Meanwhile, spent some time building this up last night:
I am pleased with the quality of the frame for the money. It looks nice, a few places where the tubes are manipulated, ovalized, welds look good, the head tube is nice and high but there is a ton of head tube hanging below the down tube/head tube junction. Sure gives ya lots of room for a sus fork crown and knobs, etc.
Long CS length. Sitting at juuust over 18" right now. There is potential to shorten that a bit with a half link and I do need to replace the CR and chain. I will likely get an 8 speed chain this time around and not a 9 speed. I think that will be cheaper and easier to deal with. What kinda sucks is that I ran into the same thing with this frame as with the diSSent. If there was a few millimeters more 'travel' in the sliders/dropouts I could keep the chain shorter and the CS length at 17.5". If I removed the little adjusting screws in the Jabbers track ends, I think I could keep it very short and eliminate that extra link but then I would have to deal with more potential for wheel splippage under load. Hmmm.
Well, part of the Wet Cat geometry idea is a longer CS length, so we shall see.
I sure do like the looks of the frame. I always thought the KM looked ugly with the bent seat tube, etc.....all squished up. The Jabber has a very classic look with the sloped TT and the straight tubes. I like small diameter tubes. Years of riding steel HTs, I guess. It just looks nice.
Will it ride as nice as it looks? Stay tuned.
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3 comments:
Wet Cat geometry is a marketing gimmick to disguise taking the easy way in design. Steep STA and Long CS are the easy way to fit a big wheel.
Enjoy the boat. It will handle like the Misfit or Ventana's El Comandante all three handle great so long as wheels are on the ground, but lack the verve I want in a bike.
@Enel - Well, I know your focus on agile bikes in techy situations. I almost never ride stuff like that...it pretty much does not exist around here. Still, your point is well taken.
grannygear
Wet Cat? Dumb name mabey, but I don't know if the term gimmick applies, based on the general concession of how well these bikes actually handle, and how many other companies are starting to adopt the slacker/longer designs for 29ers. (Salsa Selma, Niners new geo, to a lesser extent G2 forks.) you could definitely call the whole "devil thing" a gimmick, since it has no effect on the performance.
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