New Bikes In and Out

I've had some churn recently in my bike fleet. I sold my Jones (again) to a fellow iBOB, which caused my bike fund to spike up. I had the desire (again) to buy a full suspension bike. I surfed around for quite a while before coming across a NOS 2015 GT Sensor Carbon Team at the Pro's Closet. Nicely priced, and I wanted 27.5" wheels to give the bike a more fun feeling. Bigger wheeled full sus bikes I've had in the past have mostly just felt dull. The only boingy bikes from my history that I look back fondly are my '97 Pro Flex 857 and my '03 Specialized Epic, both short travel 26" wheels XC machines. Then again, there's likely also a lot of nostalgia going on here. Anyway, flush from the Jones sale, I jumped on the Sensor frame and got to building it up:

I had a spare Suntour Raidon fork, a spare 650b wheelset, plenty of tires, and the drivetrain from the Jones. I ordered up some new Shimano hydro brakes and I was ready to roll... after I figured out the cable routing on the Sensor:

GT put a lot of thought into the routing on the Sensor, and thankfully nothing is internal except the dropper. However, there are a half dozen bolt on clamps on the down tube to control the cable routing. Every time I adjusted the fixed part of my dropper seat post height, I had to loosen everything to reset the cable lengths. I did this at least three times while getting everything set up.

Here it is all together:

My generic 32t narrow wide ring from the Jones was already shot, so I used a spare 38t. It was fine at flat Alum Creek, but took some grunting at hillier Chestnut Ridge. The "Snail" brand NW ring didn't last long at all, let's hope I have better luck with the Decker:

The Soma Dream bars were actually too tall for me, so I kept sliding them  down the steerer to get the fit right. Purple grips are my attempt to break up the boring blackness:

The shock has a remote for the 3 way climb-trail-descend function:

GT's suspension was called "AOS" at this time, which stands for... something. It doesn't matter. It looks like an iteration of the i-Drive, with the bottom bracket floating partially with the suspension:

In the end, it all worked well enough. The suspension pedaled well, and seemed pretty bottomless. I was happy with the fit. The bike looked pretty good, even considering the purple grips. But... I found out quickly I would rather be riding my Marley. It's a simple tool for hitting the trail:

So my full suspension back to hardtail cycle was very quick this time, about a month on the new bike and it was on CL. With the crazy bike market right now, I sold it quickly for a fair price. And now my bike fund is even more flush, since I bought the frame and sold the bike.

I kept the purple grips, since I didn't want that to turn off the next buyer. I found a use for them on this bike:

I need a general all around bike, so I picked up this NOS Marin Nicasio frame off ebay. My thought was I could experiment with 700c or fatter 650b wheels on it. I started out with my 700c set that needed a home:

WTB team rims, i25, with nice Sram X9 hubs. I also used this build to put my Advent 9 speed drivetrain to use. To do this, I had to buy a geared hanger for the Nicasio, since it only came with a single speed dropout. The Paragon Machine Works dropouts was relatively cheap, made in the US, and slipped right in:

The frame didn't come with a headset, so I picked up an FSA headset to match it's integrated cups. I tried for a blue top cap to match the frame, but the color was way off. I ended up sanding off the blue anodization:

Up front, I used my old Nashbar cross fork. I had a plan to mount my old rack to the front canti mounts, so they would have a use:

But then my first test ride turned up a problem: the rear end flares out to fit the sliding dropouts, and with my super low Q Suntour XC Pro crankset (~145mm), my sandals tick off the frame on every stroke unless I point my heels out or slide my feet forward. That's pretty annoying.

In the end, I think this will be a fatal flaw for the Marin for me. It rides well enough, and I think it looks great (even with the purple grips), but the wide stays aren't for me.