You may recall the knowledge dropping (and/or shit stirring) that I did in SignatureJustin's threads a few months back when he was looking for information on this sort of bike: http://www.velocipedesalon.com/forum...ead-30742.html | http://www.velocipedesalon.com/forum...ere-30790.html | http://www.velocipedesalon.com/forum...ack-31233.html — or the thread about that 650b Firefly — or my 6 post info bomb on wtf the deal is with porteur racks. If you can get past the butthurt those threads make for great background on what makes this more than a homercar.

Well I recently did the initial build on my latest one and have put 500 miles on it: New Elephant - a set on Flickr



Frame and fork built by Glen Copus of Elephant Bikes, see the BikeCAD Model for dimensions.


Versus my Rawland rSogn the chainstays and front-center are 1cm shorter each, the BB is 5mm lower, and the seat tube angle is nearly a degree slacker.

I designed around disc brakes so I could use cheap 650b carbon rims that are 20x stiffer and stronger than the light alloy ones I was using at the same weight (I 'm on my third rear rim on my Rawland!). The extra 4mm of inside width vs. a normal 23mm rim doesn't make the tires any wider, but it does make them significantly rounder which took a bit of getting used to.

The Extra Léger Hetres are set up tubeless, and the low rolling resistance of that combo is definitely noticeable, but I find myself inflating them to 30-35psi instead of 25-30 because of the lack of compression damping in the casing. The sidewalls even wrinkle visibly under load! I find normal Hetres at 20psi to still be perfectly rideable, but these sag a lot when that low and squeal obscenely just turning the bars on asphalt.






The bike is 23.3lbs as shown without fenders or bottlecages: frame is 4lbs even, fork is 2.2lbs, and the rack is 1.2lbs. I could shave at least a third of a pound off the rack by making it in 5/16" x 0.028" instead of 3/8" x 0.035", and might do that next time, I just didn't want to change to many variables in the design at once.

The TT & DT are single oversize OX Platinum in 7/4/7 with the longest center butts, the seattube is 28.5 6/4/5 S3, the seatstays are also S3 in .5mm 16/11 taper, and the chainstays are from the Dedacciai 29er tubeset. The fork uses a Nova crown with matching oversize 29/21 blades and a superlight steerer (normal steel 9/8" steerers are thick enough to thread for some fucking reason).

By the numbers the front end should be marginally stiffer than my 9/6/9 standard-diameter bikes (like Columbus SL). I was pleasantly surprised that it's definitely a bit more flexible under pedaling, but also doesn't get bounced off its line as much plowing through a rock garden. Perhaps the superlight seat tube has something to do with that, but it's hard to tell. See the porteur rack thread for details, but the main charm of this sort of geometry is that you can build the frame to be super responsive/sprightly without affecting the load-carrying ability.


Here it is dirty on my way home from an overnight bike camping trip on the North Fork Snoqualmie:



Obviously it still needs to be painted, that'll get done in a few couple months with a rather ridiculous design, the vintage splash tape should serve as a clue.

I still need to add some bosses and wire anchor points to the front rack, make a custom mini rear rack for it to hold a stuffsack when camping and serve as a taillight mount, make some weigle-style mounting hardware for the Honjo fenders I have for it, do a custom wiring harness with lapel-mic cable, and machine accessory clamps for the paired triple seat tube bosses to hold a pump and/or folding saw.

When the rain starts letting up again I'll put 2.3" knobbies on it and take it out for some real mountain biking.