Latest Custom Builds — 29er

Gavin has an old school custom 29er. Back from the days when the geometry was still being tried and tested, but yet to be fully refined. It's fair to say that process did take some years to come to the stable, yet still quite nimble 29er geometry that exists today. His old ride has quite short top tube, and he decided to convert it to a monstercross (big tyre gravel) bike, as the geometry would be perfect for that, and he has a lot of old parts lying about. The only snag was that he didn't have a rear wheel...

We passed Dave at speed on the local trails. He called out and we caught up briefly - he needed a new rear wheel. He wanted a wider rim to hold the tyre sidewalls better, for more cush and grip. The Spank Oozy Trail 295 is the current alloy rim of choice - nicely finished, 25mm wide internal, 30mm external, and well priced. We rebuilt his Giant hub onto one of these using Sapim Race double butted spokes and brass nipples, for a high performance economy solution.

Following a recent driveway catastrophe (involving a wheel, a car and concrete) a new front wheel was required. We searched through our old stock and found this new Magura Pro front hub. These were made for Magura by Hugi in the days before DT Swiss purchased the hub company. In fact, it's still quite commonplace for DT Swiss to manufacture hubs for other brands - Roval, Bontrager and Giant are notable. The Magura Pro is a silver Hugi 240 (DT Swiss 240s) and a prefect gravel hub (now that most MTBs have moved across to 15mm thru axles. Laced onto THE...

We built some wheels for Calvin some time ago. He claims they are the only wheels he's owned that have never required any attention. We're happy with that! This time Calvin needed a pair of bikepacking and gravel wheels for his new ride. We discussed at length the differing options, and Calvin was really keen to ensure utmost reliability. As a result, we decided the White Industries CLD hubs were a natural choice - super reliable, super tough and absolutely beautiful! For rims, the Spank Oozy Trail 295 was selected. Such a versatile rim! We have been using these rims for purposes from XC...

AB has been riding our wheels for a while and needed a new pair to suit her new frame. She has moved to Cannondale and their new Ai (Asymmetric Integration) frameset. The Cannondale concept requires specific rear wheel dish to sit properly in the rear triangle of the frame, but all in an effort to ensure greater lateral wheel stiffness and better wheel reliability.  Cyclinic, the local Project 321 distributor contacted us with this project and we agreed the Zelvy RBL 29er rims would be perfect for this build. They are super duper light, and still quite stiff under a...