Hi.
When I bought my frame+fork, almost 1 month ago, I was told it would ship in the beginning of this month, mainly because of the fork, that was due to be produced only by the end of April. Late last week, as I had no update on AliExpress, I inquired the seller about a shipping estimation and I was told that "your frame will be ready in short days" (exact quote). So, I'm kind of expecting it will ship until the end of this week, but in reality, nobody told me that was a certainty...
Regarding the tires, I already have a set of Maxxis Aspen 32x2.4 at home over a month ago. That was my main concern, to get the tires, as they were out of stock everywhere in Europe when I decided to start this 32er project. Only after I had them at home that I went ahead and bought the wheelset and frameset!
A friend in NL has some spare new Aspens in his store, but it's not a web store. If someone needs tires I could probably get them to you, he bought extra just in case this would be a one time opportunity.
The Peyote 2.4 is testing as extremely well rolling.
When I rode the Aspens they seemed very capable already and all the testers say that of the 32x2.4" version. I'm curious how the Peyote will ride on rough technical gravel singletrack.
Already thinking I'll be wanting a Schwalbe Rick XC Pro or Maxxis Forekaster front. Even Maxxis Dissector, if it bring me meaningful extra cornering speed and not too much extra rolling resistance.
The Rick rolls really well as well it seems from John Karrasch's testing. I had a similar Rick Race in 29" but it wore out really quickly as a rear.
Please, before you rush and build your frame and fork, take an accurate weight measurement? We'll all know, and can eventually access manufacturing consistency.
If you ride a lot of tight trails, you may want to consider an angle adjust headset (not sure which exact one will fit), to get the head tube angle on the Tideace 1 or 2 degrees steeper. With the stock fork, the trail figure is on the very extreme end of slow steering response, a combination of slack head tube, short offset and large wheel all working together to result in slow handling. It also results on a very long front end, but with the unusually long chainstays that may well work out in terms of not unweighting the front wheel. If you ride exceedingly challenging descends you may even go slacker on the head tube, but then a rigid fork is probably less than ideal anyway.
Once suspension forks become more easily available in a reasonable price range, the Tideace might be a great candidate for an 80 mm fork. The 80mm would steeper (quicken) the bike up a bit, and get the bottom bracket down to a more typical height. The resulting tilt will see you wanting to slide the seat back though, and that may call for a shorter stem. If you got an L when you're more of an XL fit, this is just a welcome tweak.
With a 100 mm travel fork, it will ride much as with the rigid fork, although some forks will offer more offset to achieve more agile steering.
Some custom builders offer reasonably priced custom steel rigid forks. Won't be light, but will offset a change to tweak steering response and perhaps even choose another hub standard. Some may want to run a rear hub up front as well in case their rear freehub fails. It could also be a singlespeed hub with wide flange spacing as a bail out for on trail wheel swap.
I'm curious about the announced SR Suntour 32" fork. It seems to be quite light and might well suffice for my riding, no need to get a Fox or Intend?
