New Soma Riff

I've been working on my fleet a bit this fall. After my Niner died, I've been searching for another bike that gives me that same feeling of confidence when charging through the rough stuff. My Trek Fuel is OK, but I can never get into a long term relationship with a full suspension bike. I tell myself I don't want the extra maintenance, or that they allow me to go too fast, but in reality full suspension bikes just don't fit my early 90s image of what a mountain bike should be or look like.

My attempt to copy the Niner was a Soma Riff, somewhat impulsively bought when ebay had a sale coupon:

The frame is only a size large, a bit small for me, but the top tube length is comparable to the Niner or my KM. Alas, the higher bottom bracket exacerbates the low stack of this frame, leaving me to use a handlebar with three inches of rise to get the bars where they need to be. I haven't used the Velo Orange Klunker bar much previous to this, and I'm not terribly fond of it so far. It's heavy, steel, and has a bit of a dead feel to it. Why do steel frames feel so good, but aluminum wins for bars?


They look kinda neat though:
                            

Unlike the Niner, the Soma is a dedicated B+ frame. The rear has good clearance for an actual 2.7" tire, even without boost parts:

The build for the Soma took me a long time. I've bragged that I can knock together a single speed build in about an hour, but this took at least two weeks. The chainstays wouldn't clear my old school square taper Suntour crankarms, even with the longest bottom bracket I had, so I had to steal the SLX cranks off the Fuel. The bigger issue was on the rear hub. The Novatec rear hub (D882SB) doesn't have too many actual miles on it, but it was already chirping with every rotation. By replacing various parts (freewheel, through axle, etc), I traced it back to the bearings. The bearings are pressed in cartridges, which had to be ordered, but Jensonusa screwed up my order (AND HAS NOT RESPONDED YET!) by sending me #6903 bearings instead of #6902. Happily, my local Performance store had the correct bearings in stock, so then I just had to figure our how to press them out. After some youtubing, I ended up using a shimmed 1/2" sleeve anchor bolt to press the bearing from the inner diameter and hammering it out. I hammered the new bearing in with a socket, and everything is quiet and smooth again. Except my relationship with Jensonusa.

My relationship with the Soma isn't so super either. It rides well enough, but doesn't seem to have the boundless confidence of the Niner. Maybe it's the bars, or my riding position, or maybe the higher bottom bracket of the Soma makes it feel less balanced. Maybe I just miss the dropper? Except I rarely used it.

Ultimately, in my swapping around of bike parts to build Henry's birthday frame, the Soma ended up giving its cranks back to the Fuel, and its brakes to my trusty Surly Karate Monkey:

I have a hope my friend Chris will want my Fuel frame to update his skinny tired Gary Fisher, and the Soma will probably head out sooner rather than later. I was ready to roll both of these into a new bike, but when I went to order my new Jones LWB frame, they were out of stock. Yes! I miss the ride of my Jones enough that I was finally ready to order up another one, only to be denied. For now.

In the interim, I'll be rocking it old school on my Karate Monkey, 72 degree head angle and all.