RIP ROS

I've been doing my regular change up in my bike fleet this summer. Riding with my fast buddies Marc and Chris had me eyeing full suspension bikes again. I can keep up fine on the climbs and smoother stuff, but they can keep pedaling in the really rough spots, where I slow down on my rigid bike to find a line. I ended up stripping down my Niner for sale, and to use the parts on it's replacement (more on that later).

I posted the Niner online in the usual places, but fortunately the buyer was a local guy. He hemmed and hawed a bit, but we finally struck a deal. As we're walking out into the sunny driveway to his truck, he noticed some paint chipping around the head tube. Except it wasn't just chipping:

We pulled out the headset, and you can see the crack almost all the way around the welded head tube/top tube junction:

Note you can even see daylight through it in this picture! Kind of scary when I think I was flying down some trail at Great Seal with this frame just a few weeks ago.

Of course I gave the buyer his money back--and the frame. He's going to see if he can get it fixed.

I bought this frame used about a year ago. I've never run any out of spec fork on it, using either my 120mm X Fusion Slide or my new 490mm a-c carbon rigid fork. And I'm pretty gentle on equipment. In almost 30 years of mountain biking, my list of failed parts is one seatpost clamp, one saddle (the rails popped out of the plastic), and a few untrue rims. I'm not exactly casing ten foot jumps here. Looking at the gusset, it's welded all the way around. I wonder if this didn't introduce too much heat into the joint. Most makers keep this type of gusset open (not welded) on either end.

Anyway, I'm glad we found this crack before the frame failed on the trail.

I'm also glad I already had the Niner's replacement built and on the trail:

It's a 2014 Trek Fuel EX.

120mm of bump loving, back saving suspension on each end. I ordered up a new Sunrace 11-40 cassette to go with my 10 speed driving. Even with a longer B adjustment screw installed, the shifting is just OK. Not perfect on the stand, but adequate on the trail.

I'm running it with my B+ wheels from the Niner. I could fit a bigger tire in the rear than the WTB Trailblazer 2.5 I'm currently running. But even with this smaller tire, the bottom bracket isn't too low: I measured it at about 13.4" unsagged. I've had a few small pedal strikes on my rides so far, but really no worse than my Jones Plus.

The dropper is carried over from my Niner (so that buy wasn't a total loss...), though I need to bleed it to get it working after I installed it. Bleeding a seatpost? This frame also has a press fit bottom bracket and through axles, so I'm slowly getting more modern.

It also has a nice big tapered headtube, with lots of confidence inspiring weld area.