If you've read my previous post about designing this bike, you'll know I've ridden a lot of gravel bikes in my day. I've gone from big brands to small, and while I haven't ridden everything under the sun, I've ridden enough to know that most of them are liars.
Not on purpose mind you, they start out well intentioned - knobby tires, disc brakes, ever so slightly slacker angles, some of them even put on a short stem. But at the end of the day, they are all still so glued to what they are not, that they miss out on the chance of being what they should be.
I unpacked my frame in July of 2022, about 4 months ahead of when I expected to get it. So to my delight, I had a lot of summer left to test my machination. I live in New England, Northeast Massachusetts to be specific. In this area, singletrack can mean a lot different types of surfaces, it could be smooth and flowy, or it could be obnoxiously rocky/rooty. Nevertheless, I can't help but want to explore. Previous bikes would have me riding out on the road, maybe some gravel, and I'd spot a trail leading off into the woods. The bike never stopped me from exploring, but they sure didn't necessarily want to.
Me, trying to get my previous gravel bikes to go explore a trail with unknown terrain.
Previous gravel bikes, reluctantly going.
I digress, it sucked. Fast forward to the Spring of 2021, I was sick of it, so I set out designing a new one. This is my preliminary build and riding review.
Allow me to introduce, the Rapscallion.
Okay so full warning, the build is a little rough around the edges. I was expecting to have a little longer to accrue parts, so a lot of it came from my old build, plus some other parts I had lying around. It's heart is in the right place, and QBP had shit for inventory last July, so.
Current Build:
Wheelset: Sun Ringle Helix rims, laced to Origin 8 MT-1110 Elite Hubs - 142x12/100x12
Drivetrain: SRAM GX 11s, 10-42, 42t chainring
Cranks: Shimano Zee 165 (heavy, but all I had lying around)
Bar: Salsa Salt Flat
Brakes: TRP Spyre with 160 rotors and Avid Digit Levers
Tires: Donnelly Strade 650x50c Tubeless
Seatpost: X-Fusion Manic 150
Bike Weight: who cares.
Next Build: (only what's changing)
Cranks: SRAM GX 165 Dub
Brakes: TRP HY/RD
Wheelset: Building up a set of swappable wheels for wider knobby tires. DT350 Hubs, Raceface Arc 27 Rims
Fork: Rock Shox Reba spaced down to 70mm (maybe, if I can find one)
Expected Bike Weight: See above.
Now okay, I'm going to get right out front and say it - I don't need or want drop bars on this type of bike, and I think if you sat down and thought about it, you would feel the same.
Hear me out by asking yourself some questions.
How often do you actually get in the drops? How often do you actually swap positions between the hoods and the flats? (and if that answer is often, why you couldn't just move your hands in on a flat bar?) Did you pay someone to give you a quality fit?
This is to say, if you have a good fit on your bike, you'll find you don't really need to change hand positions all that much. On top of that, the confidence and control you get from a nice flat bar far exceeds that of a drop bar.
And don't say aero. Don't even think it.
In all seriousness. Flat bar is just more fun, and since fun is the name of the game here - that's the build. Good? Good.
Once I got the bike cobbled together with the parts I had on hand, I took it for a rip.
Now, I'm an engineer, so this first ride needed to be objective and I had to get a good sense of whether my ideas were correct - but I could not keep from giggling at how incredibly fun this bike was/is. Over the next few months, I put on a few hundred miles of what I'd call "True" Mixed Terrain.
I started making routes using RidewithGPS's heat map function, just so I could explore everything I could. Almost every loop I designed was true mixed terrain. 30ish percent pavement, 30ish percent singletrack, and 30ish percent gravel. I also pride myself on the fact that most of my rides last year had a fair percentage of "Unknown" as the trail type.
But this is also a ride review, so let's talk about the ride quality.
Road
Since I live in Eastern Massachusetts most of the rides I go out on start from the pavement, so there is really no escaping that part of it. I went with 4130 for the tubeset, partly because this is really a prototype and I wanted to be able to really beat on it, I knew this was going to come with a weight penalty - but I had a clever idea. Remember that really steep seattube angle that I designed for pedaling efficiency? Well, it worked. I wanted to give myself more leverage over the bike, so as to counteract the weightier frame. Boy howdy does this pedal smoothly and efficiently. I'm also using a 42t chainring against a 10-42 11speed cassette, so I have plenty of gear ratio to spin at speed.
