Old-School 29er

My shop has had a guest the past several days: Kelly's old Trek Multi-Track 720 has been in for some sorely needed TLC.

New tires (Bontrager 700x38 H2s) were definitely in order after the sidewalls of what appeared to be the original tires (Trek 700x35 Multi-Tracks made by Cheng-Shin Tire) started to flake apart when I went to change the tubes. I also cleaned the drivetrain, probably for the first time ever.

This bike really brought back some memories: 7 speed cassettes, Alivio derailleurs, overpadded saddles, cantilever brakes. I must say, a 7 speed chain is one burly component. Aside from a little rust, after cleaning it up it looks good for another 10 years. Of course this might have something to do with Kelly not getting out of the saddle and giving it the spurs much over the years :-P

Amazingly the brake pads, while a bit noisy, still worked great. I was able to lock up the front wheel while taking a test blast down the driveway. Did I mention they were noisy? I'll have to remedy that at some point...




I'm now curious as to how old this bike is. Vintage-trek only lists one black 720 multitrack, made in 1991, but the decal color isn't right. It looks like this particular model was made between 1990 and 1999. The colors got progressively fancier over the years, with pearlescent paint jobs and fades. So this bike, in basic black is almost certainly on the earlier end of the scale, and may be a 91. Bikepedia only has data as far back as 1993 for this model, so no luck there either.

The Kalloy seatpost has '93.10' stamped on it, and seatposts often have the date stamped, but the 93 bike was a black to purple fade...

...Hopefully Kelly can shed some light on this mystery (assuming she bought it new).

Anyway, enough history. What actually prompted me to write this is that given my recent plunge into 29ers, it became obvious that sometime back in the day, somebody threw some CX tires on this thing or something similar and presto, the first mass produced 29er was born without any fanfare or Gary Fisher being involved in any way!

Project 29er: Built

Outdoor glamor shot before I made the final steerer cut and changed the seatpost. I like to think the black-white-red color scheme came together nicely. Weight as pictured was 28.68 lbs.

Finished building up the RIP 9 tonight. It went pretty smoothly, only problems were pretty minor: Some slight drag on the rear rotor, some trouble getting the front derailleur aligned right, and dealing with the wonky cable routing.

This caliper will never be the clean again. Ever.

The things that have really caused my headaches when building previous bikes where not issues with this frame: The bottom bracket threaded in all the way by hand (Bravo Niner!) And the internal headset just drops in, easy as pie, no need to bust out my homemade headset press.

One of my few gripes about this frame so far: The cable routing. The front derailleur cable in particular is a bit gruesome. Though now that it is set up, I'll probably never think about it again.

Converting the Schwalbe Racing Ralphs to tubeless was quite easy too. The rims came from George with the rim tape and valve already installed, so I didn't have to deal with that. I just followed the directions on the bottle of Stan's sealant and everything went smoothly. I've never done this before, so I can't be sure how much using Stan's tubeless-ready Arch rims helped. I'm thinking of converting an old pair of Specialized branded rims for my Turner and tend to doubt it will be as easy.

Cages and seat bag added. I'm going to try and go sans-Camelbak on shorter rides this year. Obviously need some bottles with a flip-top dome to keep the crud out on that bottom mount.

I also used Stan's sealant injector, which is probably overkill, but avoids some mess. I used 90ml of sealant for each 29"x2.4" tire. Both tires lost a bit of air the first few days, but after last night seemed to have sealed up tight. My only concern now is whether the fairly lightweight Ralphs will hold up.

I could stand to trim the brake lines...but who am I kidding.

I set the rebound front and back at the middle of the range. That can be dialed in easy on the trail. Set the pressure in the fork at 85psi per the manual's recommendation. Shock is at 150 psi which gives the recommended 25% sag. I'll mess around with the ProPedal setting when I get on the trail.

I've only tooled around the driveway, but I think I'm going to like these Ergon grips. If nothing else I can annoy my riding partners while I pontificate about how, "grip technology has really come a long way the last few years".

Niner's trademark "Top Tube Coach".


185mm rotor front, 160mm rear.


Niner supports beefier options for the rear axle, but I'm sticking with a standard QR for now. It's probably quite sufficient for my riding style (sit and spin), weight (average), and power output (uh, modest?).

To say I am looking forward to getting this bike on the trail would put me in early contention for the "Understatement of the Year Award -- 2010". But the woods are still in full-on bog mode right now. Going to do the next best thing: Spend tomorrow doing trail maintenance work at the FOMBA trails.

