I’m really feeling that idea of a two tone paint job with the yellow and orange stripes in between. Kinda like my shitty old Peugeot that this bike was originally planned to replace before I decided I didn’t hate myself that much.
First few rounds of parts and supplies ordered. Need to nail down the colors. Going with Montana Gold and some automotive clear on top. I’m going to try to do this whole thing in paint, using vinyl for masking. Been watching a lot of ETOE videos on youtube.
huffy santa fe is my dream. all city came pretty close with a space horse
That SantaFe is pretty.
I’m leaning more towards a horizontal two tone, split along the HT, DT, ST, & SS with the TT being entirely the top color and the CS and fork being entirely the bottom color. Bands of yellow and orange will separate them. White on top, Red on the bottom. Little stripes around the fork leg to match the ST and stripes along the top of the top tube.
Wow, this sounds very complicated now that I’ve typed it all out.
Huffy Sundance was actually what I was thinking
Maybe I just can’t find a good picture of that bike, but it looks kinda meh.
So I’ve pretty much figured out what my ideal spec is for this bike, already ordered a bunch of parts even though the frame is just a pile of tubes. Here’s the start of a spreadsheet keeping track of every part because I have nothing but time on my hands to do mindless work right now. I’ve redacted my pricing for lots of things for obvious reasons. The stem and bars are just a placeholder until I get it rolling for real. All tires eventually wear out so I’m not too concerned with tire choice right now.
I still think I’m going to roll the dice on those Magura MT Trail Sport brakes unless anyone has any first hand poor experience with them. 180mm Magura rotors F/R. If I don’t like them, I can always sell them on pinkbike or ebay or whatever for close to what I paid. For the drivetrain the parts bin sram 11s to keep the initial build cost down and the 12s Shimano kit I want isn’t available yet. Going with an 11-42 XT or SLX cassette when they’re available with matching chain.
SLX 11s hub won’t be able to handle 12s microspline down the line. DT 350 for future proof, or rebuild wheel later.
I really wish there was an 11s microspline cassette.
Oh, for sure. Future plans are for fancy hubs laced to carbon hoops when the Shimano 12s train comes to town. The SLX/Stan’s are just the best bang for the buck I could put together right now.
my experience with magura brakes has been nothing but meh.
TRPs seem to be some of the best bang for buck around right now above budget shimano. hard to beat budget shimano but if you want baller on a budget the terps are great. g spec slate is $120 retail and i think you know the math.
as mentioned, shimano bleed, sram-ish modulation (i.e. not servo wave) and great stopping power
however, i have some guide r? that fax machine sold me a while back and there seems to be no clear path forward on using them. make you good price, etc
The main two things I’m looking for with brakes are to keep the bite point constant and to have a lever shape that works well with single finger use.
Wasn’t getting that with either of the two XT brakesets I had in the past. They do work very nice though, if a little grabby. But I felt I had to set them up in the way that worked best for them and not the way that worked best for me.
In the past I wasn’t a big fan of the mushy sram lever feel. I had Juicy’s on one bike BITD and some other Srams more recently but I don’t remember what they were as I swapped over to XT very quickly. I was dreaming of getting a set of Hopes because of how adjustable they are, but not sure I wanna ball out that hard. They’re the only brakes I’ve ever felt that do exactly what I want them to do.
I’m using Guide REs coming from Shimano stuff and I really like them. Lever shape isn’t as good as Shimano but they are really consistent with great modulation.
Hope brake all the things.
SRS: Hope X2’s are great and affordable, they hold my speed down good enough for me to run on my rowdy 160mm enduro ht that see’s bike park use… Including runs of +2500 feet of vert without fade
Just get them and see the light, I have a hard time seeing you needing four pistons on this build. They use the same lever/reservoir as their dh/enduro offerings.
If you feel like you wanna ball hard: e4 front with x2 rear.
These spokes are just a tiny bit bendier than standard comps and that’s super helpful getting those last ones around without nicking the rim. The hoops, are not bad but also are just a little disappointing in the sidewall straightness department. They more than make up for it by fitting these tires so perfectly. The tires measure in at 2.4" on i29mm rims but have a nice profile with the corner knobs right at the edge.
Ok, back to paint/graphics dithering. I think It would be super cool to have a two tone paintjob on this bike. White up top, red on the bottom, with yellow and orange splitting them. I can have my buddy cut me some paint masks and then go with Montana cans and 2k automotive clear.
But, I’m not as good at designing these things on the computer as I thought I was. Or maybe the web based app I’m using (pixlr) just isn’t the right tool for the job. I used to be very proficient in photoshop and illustrator but that was like 15 years ago. Now I’m having trouble tracing and lengthening these images into something my buddy can cut for me.
So, what free web or windows based software should I be using to trace these images into vectors and stretch them into the sizes I want? Or does someone want to do some design work for me?
the gimp is pretty good free ps alternative. the shortcuts are different enough to drive you nuts but if it’s been 15 years you’ve certainly forgot all that.
pretty sure i remember it supporting paths vectors etc
Montana is pretty fugitive on a bike and it gets flaky with age.
inkscape is a free vector graphics editor I have used. But for real simple stuff you might be better with a free cad program.
It would just be the base, over an epoxy primer and covered with two component clear.
I’ve had issues exporting from inkscape to Adobe products
OK, I finally put pen to paper so I could show ya’ll kinda what I’ve been seeing in my head.
There’s about a 47 degree bend at the top and the bottom of the stripes. I need to figure out that angle exactly because I want the horizontal section of the stripes to be horizontal to the ground. The yellow and orange stripes will be 12mm tall and the curve at the top and the bottom will have a 19mm radius. I want it to say SENKO in negative space so it comes out white, it will be split in thirds by the yellow, orange, and red and 150mm down from the top of the curve. Measuring along the top of the yellow curve I want the graphic to 500mm long measured from the outer ends of both curves.
The top tube graphic will be the stripes from the Kamei logo each 12mm wide and stretched out but with no gaps between the colors like the DT. I want it stretched out to be 190mm long. Also a 20mm tall Tarck Bear cutout to go on the inside of the NDS CS, positioned like the coffee grinder logo, which might already exist in a useable format in the tarck-o-sphere. Who’s holding print quality Tarck Bear graphics?
I really only need masks for the tarckbear, DT, and TT, I can do the ST and SS with tape. I plan on laying down a white base coat and masking off and spraying each of the colors individually from yellow to orange to red. I want each of the colors to run into each other with no gaps, which will be a ton of fun to apply to the frame. I need to figure out some sort of registration marks to make sure everything lines up properly. So basically each color will be it’s own layer and I’ll be weeding the cut in reverse.
