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before you say “hey ronnie I thought you were all out of those things and those forks!”, well this one has been reserved for a while for a special customer. the rollerskating @skatergates of Erie PA.

this one was in the works for a while — tried to have it ready for pick up at the spring fling in May, but the front der situation ended up being rushed as a result. the result of that was a terrible shifting experience, especially for someone new to friction — mid way through the spring fling ride, it all blew up in a chain suck extravaganza that demolished the rear der — I was able to fix it enough to get her back to the barn, but some work needed to be done before this bike flew free!

Jay did some mod work to the front der clamp so that it did not interfere with the lower bottle mount — allowing for the cage to drop far enough down to handle the 38-20t range. you might be able to zoom in on the photos and see. works great! shifters are micro shift thumbies set to friction. grips are faux ultradynamico.

so that outer ring is just a bash guard. thats a suntour XC PRO micro drive crankset in a 94 BCD. love the profile of these cranks — peak suntour — an era that ended before it was over. in the rear we have an 11-32 XT 9 speed (they still make em!) cassette and the ever stalwart M950 rear der. the micro shift R9 front der works well, and is readily available. 9 being such an auspicious number — goes well with bikes.

Mars race 27.5 x 2.2 wrapped around crust rim brake rims on XTR M950 hubs with Paul pewter touring cantis to match.

Amanda has a set of my uncle Ron’s upright ortho bars on one of her big Rivs, so since this bike a sprightlier version, we figured we’d go with something sleeker since this bike would require less muscle to wrangle. these are 55 nitto albatross bars with some extra width added in the bench vice. they work well with the 16″ frame.

tied the cables together with a twist from GHOOOST in Japan. check out there neat stuff!

perfect for tying up the cables. we will stock them at some point when we stock our bigger things again.

stem caps made locally by Brian at Yellow Bird. stem is a nitto gravel ahead stem. 25.4 clamp.

love me some Paul touring cantis. I like this photo too. not sure if we will ever do these forks again — they are cool, I will agree … but simpler is better, and these were not simple in such a small batch. but 50 or so of you out there have one!

ran out of decals for this frame, and the minimum was too high to order more … so just like on myyyyy personal Alumalith, the decals are *very* hand painted. its folksy, and even though it is far from perfect, I kinda like that about it. works well with the raw aluminum. a little fluid film on top. aluminum is an extremely hard surface, and doesn’t really need any corrosion protection, but this lanolin based stuff is what we and apparently Charlie Cunningham use/used on all our frames for a nice luster.

the bars are up kinda high here, she might want to flip the stem for more front wheel control on trails. I always suggest leaning into your “upright” bars. you need that weight on the front for trail control.

okay thats it! I still need to test the new fork that I am showing at MADE on a 29er I am working on, but we will at some point offer these frames again. just wont be this summer like I’d told many of you.

hope everyone is having a nice week!

Ronnie