Hoping to get ~$500

Slowly ramping up my budget as per norm when bike shopping.


Going back to the idea of picking up a (used) lefty fork aswell

Apparently my renter's insurance can cover some of the bike that was stolen... but may have to buy the same or very similar bike to what was stole as it's "replacement" hrrrrm.

Guess might be another bikes direct bike for the time being... upgrade to xmiplay wheelset or something or dunno :\

Just had my mountain bike stolen yesterday (sad day).

Now that I'm going to be in the market for a new bike I'm thinking about building 29er using a Chinese carbon frame with my fallback being ordering another bike from bikesdirect. Soliciting help!

I was riding a Bikesdirect Gravity29Point3 19" purchased 2 years ago and was my first mountain bike. I should probably have gotten the 21" frame but the 19" hasn't been bad at all.

What costs should I be expecting to incur to be able to build a 057 carbon bike build with good but not great components? What might I be able to get in the $1000-1200 price point? There a good budget conscious way to get a lefty fork to drop some weight?

I remember back before I got my old bike there were discussions on buying a bikesdirect bike and a chinese frame and just moving parts over to the carbon frame, which was a little too much of an investment for me at the time.
Is this still done or worth doing? Buy a bikesdirect bike and move parts to a carbon frame?

My background:
I got into mountain bike for adventure racing and bike-orienteering purposes. I'm not a crazy technical rider and if things get too steep or rocky I tend to hike-a-bike, hopefully this will change someday but I've already tore one labrum

Adventure races I do tend to last 6-24 hours and about a depending on the event 25-50% of the time is spent on the bike on road/fire-road/technical singletrack.

I'm not the most well versed in bike parts/etc. Not sure how different the group sets perform compared to one another (i.e Sram X9 vs XX1 etc) just what I can google.

My Goals:
(1)
I'd love a lighter bike to reduce effort on elevation climbs during long endurance events.
Also I have to partake in the occasional bike-whack (aka carrying my bike up the side of a mountain, off-trail through bushes/etc)... so lighter is better.

(2)Trying not to break the bank... if I can match the level of quality in my old bike but reduce weight I'd be happy. Any specific targeted upgrades that make sense (wheels/etc) would be welcomed. 

My current fallback choice is: The next model up of my old bike Gravity 29.4 in 19" just cause it's currently $700 at the moment in the 19" size (link for reference: http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/gravity/29point4.htm) if this falls through I'd look for another bikes direct bike in the $650-900 range.