Sunday, January 09, 2011

M-M-M Monster Cross!


The Qball Monster Cross is finished and ready to ride!  Question is, when?  When I first put the FMe bars on the bike and sat on it, it felt like the stem was too long but after a little test ride in the driveway it felt OK.  I am going to try a shorter stem.  I am hoping by next weekend people will have ridden at some of the more popular riding areas like Huntington and Trumbull and that there will be some nice trails to try this out on.

While riding around the driveway, however, I could immediately tell the difference/advantage these bars have over the Salsa Woodchippers.  The same leverage is there but so are the brakes.

If the opportunity arises, some Orange Blunts will look really nice on this bike and mesh nicely with the style of riding I am going to be doing with this bike.  I don't like changing tires and tubes, so the other day I picked up another disc wheelset for a really nice price that I am going to rig up with my pair of KendaKross tires.  So, all I need to do is switch out the wheels and now I have a commuter, kid puller, and gravel grinders!  4 bikes in one!

That was one of the reasons why I went with the Qball frame in the first place because I knew at some point I would want to try gears on it and who knew that it would actually be so versatile!  I guess that is one of the things I love about riding the big wheels.



Right now, it's rigged as a 2x9 but at some point I may even go back to a 3x9, depends on how much of particular style of riding I am going to do on it.  What I could see happening is during race season, the only use it's going to get is commuting and pulling the kids.  Then come fall, I will be choosing it to ride off road more often.  We'll see.

3 comments:

Rick said...

Looks great!!

Ben said...

I like the black/orange handle contrast, and your bike building skills in general!

MMcG said...

My back hurts just looking at that set up. You sure the bars don't need to come up a bit??