 11-speed setups. So, what’s the big deal? Just put a big cassette on. They make plenty of them these days. Well… Kinda. Cassette availability: SRAM’s HG-compatible cassettes stop at 42t. I have that and want at least 50T Hubs: Most large cassettes require an XD driver on the freehub. Some hubs can be changed easily, some maybe, some not. Mine was in the ‘can’t find one’ category Derailleur: The SRAM Force 1 (and most other road derailleurs) isn’t rated for cassette cogs that big. The longer cage varieties like this one can get to 42 but some only to the upper 30s. Also, the derailleur’s total tooth takeup (difference between largest and smallest) gets strained beyond ~37t. 50-11 = 39T to take up...