Just taking off, the shorter chainstays allow for snappy acceleration, and once I'm up to speed, the long front end and slacker head angle make everything nice and stable.
I was expecting climbing to be a bit cumbersome, and while it wasn't fun (when is it ever, really) - it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Whether I sat back in the saddle to grind up the hill, or stood up and powered through - the bike seemed to allow a relatively pleasant experience on the ups.
Pointing the bike downhill on a climb was like riding a freight train. The long wheelbase, slack head angle, long fork offset, and wide flat bar made the bike feel natural and at home at gravity fed speeds.
It can't all be good though. I found a mistake in my calculations when I was riding a long steep hill. I'm a fan of the tight switchback method when climbing such a hill, essentially riding diagonal across the road til the edge, making a tight turn, and doing the same in the other direction, rather than riding parallel. The combination of my long fork offset and slack head angle made for a point of strong steering acceleration when my bars were turned about 70° in either direction. Now most bikes have this issue, but this was significantly more abrupt than I've experienced in the past. It's not the biggest issue, and I only notice it on the pavement, so whatever.
Longer distance riding on the pavement is sort of dull, but that's to be expected, pavement is boring.
I'm giving this bike's road capabilities a 7/10.
Gravel
Putting this bike on the rough stuff is where it shines. The stability mentioned before on the pavement doesn't wane here. The tires I got (Donnelly Strada), weren't too bad, the corners don't have a lot of bite but the center tread holds well enough. Climbing and descending both felt solid on gravel, and there isn't much more to say about it - after all, this is what I designed the bike to do the best - and it certainly does. My biggest gripes about how it performs on gravel and singletrack is to do with the build. New brakes are on the way and that will help a lot.
I'm giving this bike's gravel capabilities an 11/10.
Trails
As mentioned ad nauseum, I think a gravel bike implies that it should be good at a variety of riding, in fact lately I think I'd like to amend the term gravel to ATB, or the more recent "XBike". All of that said, I wasn't expecting for this to replace my mountain bike, merely to give me the freedom to explore a variety of terrain types. Up until July 2022, most of my miles that year were ridden on either my hardtail or enduro bike, but they were all trail miles. After that July, I am a bit ashamed to say it, but I barely rode my mountain bikes. In fact, after riding the Rapscallion so much and then hoping back on my enduro bike, I was prompted to sell it and start designing a steel full suspension trail bike, but that's a story for another day.
Within a mile from my house, I have a pretty big variety of trail systems. From fairly flowy singletrack with rolling climbs and descents, to obnoxiously chunky trails with winding climbs and "chute" descents. One thing they all have in common, is that they all create a lattice of access to gravel forest roads, and long forgotten dirt logging paths. Connecting everything into one big ride, just makes the most sense.
I'm not riding these chunky trails at full blast, like I am with my enduro bike. No, instead I am taking a slower and methodical approach to each section - which really opens my eyes to how different a trail can be. The big tires allow some forgiveness if I mess up here or there, but the rigid frame offers a sort of efficiency that I had nearly forgotten about.
I mean lets be real, all I really made was a 90's style mountain bike with modern geo and components - so suffice to say, it handles off-road exceptionally well. It has me thinking that I'd like to put a short travel suspension fork on the front, so I've been looking around for an old Reba that I can space down.
This bike gets a rating of 9/10 for trail riding.
Bikepacking
Since a huge motivation for exploring is to find places to camp, or photograph wildlife, it's only natural that I wanted to take this out bikepacking as soon as possible. So I made some bags for it, and as of this writing I've been out on six overnighters, at a total of 130 miles of riding with bags/weight.
Bikepacking on this rig was pleasantly surprising as well. Any bike requires some slow and thoughtful pedaling with weight on it. All of my overnighters were towards the fall/winter, so I had a bit more weight than I'd have liked. One thing I'll say is that I may drop down to a 40t on the front if I end up doing some of those mountain loops again.
