Goes to the owner of Flagstaff's oldest bike shop: Cosmic Cycles. If you wanted to buy a Ritchey mountain bike in 1984 this was the place. All sorts of delicious bicycles have floated through this shop and pictures throughout the generations support that claim. If you wanted to see a Mantis on the floor in person, this shop had one circa 1993. A fat chance, yeah that too. There are still some old relics to be found in there, and maybe the red one will be among them one day. For now though it'll get ridden down Arizona's worst single track, floating over what all those guys breaking all those bikes of yester year never thought possible. We took a preliminary ride down Private Reserve, one of the nastiest, and I never saw the red one nor its pilot. Not surprising exactly.
The build is 1x11 with a 142x12 thru axle in the rear, Race Face Next 30mm cranks, A 140mm Revelation on Protection 2.4x650B Trail Kings mounted on a nice set of DT 30mm wide downhill rims. Thomson Dropper post cause I just had to. The geometry is pretty modest and modern. Not too low not too slack, but none of that NORBA either. Pure Flagstaff evolution.
Handlebar and headset spacer....possibly the most carbon to ever adorn one of my bikes. There have been a few with cabon bars, and a few with carbon spacers, this is the first to have both. The spacer matches color so closely to the King pewter anodizing I had to do a double take when we built it up. Funny thing about the little details. If you ever want a guy that isn't me (or you) to part up one of your frames, Scott is your man.
The cables stay outside the frame because I worked on Kleins in the 90s and it wasn't as fun as you wanted it to be. They were good looking bikes, but that's a rant for another time.
Enjoy the Red Sled Scott, and may there be many rides to come!
Looks nice Richard.. my only complaint is you seem to be skimping on the photo op! Keep us folks in mind who don't get to see your bikes in person and snap some pics against a more neutral background. I would love to hear why you didn't rock the Covert. Seat tube size or internal routing?
ReplyDeleteWe finished that build late at night and I totally slacked on the frame pics before we built it. Meant to, meant to take them, oooh, bike is gone. I'll get some on a ride on day and put them in the gallery or something. The seatpost is a 30.9. No covert due to internal routing. See the statement above about Kleins. I have seen it done pretty clean on steel, but I really don't want unnecessary holes in the tubes, especially the DT.
ReplyDeleteA mans got to have standards.. I like it. No holes in DT's sounds like a good rule of thumb. I have been telling myself to take more and better pictures for 20 years and Im still slacking.. just thought I would bust your balls a bit.
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