Swoofty

Beautiful day, Venice Beach, Crewkerz Guilty and me. Repeat tomorrow.

In the crank department, it'll be some form of 24mm goodness. Shimano XT, Deore or Bonz splined (maybe 18t, maybe 22t). I've got a sweet Hope bottom bracket on the way too.

The contenders for handlebars are the Crewkerz WAW carbon bar or the Comas carbon bar. I've run the Comas bars on my last 3 bikes and I think they're a perfect bar, BUT the WAW bar is stiffer so might feel better on a steel framed bike. The WAW will go on first for a look-see and the Comas will be the fall back.

Trials bike? Ridiculous design? I'm not sure how to take that 26" makes more sense for a Marino as the 26" street trials market is very underserved. If your timeline holds for me to I'll need to get myself something else for Christmas!

Feb 3 !?! Holy chit! Well I've got my fingers crossed anyway. Did you go 26 or 24 or 20?

The fork that I chose to design this bike around is the Czar 24/26 urban tapered fork. I've had a few of these forks now and I really like the way they feel. Plus, they were discounted on Tarty Bikes, but only in anodized blue. The frame should come from Marino in silver so this fork will have to get some rattlecan lovin in satin black. I'm feeling orange accents for the build, but I'm not sure what to do about the red 15mm through axle. It seems a little excessive to strip it and re-ano it in orange and painting it is probably not a good option. I'll probably leave it red until the end and hope it doesn't stand out too much.

So for no reason in particular, I decided to order a Marino. I'm still currently in love with my Crewkerz Guilty, but nothing lasts forever and it's nice to have a 'backup' bike. I'd been looking at the latest Silex bikes, but none of them were exactly what I wanted so, enter Marino. This will be my Marino build thread over the next however long it takes to get my frame from Peru. The design was finalized and deposit accepted on September 6th, 2021. The numbers are a little Arcade and a little Guilty, but I wanted tapered headset, vertical dropouts and 73mm BB. We'll see what I actually get. I'll keep updating as I go with bits and bobs that will go on the bike. Feel free to make suggestions or comments about my choices.

Sorry for the very late reply! I switched back because of the return speed of the MT5 lever over the Shimano and I felt that the MT5 lever had more top end power than the Shigura setup. I've had zero problems over the years with my MT5s so I didn't have any complaints to start with. I did a vid on my Shigura experience here: (the Shigura bit starts at 10:11 or so)

The 2 hydras that I have look and feel solid still. The one that the bearings died on still worked and looked fine. The driverings look fine and the pawl steps look fine on both of them. Since I don't have a new one to side by side compare, they look the same between the two I have and with online pictures. I put new bearings in my old freewheel and it's back to top notch feeling. I found a more heavy duty Enduro MAX bearing to replace the one that cracked so we'll see how that goes. My hour long ride today was flawless. Back to normal.

I9 got back to me this morning and they're sending out a whole new freewheel assembly! Top notch customer service again. Of course I already ordered new bearings over the weekend so hopefully now I'll have a backup.

I was chasing down a mystery sound in the drivetrain recently when I discovered that BOTH freewheel bearings in my Hydra are toast. The odd thing is it never (noticeably) started skipping even though there was quite a bit of play in the freewheel. It's just over a year old so I've contacted I9, but haven't heard back yet. Hopefully it just needs new bearings, $20 or so. It's easy enough to take the freewheel off so I guess I should check that more often.

And now a crap vid of me riding this thing.

Just out of curiosity, have you measured your frame to see how close the numbers are to the ones on paper? I'm interested to see which of my numbers 'drift' a bit in the actual build.

I could do a build thread, but way too soon to start one now! I've asked for 'silver;' we'll see what color that comes out to. I asked if i could have it raw, but he advised against that due to unknowns in shipping times. Fair enough. Depending on the 'silver,' I might strip it and go for a see-through cyan like they do on the TMS Silex bikes. Looks like a Jolly Rancher candy with steel inside it. We'll see. I'm leaning toward this color. It's the color the first BMW M4s came in.

Well... my order is in. Oh boy... Now I wait. Already ordered a fork and cranks

Well thank you very much! Cheers!

Would you mind posting the numbers for this build? What did you end up for seat tube angle and seat tube length? Looks a beaut for sure.

Yup, that looks like a real Hope, but like Adam said, that looks like it had a manufacturing problem. Good aluminum doesn't look like that when it fails.

I hate to ask, but this is the current world we live in; are you sure those are legit Hope and Magura adapters? The Hope should have a letter cast into the adapter (that one looks like an 'H' version) and the Maguras have white printing with the adapter code (QM5, QM10, etc). That does seem like a curiously high rate of failure. Another option would be to drop down to 180s and use 4 piston brakes (or stick with 2 piston). James Barton uses 180s on his 26" so should work for mortals like us too.

DAMN! Ok that's serious power. Are those 203 rotors or 220? It is better than breaking your frame mount. I very much appreciate it when trials companies put their brake mounts at the 180 rotor position so even if you do go for 203s, the adapter isn't too large. You should probably find a machine shop and have one made of steel.

I run MT5s on multiple bikes and my pad of choice now is BBB sintered MT5 pads.https://www.bike24.com/p2169564.html They have been outstanding. The trialtech MT5/7 pads are great too. I could never get the Hopes to feel the way I wanted and MT5s are much less expensive. The MT7 lever is too finicky for me; the MT5 lever isn't fancy, but it's simple and solid.

I've got a review of the bike up if anyone wants to see me say 'om' a million times.

+1 for the Crewkerz fork. One of the most gorgeous forks I've ever seen. I was in the same spot as you, I considered the Echo, but couldn't find one that wasn't astronomically priced. I went with a Born carbon fork, but upgraded to the Crewkerz pretty quickly. I didn't find anything wrong with the Born, I just wanted the tapered steerer and the 9mm through axle on the WAW.

Another beach bum here. I've got loads of spots between home and the beach about 5 min ride away. Since there are few students on campus at the moment, I've been riding UCLA, about a 15 min drive away. Downtown LA is about a 30 min train or drive away, but it's usually a constant dance with security now that it's not a ghost town anymore.

+1 for HT. I've used their AE03 and ME03 pedals for years now. One bearing died after a while, but they have full rebuild kits for $14 and great vids on how to do it without special tools. I've heard good things about the composite ones, but mine haven't died yet so haven't tried them.