The bike handles the weight really well, steel is real, as they say. The stability of the frame's geo really helps when gaining speed on a bike that has a bunch of bags on it.
Those TRP Spyre brakes do NOT like bikepacking, so I am eager to get those swapped over to something with a bit more bite.
This bike's bikepacking score comes to 10/10.
I plan on evaluating the build on this bike a fair bit, as mentioned above, so there will be more testing done before I decide to design MK2. Suffice to say though, this has been one of my all time favorite bikes despite only knowing it for a handful of months. I cannot recommend Marino Bike enough, as they helped to make this dream of mine a reality. Their work is supreme in quality, and the cost effectiveness is unmatched. As I alluded to, they are currently helping me to bring my full suspension dream bike into reality as well, more to come on that as we get closer to the season.
It's nearing the end of Winter here, and I am already planning routes for the upcoming season, so expect a lot more out of the TroubleMake Rapscallion.
Slightly off topic musing
This project was initiated in part because no one in the industry was really making what I want. Since I started this project, a few other companies have made a similar style bike, which tells me that I'm not the only one that wants this type of change. I have worked in the bicycle and outdoor industry for a long time, I've worked for manufacturers, shops, and even worked for myself, consulting for the former - so I have some experience to back up my authority on this topic.
Bikes have become sort of disposable. Have you noticed? Not necessarily just in their durability, although in some cases that too, but in their marketed usability. The unfortunate reality is that while COVID has brought the industry millions of new and returning riders, most of the manufacturers have grown to rely on near constant product obsolescence. There's always something new, and consumers are made to feel like the bike they got last year is no longer feasible, even to the point reducing support for older tech. Sort of like the iphone effect.
This is extraordinarily harmful for our future as an industry and community. If you are contemplating buying a new bike this year, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to do some serious research into the companies that you purchase from. The big S and T are not buying shops as much as they are harvesting the businesses that they forced into a position to sell. Bike shops build community, it is their greatest attribute. The community is best served by people who are passionate about this stuff, and consumers ought to support the manufacturers that support those types of shops. Leaving the fate of the communities and industry's overall direction up to the companies who only serve themselves will only end with higher prices or less benefits.
I'll give you a really good example. I'm sure you know about PF30 and BB30, but if you don't, they are bottom bracket standards and were presented as alternatives to the standard threaded bottom bracket, or BSA. The companies that pioneered these standards, forced it down everyone's throat, despite it being an incredibly problematic system, engineering-wise. I worked for a company that saw tons of failures on their BB30 system, warranty after warranty. They continued to push it as a technology until it became one of the standards.
Why? Well, to thread a bottom bracket shell takes a fair bit of machining. First you have to bore a shell, then tap threads, then face the shell, chase the threads, check for tolerances, etc. It takes a lot of machining time. PF30, and BB30, for metal frames is just a simple bore in most cases. For a carbon frame, it's just a matter of one sized BB mold insert. Super quick, and then it puts the onus on the component manufacturers to get the tolerances correct. Essentially, for the frame manufacturer, it cuts out a fair bit of time and cost to building a frame. That's good though right? They save time and money, and they pass those savings along to the shops, and then the consumer right? Wrong. This was billed as a new and better technology, so they ended up charging more for these frame designs. If you ask most mechanics, they'll sing to you the woes of press fit bottom brackets.
This is all to say, focus on supporting the manufacturers who take care in designing their product both for features that appeal to riders and of those who will be maintaining them. And don't go buy a bike with internal routing through the headset, until you talk to the mechanic who's going to be fixing it for you.
My Rapscallion build is an ode to the idea that consumers (me) dictate what they want the manufacturer's to make. That is the way the industry was for a long time, during the time of sustainable growth. Now, manufacturer's dictate what the consumers will buy, and is marked by unstainable growth, and distrust between bike shops and suppliers.
Please do your part in supporting the manufacturers that partner with small businesses, encourage serviceability in their products, and that are active in community building efforts. Here's a hint in finding who those companies are: If the company is quick to jump on the next quick trend, they are in the business of selling you on the next quick trend, not a well thought out product.
Just my $0.02
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