Ok, now that I'm in the market for another bike, I decided on what I want. I am looking for a STRONG but very light frame or even a complete bike. I want a singlespeed for sure and I'm hoping for the bike to be in the sub 20 pound range. I have looked at tons of frames and bikes but can't deicide on which one is the best. My budget is around $2500 but preferably less. I am 5'11" and about 195 fully clothed and I ride very aggressively and for rather long amounts of time(my usual run is a little over 25 miles). I ride mostly street but I like the option of being able to ride trails. I just need some suggestions on bikes and frames that would suite my needs. Any help will be greatly appreciated. -Will

Redline 925?

https://www.redlinebicycles.com/adultbikes/925.html

a friend rides one. seems pretty nice. and light.

https://www.ninerbikes.com/sir9.html

I was checking one of these out. Super nice, probably not in the sub 20lb range, but close. I'm not sure you can find a mountain bike that light. Unless you go carbon.

Edit: The One9 aluminum frame weighs 3.3 lbs. according to the site.

Yeah, from what I've seen that's really the only way but I've heard that carbon can shatter pretty easily. I really like the way the niner frames look! And damn 3.3lbs!!! That .2 less than what I ideally want! Awsome! I am considering the ONE 9 and the S.I.R. 9. I am gonna see what other people suggest but these frames look awsome! -Will

Carbon won't shatter unless you're taking repeated 20 ft drops. Doesn't really souund like the type of riding you'll do. As for the two frames, the S.I.R. will weight a bit more, but i think the ride would be a whole lot better. I have an aluminum hardtail and the ride is pretty harsh. Steel just feels nicer to ride. And, honestly, i was surprised by how light the SIR was when I picked it up.

bang carbon on a rock though, it gets a nice gouge; then what???

weight weenie or not i'd still recommend a steel or ti bike for mountain biking.

they might not be the lightest but they'll be around longer (and your really only talkin maybe a pound or two).

this guys stuff makes me drool.

https://www.blacksheepbikes.com/

but this guy will make you a nice steel bike at a great price (i got one).

https://www.waltworks.com/

ellsworth one?

Like max a mill I am a huge fan of steel, but if you are deadset on light, light, light, everyday frame, I would go with a al MTB frame. Carbon is for race day.

Bianchi also sells the AL version of their singlespeed frame only.

are you leaning towards traditional MTB size or 700c wheels?

What is with all the mountain bike suggestions? He said primarily streets, with the option of trails. That screams "Cyclocross!" to me. The Blacksheep Pineridge comes in custom steel for $1400, and could easily be built up nicely for around $1000 more, and moderately for $500 more.

Other good CX options for cheaper are the Bianchi San Jose, IRO Rob Roy, On-One Il Pompino.

You can go Ti from De Salvo for $1875.

my friend's niner is sub-20 lbs... i think it's 19lbs actually.

he has put that carbon fork through heck down very tech trails and it's completely fine. it flexes quite nicely and controllably.... he is also 6'2" and weighs 200 lbs. he's selling this though to finance his moots 29er. yes, he's one of those. ha!

It's not particularly difficult to go under 20lb with a ss MTB, I think. With $2500 and a lot of bargain hunting, I'm pretty sure you could even build a fully geared sub-20 MTB (with a rigid fork) Frames tend to be similar weight or even lighter than road frames, and the rims are lighter, too. If you want front suspension, 20lb may be out of reach, or it may not. Depends on how much ebay scouring you do and whether you throw in a couple of cheap used ultralight parts.

You aren't exactly light, but if you don't ride particularly rough trails, you don't need anything extremely sturdy.
Frame should be Al or, if you can squeeze it out of the budget, Ti. Look around on ebay for a Ti frame.

Oh, if you don't need your frame to last forever, just buy one of these: about the best kept secret among ultralight MTB frames. Magnesium from Litech, the now defunct Russian pioneer of Mg welding. Light, dampens vibrations like Ti, very light. Has a funky seatpost diameter and comes with an unusable shim. Very light as well. 1300g for the 17". Dirt cheap, because people don't know about it.

Also, Mg tends to corrode pretty damn fast, which is why I didn't buy one in the end (I could have got one for $90 last year, but it was sorta nicked from the factory when the company was falling apart, and I wasn't sure it got the anti-corrosion treatment on the inside of the tubes. So I looked up everthing about the frame, found it's fantastic, and then passed up.)
But you can just buy another one if it craps out. You're still only out $300 after that...

Got great reviews on MTBR.com.
The company even supplied frames to top racers from Russia, The Ukraine and other nearby countries. Bodrogi, our road TT world champ medalist rode one, too. Their own website is now gone, as the company went down last year, so I don't have the list.

Litech, Lodestar, Salt Cycles are all stickers for the same frames. They pop up all the time on weight weenie sites like weightweenies.starbike.com and light-bikes.com

I just put all this out there so the SS gang know about it.

It may be sacrilege to bring it up but if you want to ride on both roads and trails a ss may not be the best choice. You will at least need a flip-flop so make sure whatever frame you get has canti-mounts. Is flipping a wheel whenever you switch from road to trail worth whatever benefit you see in ss. If so I would get a qr on the back and avoid ebbs in favor of track ends to make it as little a hassle as possible. Also remember that you tire will be on backwards one way.

