Chinertown
Chinese Carbon MTB => Metal Frames => Topic started by: frnchy on July 30, 2024, 06:27:05 AM
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I recently finished up this build for a friend, based around a Seaboard GR-02 frame, with a set of Elitewheels gravel hoops and an 11 speed Shimano mix groupset that enabled a super low climbing gear. The build ended up really nice, even a bit under the estimated weight (actual weight was 9.185 kg) and I’m quite pleased with it. I wanted to share some build notes and some info that I wasn’t able to find elsewhere, as well as some general thoughts.
- The frame finish was very nice, with good paint and smooth, even welds. The BB area and brake mounts didn’t have any paint overspray and everything was aligned. There is a rather poorly translated safety warning (“Pls [sic] remember to wear the protection” is a particular highlight) on the top tube by the headset, and very annoyingly it’s below the clearcoat so it’s not easily removed. Nothing a bit of black tape can’t fix.
- A 31.8 mm front derailleur clamp is needed for 2x. I’ve seen some store pages say that a 28.6 clamp is needed, this is NOT true!
- The rear derailleur hanger is a TERRIBLE design. Whenever the rear wheel is taken out, the hanger rotates around the one bolt holding it to the frame, so when the wheel is put back in, you also need to push up the rear derailleur to get the hanger up far enough in the dropout to get the thru axle into the hanger’s threads. Once it’s in place, it’s fine, but it is really annoying and should be changed.
- The cable guide area below the BB is a little crowded and not especially well designed. I would have liked to see a clip here to keep the brake hose out of the way of the cable guide. I had to use an internal cable routing tool to keep the shift cables from fouling on each other and the brake hose. Regardless, it wasn’t hard to set up the rear brake and the derailleurs since the downtube area opens up by the BB and there’s plenty of room in the downtube itself.
- The 700c x 42 mm quoted tire clearance is accurate – the tires on this build measure ~43 mm wide and there’s ~3.5-4 mm clearance at the chainstays.
- The 46/30 Senicx chainring only has “10/11 speed compatible” on it but I can confirm it works completely fine with a 12 speed Shimano chain.
- Getting a super low 30/40 max climbing gear was shockingly easy by using a GRX RX400 rear derailleur (nominally 10 speed, but uses the road 11 speed pull ratio) with an SLX cassette. The B screw did need to be turned in almost all the way, there’s maybe 1.5 threads left, but shift quality in all gears with the clutch on is very good. Honestly, I’m kind of jealous of that lowest gear – the best I can get on 12 speed is 30/36 and I’m currently using 31/34. Hopefully someday someone will make an 11-40 12 speed cassette…
- The wheels are seriously impressive, weighing in exactly on their advertised weight, with even spoke tension all around and completely true, at least to the limits of my truing stand. The freehub uses 4 pawls and is nice and loud, but be careful when taking it out since there’s no guides to put the pawls back in the hubshell once it’s popped out. I had to use a rubber band around the pawls to compress them enough to get them back in, then use a seal pick to carefully extract the rubber band while the pawls were captured in the drive ring. Not ideal.
Overall this was a very pleasant build and my friend is super happy with it. I'd happily use this frame myself for a low-to-mid range gravel build or commuter bike.
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I had the exact same problem with this stupid hangar design as I wrote in https://chinertown.com/index.php/topic,4082.msg58390.html#msg58390 :(
I want to try some blue lock tight to see if that can hold the screw in, but haven't gotten around to doing that. Also I ruined the head of the screw, trying to tightening it to hold the hangar. If anyone knows where to buy spare screws or the dimensions let me know :/
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Beautiful build! I built mine as a budget commuter and it certainly deserves better than that.
Shimano GRX gives you a lot more flexibility than they advertise. I'm running an 11-46 cassette with my 46/30 crank. I did use a Wolf Tooth Roadlink and a larger jockey wheel but it works quite well.
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Really nice build! I'm doing something very similar, except with a Kona Rove steel frame.
With the SLX cassette, do you think there's enough chain to run 34/50 on the front?
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Really nice build! I'm doing something very similar, except with a Kona Rove steel frame.
With the SLX cassette, do you think there's enough chain to run 34/50 on the front?
Probably - I think I had to cut about 6 links out which would just give you enough extra chain to cover an extra 4 teeth. I did get a 126 link chain though my statement doesn't apply to anything shorter.