Righto, so why this bike? Well, it's an idea that's been brewing in the back of my mind for a while. I mostly ride fairly mellow trails, but at reasonable speed (relatively speaking). I most like cornering and pumping trail undulations, so a short-travel bike tackles what I like riding most with ease. But the thing is, until very recently - short travel typically meant old-fashioned geometry, which
isn't so good for how I like to ride... I like the safety-net modern geometry affords, and the smooth, confident cornering at speed it allows. So with the rise of (everybody's favourite) "downcountry" bikes, short-travel bikes have been receiving much more progressive geometry over the last year or so. While I can live without the marketing tagline, this is the type of bike I've wanted to add to the stable since I “outgrew” and sold my 5010 a while back. I was chasing that Goldilocks "just right" bike to fit in-between my fully rigid “flat-bar gravel" bike (Highball) and "big bike" (coiled Sentinel).
Realistically in a (COVID-lockdown effected timeframe) I'd really only "just bought" and only put a handful of km’s on my Sentinel at that point, so the thought of dropping another $5000-6500 dollars on another big-name frameset just wasn't happening (or possible). So the idea got parked.
Then
@ozzybmx began posting about his lightening regime of his Transition Spur. And the bug bit again,
hard. I wanted into the club, but I still didn't have or want to spend big dollars. Then I remembered seeing
@Ben78's Ican S3 frameset over in the AliExpress thread. And down the rabbit-hole I went... It turned out NS bikes had designed the base frameset (
NS Synonym), but left the front triangle "open mould" (in essence - "not copyrighted"), and only kept their (slightly different) rear triangle proprietary to their frames. Ican had used the same front triangle, but with a different (non flex-stay) rear end. I did send Ican an enquiry, but simply never heard anything back. So I dug deeper. An online search for more info on the Ican found me on the Chinertown (Chinese direct-to-consumer bikes) forums, where I discovered the Carbonda FM936, which used the same NS-bikes designed front triangle, but unlike the Ican - retained a flex-stay rear triangle which saves weight and leaves one less set of bearings to worry about.
Unlike the NS bikes design - which comes in both 100mm and 120mm rear travel variants, Carbonda recommend against fitting the longer stroke shock. For my intentions for this bike, that didn't worry me.
So what about the shock? Well, for a pedal-focused bike intended to be used in a variety of terrain, I wanted something with a climb-switch. I typically use a climb switch on boring/smooth road climbs as it just cuts out the wallowing and makes things psychologically "a bit easier", but being tall and the adjuster levers for the shock being nestled right down near the chainring, I wanted (yes,
wanted) to go with a shock with a bar-mounted remote lock-out. I mean there's no point using a lock-out if it takes longer to set it than the (perceived) time it saves you up a hill (nor is it worth risking putting your fingers through the chainring to save 1% of your energy...). Now Trunnion 165x40mm shocks are not uncommon in the XC world, but lets just say that stock wasn't exactly
abundant (especially with the ongoing COVID situation globally). I've had several Fox air-shocks in the past and
every one of them has leaked air - so I wasn't keen to repeat that spec choice, and most of the options from smaller manufacturers like Manituo, X-fusion, SR Suntour seemed to either be notorious for grenading or impossible to get spares for. So I went hunting something RockShox. Nothing that interested me was available locally (and nothing even coming in until sometime next year...), so it was time to play freight-forwarder roulette. While investigating options, I came across the Scott "Nude" shocks. They're an interesting little jigger- they have the typical Climb (lock-out) - Trail - Descend (open) modes, but the trail mode has an interesting little ace up its sleeve. Not only does it wind the compression up a touch, it also closes off a portion of the air spring chamber inside the shock, which creates a shorter-travel
and firmer damped ‘Trail’ setting which (I'm hoping) should be perfect for those choppy or loose climbs where you don't want the bike to wallow, but also don't want things so stiff you loses traction if the wheel breaks contact with the ground.
But now, what about the fork? 120mm max front travel was something of a limiting factor for my choices. I've had Fox 34's in the past and found them 'noodly', Fox 36's or Marzocchi Z1's have a minimum travel of 140mm. Yes, there'd be RockShox or maybe even other options, but it would mean spending more money. As I was already planning of robbing the build-kit from my retro-inspired (and heavily-anodised!)
Waltly V3 - I was going to have a Fox 36 spare. Was it worth selling it and buying something new? Maybe, but maybe I'd end up with another underwhelming short-travel fork. So maybe "better the devil you know". So I wondered, what about a 120mm Fox 36? No 120mm 36 airshaft is available from Fox, but how different could they be? I had a spare 140mm airshaft. Checking it over, I realised if I knocked the roll-pin out of the top-cap and re-drilled it lower in the shaft, cut the shaft down 20mm and refit the top-cap it should reduce the travel 20mm as well. Low and behold - it worked! (I did read later that apparently you can swap the 36 air-shaft’s pistons and bump stop parts onto a 34 air-shaft main shaft for the same result also...) Worth noting - despite Fox's claims of different air-shafts to suit different travels (with the inference that the negative spring sizing is tuned to suit), my '19-'20 140mm and 160mm airshaft hardware turned out to be identical, one just had a 20mm longer shaft.
The rest of the build kit is all "known" parts that I've swapped forward as I'm happy with how they've performed on previous builds, though I changed to a Ritchey Classic V2 saddle on this one as it has a bit more of a "ducktail" compared to the Ergons I've run previously. I often found myself sliding back on the Ergons on long, steep climbs, so hopefully this helps hold my posterior stay in place without so much readjustment!
Overall, I'm blown away with the quality of the frame. For a frame (not including shock) that only cost ~$1500 dollars delivered (exchange rates will vary obviously, and various paint options will add additional costs) - it is
extremely well made. While longevity remains to be seen (I'm ~95kg kitted up and don't plan on riding this thing gently), there's several people on the
Chinertown forums that have definitely put some miles & elevation on theirs. Based off a visual inspection of inside the frame, this frame is a world better than both my carbon Ripmo frames (particularly the first Ripmo frame) with much better carbon lay-up, much less excess/mess inside/stray resin and fibres inside the frame. The "paint finish" also hints at the quality of the carbon, as - well - you can see a lot of the carbon through the "paint". I would say the stock "matte paint" finish is actually more of high-fill undercoat ready for the paint shop. It actually makes for quite an interesting effect though, as sometimes it looks like it's matte black, and other times it looks like it's raw carbon. As this exact frame is marketed under Vitus and several other brand names, I guess it's no surprise it's OEM quality and that they have their frames ready for paint and decals as standard.
For reference - this is a pic from inside the head tube I grabbed prior to assembly (the squiggly line at the front of the head tube is actually raised, not a void like the shadow makes it appear here - it's just from the ‘bladder’ used during moulding):
Overall (based of first impression), I would happily buy again - and I dread seeing them pop up all over the forum now someone's taken the gamble...
One final note regarding the remote cable routing, I did have to modify the drive-side cable port cover (and ever-so-slightly file the port in the frame itself) to accept the extra cable to keep everything routed neatly. Fortunately, the brake hose and dropper cable ports were about 4mm apart, and the cable port cover has a nice thick foam "stopper", so once I'd cut the divider tab out the two cables and the brake hose all sat together in there really snugly. A happy coincidence indeed.
