Just received my 068 about 2 hours ago; this post is first impressions + some remarks about features that aren't listed on the SPCycle site. Before starting, I want to give props to David at SPCycle for being very responsive to my (many, annoying) emails and providing accurate tire clearance measurements. Thanks!
FULL ALBUM HERE: https://imgur.com/a/H2liWld
This is a size small frame in the blue chameleon color. I'm very pleased with the paintwork - it's flawless almost everywhere, just some tiny deformation around mounts and holes that will be covered up by bolts anyway. The color itself is exactly what I'd hoped for, a blue/purple shift with teal sparkles. There is some overspray around brake mounts and some of the bolt bosses, but nothing that can't be fixed with some careful use of a sharp utility knife.
The weight isn't super impressive, but it never was gonna be: 1154 grams for the frame (no hardware) and 500 grams for the fork (with thru axle inserts, uncut). Seeing as the downtube is so incredibly girthy, and the rest of the frame isn't exactly svelte, I'm ok with these figures.
Now for a list of thoughts and observations:
- I fit 650b x 54 mm (measured tires) between the chainstays with ~2-2.5 mm of room on either side! I'm planning on running 650b x 50-52 mm as my gravel setup on new wheels, so this is very nice. I don't have fat 700c tires to test with, but I'll get more exact chainstay measurements later.
- The headset bearing cups are molded well and the provided bearings fit snugly with zero play. I'm using a Token S-Box compression ring and top cap, as I don't like the aluminum C-shaped compression ring that comes with the stock headset - too much risk of fork damage and it's HEAVY. Unfortunately, the Token bearings are 51.8mm OD and have a small amount of play in the 52.0 mm bearing seats, so I can't use them.
- The hose routing hole on the steerer tube is kind of rough, but won't be a concern when it's hidden away in the frame. There was one strand of loose carbon that I sliced off without issue. I pushed a brake hose up from the caliper end and it popped right out the steerer hole without any guidance needed, so the inside is perfectly fine.
- Speaking of the inside, the interior of the frame looks to be very well molded, without much in the way of wrinkles or excess resin. The only real exception are the areas where the chainstays are bonded right behind the bottom bracket, which have some lumpy resin but nothing major. See the endoscope pics in the album.
- There's a cable routing port on the back of the driveside seatstay, which is a far better location than the port on the underside of the chainstay. However, it looks like the seatstay port may only be large enough for electronic cables - not an issue for me since I'm building this up with Di2, but something to consider if you're going mechanical.
- There's a fender mounting boss on the underside of the fork crown. Not super useful on the holeless fork since there's no corresponding mounting holes by the dropouts - I'd like to see those holes present, but clip-on fenders should be fine for the winter.
- The bottom bracket threads are clean, with no point overspray or damage. I'm not sure if the paint around the cups will be damaged by BB installation - I'll be doing that tomorrow with a SRAM T47 BB and an Abbey tools socket, clamped to the frame, so hopefully there's not much room for anything to slip.
- The front thru-axle has measurements written on it but the rear doesn't. Ideally it would, but here's the measurements: ~168mm length, ~15mm thread length, 1.0 pitch (thanks, UDH). The brass washer on the rear axle is captive - good - but the washer on the front isn't retained in any way and just pulls straight off. Also, the rear axle head sits flush with the frame but the front axle head protrudes slightly. The axles are quite heavy, I'll likely replace them in the future.
- The flip chip on the brake side is only retained by the axle! When the axle isn't there, it just falls straight out of the fork. Not good, especially because the driveside chip is elegantly retained by a little grub screw on the tip of the fork blade - why couldn't this have been done on both sides??? This is my biggest complaint since it's so easily avoidable, and actually IS avoided on only one of the blades!
- The brake mounts on the frame and fork look to have been faced, but then not fully masked, so there's a rim of paint around the edges that prevent mounts from sitting flat and flush. I did some experiments with carefully slicing away the paint from one of the fork brake mounts, and it looks pretty good, so I'm going to complete that on all the mounts once I'm done with this post.
Overall, it looks like this frame will do exactly what I wanted - to serve as a road and gravel bike with 2 wheelsets, without compromising too much on either front. I'll make at least one more post, probably 2, detailing any build notes and ride impressions I have.
Check out the album - it's got all the pictures thus far!
