Mtb2223- is yours a long cage? Mine is 9spd med cage, brand new. Yours  Looks totally different!?

Well thanks for the replies, I'll reroute it & I guess that big loop is something I'll have to deal with then.

Got everything together enough to spin up & down the street, feels pretty awesome so far. Waiting for the right headset till I take it for a real  ride. I'll post up a build list & some pics soon.

Ok movin on with more info on build..

Here's the donor for some stuff. My goal for this project was mainly because I'm tired of dragging this 29 lb tank around the forest. Gonna squeeze in a few upgrades while trying to keep the budget down & fun factor up.


New parts for build-
 700mm flat bars  114g
Carbon stem 120g (with bolts)
Carbon seat post 230g
Carbon seat 106g
Xt shifter & derailler 380g
Esi grips 54g
Maxxis beaver 29x2  520g &492g
Kenda tube 180g each

Forgot the details

17.5 frame  1274g bare.

The lil things~

Clean up derailler hangar slop- easy, forgot to take an after pic



Lack of paint (?) on BB shell & at the water bottle mount holes- easy with some matte black spray



And then there was just a general smoothing out the seat post tube-was way too rough for my liking, the post slides so much smoother now. just used 3m red scotch brite pads. Also smoothed out top & bottom of headset. No pics of that

Pretty happy with it otherwise. I guess that's the trade off for saving a few $$

Here's a couple to start

I tried to add pics in the attachments, but ii get an error saying the upload folder is full?.

Anyway....Got the Frame in 7 days. Was surprised by that! Looks like I'm gonna need to get a headset for it, the one from my Giant doesn't feel/look right. Any recommendations? I'd like to get it ASAP as that is all I'm waiting for at this point.

The fit & finish is good, a few small details I can point out later, but nothing that some patience & an attention to detail didn't take care of.

As soon as I can figure out the picture upload thing I'll get some up. 

Congrats man! Good write up too. That is no easy feat, so go put that buckle on the mantle!

I will put up some pics as soon as I can. The first thing I did was take some measurements & make sure it's all true. I read about the rear brake mount issues after I ordered it was dreading any major issues, but it looks like I got a winner.....so far.