Be very very careul with steel. Ultra light steel frames are a durability nightmare. The alloys and treatments used make it about as brittle as Al and in conjuction with the paper thin walls this means even a low speed crash can trash the frame.

I agree with all the people suggesting cx frames. Unless you want to ride technical single track it's probably the best option for you. In your price range you could easily afford a custom one with track ends if you are set on ss or you could get a multispeed one and make a 9-speed.

While I agree with your sentiments regarding the cross type of bike, my response was related to his thread title.

Look at the Bianchi WUSS.

Rivendell Quickbeam? SS cross bike, steel, longish wheelbase, can take big ol' tires...

Holy crap, I totally missed it. Yes, moron = me.

On that vein then, there are literally a ****eload of custom builders out there who you can get a light, steel (or even AL) frame from for around $1500 (Including Carl Strong, one of the best TIG welders in the country!). The Salsa Juan Solo is also pretty damned light (3.77 lbs).

To all the carbon haters: Don't knock it 'till you see it happen. Carbon handlebars and seatposts are the norm, and carbon technology is being improved all the time. Remember, a lot of folks said suspension wasn't worth it when it first came out, and look at what's happened with that.

True you will spend some cash on it. My spicer ti rigid mtb is just barely sub-20#.

Iso, the Niner is a beaute!

That's because it wasn't.



That carbon fork is really nice. Who makes it?

laura,
that niner is scott namken's, not scott my roommate. do you know him? he's my one of my two friends named scott with tons of tattoos that work at cyclist and ride orange ss 29er's. hahaha this scott is the head mechanic at cyclist.

also, are you coming to the track tonite? i'm racing. last week i did pretty well... 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in my races. i did loose to a woman though. everyone was giving me crap. hahaha

dutret,
i agree rigid is best. it makes you really have to ride smooth and pick the best lines. the carbon fork is made by pace. i think they make a 26" version as well. again, i cannot speak highly enough about this fork. it works beautifully. it flexes, as it should, so perfectly.

as far as staying away from ebb, i disagree. there is no real effort involved in the chain tensioning. just get the chain on the cog, and put the axles in the dropouts... bing! the ebb moves until the chain is at good tension. i know three folks with ss mtbs with ebb's and they all love them.

speaking of rigid forks, does anyone have experiences with the on-one 29er fork? i'm tired of my future 29er parts bin collecting dust, so i've decided to go with the 29 inbred frame. i'll probably want to go with their fork too, but i don't want something that rides as crappy as the surly 29 fork. that thing is way too springy.

Dear lord let's not get into this debate; suspension has its place, we all know it. Suffice it to say, suspension technology has improved remarkably since the beginning of single-pivot elastomer-shocked behemoths. The same could be said for carbon frames and components. This is my point.

EBB's are kind of hit or miss. If you have a good one, and you take care of it, it can be an excellent, worry-free piece of equipment that allows to you easily adjust chain tension while running discs and a QR rear wheel, and even allows minor chainline adjustment.

If you have a bad one, you can squeak a lot, have trouble servicing it, and/or ruin your frame (in the case of some set-screw type EBB's). Most are good, but some have wound up being awful.

Note the past tense of my statement. It WAs not for quite a while. It is now for many types of riding. I use both but the suspension more often due to the rooty trails around me(you can't pick a line around transverse roots). I was trying to agree with you about how far the tech has come.

I would really like to try that carbon fork as it might suck up enough to make a large potion of my rides tolerable.... it's probably way out of my price range anyway though.

Maybe I'm just not experienced with nicer EBBs but the ones I have used(tandem) would make adjusting the tension after flip-flopping too tedious to do multiple times each ride. Its not hard but its alot harder then flipping a wheel in track ends. Since a flip-flop precludes a disk the main advantage is lost anway. Noone makes a flipflip disk hub yet right? that would look pretty intense with rotors on each side... you could even do dual calipers too just to have that much more stopping power that would never get used.

there's one on ebay right now for 200 and they sell them here:
https://www.fullcycles.com/product_in...roducts_id/626

the 26 version is cheaper...

edit:
as for ebb's my only experience is via proxy of friends' bikes. that niner, a friend's steel blacksheep ss 26 and another friend's ti blacksheep ss 29 all have ebb's... everyone's ebb has been problem free and performed great.

For a very light mountain SS- i'd look at the cannondale single speed with EBB, or the aluminum bianchi mtb setup. If you want to quickly switch between street and mtb riding on the same bike, your best bet is to have two wheelsets- 1 with a low gear & knobbies, and a second with high gear and slicks.

with disc brakes, you could even run a 26" wheels for the mountain, and 700c for the road without trouble, which would also help out with the road/mountain gearing disparity.

yeah a bit much for me...


Maybe I missunderstood what the OPs needs are. I assumed that he wanted to go on rides that where primarily on road with some trail sections in the middle. If that is the case a seperate wheelset would not be that useful. Also even if ebbs are easy to use are they really easy enough that you wouldn't mind adjusting them multiple times in the middle of a ride instead of having track ends? That was the type of use I was envisioning them being less well suited for.

I guess we need to hear back from him now.

Right now I am looking at:
Black Sheep
Walt Works
Strong
Niner

I'm interested in his bike if he's still selling it. Let me know how much he wants and I'll consider it. -Will