Ben’s Great Divide bike

Ben is a local endurance racer who asked me to build him a bike to race the Great Divide route on. This is a mountain bike route that runs from Canada to Mexico through the Rocky Mountains. The bike needs to be able to handle various terrain, be comfortable and carry equipment to be self-supported. Ben wanted to go with dropbars for the multiple hand positions offered, and opted for 2.3″ tires to provide the suspension.

We spent some time working out the position he would want, working from the fit numbers of his road and mountain bikes. Initially we were going to use a carbon rigid fork, but the available options are all very tall, and so compromised the handlebar height and reduced the available front triangle space for bottles/bags. Instead I built a custom steel fork, which allowed for optimising the steering geometry.

The wheels use Boost spacing, which gives a good chainline with the SRAM mountain crankset. The Ratio upgrade kit allowed for using a SRAM double-tap dropbar shifter to operate the 12spd Eagle rear derailleur. Custom bags are underway – the frame includes hidden bosses under the toptube for strapless mounting, plus additional bottle cage bosses on the fork legs and under the downtube.

Ben wanted to test the bike out on the Stagecoach 400 – this made getting it finished a little hurried! But Custom Powderworks came through with a quick turnaround on the paint, and a late-night assembly got it done in time. But explains why there aren’t any studio photos of this one 🙂

The final weight as shown is 21.3lbs.

 

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