i've paid 160€ for it  + 10€ of taxes at italian customs

When was this? That's WAY cheaper than what I get for a price on Aliexpress now in the US.

Is Aliexpress running a fake sale?
It says these are 40% off until the 18th of Nov, with a sale price of $248.34 down from $399.00 

Haven't these always been around $200 dollars?
I bought the Lexon MTB crank about 3 months ago for 200-ish.   

Anyone know which is the 'real' vendor for these on Aliexpress? There are quite a few different listings of them+Chainrings+powermeter for varying prices.

"Probing"
 

What does "shock absorber" mean? RD clutch? Are they developping an electronic clutch? Or bundling a gravel (coil) fork with the groupset which will have an electronic version?

Since they are just ripping off Srams RD, it has a fluid rear dampener in it to mitigate chainslap.

Really wish someone made a lightweight gravel fork that had more like 60-70mm of travel. I believe the Fox TC32 goes to 50mm but that doesn't seem like it'd be enough if you wanted to get your bike in places where a sus fork would really make a difference.

Hey repoman, I like this post and love your detailed build report.  I'm building an XC bike myself.  Question for you:
- Why did you pick this frame over others such as Tantan FM121, SpCycle Sp-M861, etc?  To my understanding, this frame is the heaviest among them.
- Total weight of your bike after build?

Thanks for reading man.

I went with this frame primarily because I have a Lightcarbon Gravel frame that I think is pretty good, I don't know much about MTBing, I built this one up to basically learn how to ride technical stuff easier for gravel rides/races that incorporate tech so I figured a short-ish rear travel would be good. I have no interest in bike park/shredding gnar/tail whips sort of stuff.

Bike weighs 25 lbs right now, the 2.4" Purgatories are 1kg each, so with some legit XC tires IE Race Kings/Fast Tracks/Renegades/Ground Controls, a light saddle, and a weight weenie cassette I think this would be a sub 23lbs bike.   The post is a Transfer SL so it's super light for a dropper, the rear shock is a Float DPS so its sort of light but not the weight weenie one, the fork is a 2022 Stepcast which is pretty light.


You can't really trust published weights for any of these frames tbh. A lot of them weigh a lot more than what the sellers claim, sometimes they weigh a bit less.

I bought a semi-thermal jacket from Spexcel a while ago. I think it's really nice in cut and fabric. 
Something that seems to get mentioned a lot with Chinese clothes is that they generally have nice cut/fabric but they put sort of crummy zippers on the stuff, which is true of this Spexcel jacket.