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.