Project 29er: Out of the Box

The RIP 9, wheels, and OEM fork arrived today. I haven't done much beyond take it out of the box and weigh it. Nothing was even remotely close to it's claimed weight, the frame was a whopping 7.62 lbs (3456g), the wheels 4.33 lbs (1963g), and the fork 4.05 lbs. (1837g). This pushes my earlier estimate of the total weight to 28.51 lbs. Still lighter than my present bike, but a bit porkier than I had hoped. I can live it with though.

Holy Hydroforming Batman!
Contrast with the strictly straight tubed Burner.
On the right, hiding its shame in the shadows
is LeKG's hybrid, visiting the shop for some TLC.

Bottom bracket junctions aren't what they once were.

The Turner's old Chris King hubs get a new lease on life.
I would have loved some new red CK's, but even I couldn't justify the expense.

Front wheel built up by George at Bike29.
Hub was originally a 9mm axle, but fortunately for my wallet
a 15mm through-axle conversion was available.

The OEM Fox F29 RL.
Claimed weight 3.5 lbs.
Actual weight 4.05 lbs.
...and my bike gets fatter...

More tech changes since my last new bike:
A monster 1.125" to 1.5" tapered head tube.

Project 29er: What Will It Weigh?

I was bored this weekend. So I weighed every component of my RIP 9. I'm not a weight weenie, as can be seen by my choice of frame, but I like charts. Charts with colors are even better!

It will surprise no one to hear that many manufacturer's claimed weights are less than the actual weights. What is surprising is that some brands actually overstated their products weights. Ritchey's SuperLogic bar for example, was 3 grams less than published. That's probably with the normal +/- for a part like this, but it's nice to see some honesty.

Regardless, my goal of a "lightweight" RIP 9 seems promising. If the remaining items are anywhere near their published weights the whole thing may come in under 27 lbs (though I'll believe that when I weigh the finished product). Even if the weight goes as high as 27.5 lbs, for an aluminum framed, 4.5" travel full-suspension 29er this strikes me as quite reasonable, especially considering many of the parts are not exactly "lightest in class" (i.e. brakes, pedals, seatpost, tires).

We'll see...

Project 29er: Nearing the end of Fed Ex fun

The end of the frequent visits from Brown Santa and the FedEx man are coming to an end. A few final items arrived today. Now we are waiting on the big stuff, the wheels and the frame. Wheels should ship out today and the frame sometime this month.

Originally I had planned on using my old black Salsa seatpost clamp and rear skewer, but color accessorizing madness got the better of me.

I am reusing these 959s, I love these pedals, and they last forever. In the 15 or so years I've been using clipless pedals I've really only used two sets, these and some 747s, which are now on my road bike. Not sure what it takes to kill them, but it would probably kill me too.

Same as my old bike. If it ain't broke...

I see a pattern here...I was going to reuse my Avid Juicy 7s, but a good deal on Avid Elixir CRs (185mm front/160mm rear) at Speedgoat caught my eye and the bonus white-black-red color scheme sealed the deal. Plus I want to have enough parts left over from my old bike for next winter's diversion: Project Singlespeed

Project 29er: Finally, a frame.

The Winner: Large Black Anodized RIP 9

After a lot of research I had narrowed my bike choices down to two: The Santa Cruz Tallboy and the Niner RIP 9. My local LBS is a Santa Cruz dealer, which is a big plus, but in the end the Tallboy's $644 premium over the RIP 9 and the inability to actually see one in person doomed it. Admittedly the Santa Cruz is a good deal lighter than the RIP 9, but that extra $644 goes some ways to making the Niner a bit lighter via component choice than it might otherwise be.

I ordered my RIP this weekend from Five Hills bike shop in Waterbury VT. The owner George Wisell talked me out of my original plan to build up my old Chris King hubs with some Stan's ZTR 355s, instead we opted for the slightly heavier, but more robust, ZTR Arch rims laced up with some 14/15g spokes. I'll wait till I have a picture of the wheels to reveal the colors, but it's going to be a change from basic black of my last several wheelsets.

In other news, a few more parts trickled in:

Jumping on the Ergon bandwagon and see if it is all that.

Some ho-hum stuff.

The weekly bling: Ritchey carbon fiber alloy matrix WCS 4-Axis stem. Claims to be be strong enough for mountain biking...I certainly hope so.