I wanted an aggressive gravel bike that's able to fit MTB tires. Trying to copy a Salsa Cutthroat with a Chiner frame. I basically wanted ~70mm BB drop, clearance for 29x2.25, chainring clearance for 36t+, and modern XC geometry (100mm fork geo, ~69 deg headtube, etc). I usually ride large MTB's (I'm 5'10.5") so I ordered a medium FM199 frame from Serpah on Aliexpress. It arrived in 9 days from ordering and was packaged very well!
-Serpah FM199 Chinese Carbon 29er MTB Frame
-SRAM Rival HRD 1x w/ 38t and 10-42
-Teravail Sparwood Tires on ARC27's laced to Novatec hubs (my first wheel build!)
-Niner Boost RDO Fork
-Tranzx Dropper actuated with left shift lever
-Ritchey VentureMax bars
The main setback on the build was routing the rear derailleur cable. This frame is intended to run bare cable through the frame, but I like to run full housing so I drilled through the frame fittings. The DS chainstay is THIN inside, I had to grease up the housing and use a bit of force to get the housing through. With Jagwire 1.1mm cable there's no issue with stiction. Other than that the build was super straight forward, the BB was solid and the PF BB went in no problem, no creaking yet! Headset area was solid, the rest of the cable routing was easy, everything else went together in one night. This frame is weird that the rear caliper is set up flat mount, but they include an adapter. Luckily I'm running a road groupset so I actually am running flat mount in the rear and post mount in the front. Since there's only clearance for 29x2.3 tires and it's boost spacing, the DS chainstay runs parallel to the centerline a ways past the chainring, I'm sure I could fit a 40t or 42t no problem.
It weighs 21.9 lbs as it sits in the pictures. I also have carbon road wheels that will get the weight down to 20.5 or so. I could drop another pound or so off the gravel weight if I went carbon with some lighter spokes, but I'm pretty happy as is. The wheels are 1840g without tape or valves. I found a nice gravel two-track trail that leads into a tight single-track trail and then leads to a long dirt road, this bike was perfect for that! I want to get it out on some longer single-track trails to see how it does.
