foxwelljsly
Me too, I ate one sour too.
Nice. Love a new build. The non matching brakes would fry my bike OCD, though.I've had my Cotic Roadrat since 2010 when I bought it on the bike-to-work scheme as a factory Alfine build which sneaked in just under the £1000 bike-to-work limit that applied back then. Quite a bargain really as it the closest equivalent Cotic frame now costs about the same as the whole bike did. It was mainly bought to be my commuter and for a little bit of light touring although I switched it to gravel tyres a couple of years back. The Alfine has been good (it's not been serviced in that entire time!) but for gravel use the gear range is a bit restrictive so I decided to rebuild it as a 1x11 derailleur set-up instead. That's trickier than it sounds as the bike has sliding horizontal dropouts, however Cotic used to do a chain tug that had a mech hanger on - but unfortunately when I contacted them they no longer have any. Instead they pointed me to DMR chain tugs that can do the same thing so I ordered a set of those.
So this weekend I raided my parts bin and rebuilt it, with the only other bits I needed to purchase being some gravel bike wheels which I got via Facebook marketplace (£60 for a wheelset originally from a Boardman ADV including tyres). It's a proper "bitsa" at the moment - an 11-51 Deore cassette and matching Deore long cage mech (which I think is the only 11 speed one that does 11-51), the 39t Alfine chainset that was already on the bike, a XTR shifter, Deore front hydro brake and the original Magura Julie rear (still on the original pads and not even bled since 2010!). The tyres are mismatched (both 38c but a Schwalbe front and a Vittoria rear) and more for tarmac & hardpack than mud, plus probably wire beaded so likely quite heavy.
I took it up in the the Pentlands for a shakedown ride on a mix of tarmac, gravel and muddy/rooty trails and it coped pretty well and seemed fairly fast. Despite the heavy tyres and that monster cassette it's also lost 1 lb in weight compared to when it had the Alfine, despite the Alfine build having what I'm pretty sure are much lighter tyres. Gearing with the 39t chainring and 11-51t cassette seems ideal - fast enough at the top end that I PB'd one of the downhill Strava segments in fact. The only downside I can really see is that it's likely to be a massive pain in the backside taking the back wheel off to fix a puncture, so I might see if one of the local framebuilders will weld a mech hanger on (as it's a steel frame). There is a framebuilder very close to my Edinburgh place that makes frames for Cotic, so I'll see if they'd be willing to do it.
I'm toying with the idea of going to drop bars but don't have any spare road bike hydro brakes and shifters, so it might stay as flat bars with stubby bar-ends for a while. I've got a spare set of XTR brakes which might get fitted, and I've also got more dirt orientated tyres that I'll fit (which are folding bead so probably lighter as well).
There has been talk with some of my friends in the Cairngorms about a bikepacking trip into one of the bothies that we can ride to straight from our village, offroad all the way. That'll likely mean carrying a fair bit of booze and as the Roadrat has rack fittings front and rear (and I have racks for it from back when it was my tourer) it'll most likely be the bike used for that. This was it back in its Alfined tourer days:
Been using the 5100 group for a while now. Have you found the cassette gets a bit noisier than it should once it’s wet and dirty? Mine makes a horrible noise on wet trail days, like today.
