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Monday, July 18, 2011

Tagara "Yuta" Primadista's Origin-8 700CX

Along with another Origin-8 featured yesterday came another 700c frame from Origin-8 that is designed for cyclocross, the 700CX. Yuta bought it from Sumvelo and let us build it into a budget-conscious cyclocross bike that did the job just right.



First was the wheels. We managed to get our hands on a pair of second-hand Rigida DP-2000 700c rims with a bit severed sidewall. To make it cleaner, we have them polished then built them with plain gauge stainless steel spokes to a pair of Shimano M475 disc brake hubs. The result is a fine set of wheels, although we're not pretty sure of taking these wheels into the muck. We shod them with Maxxis 700 x 42c Wormdrive tires.

Oooh. Shinyyy.

To keep things simple (and to keep the cost low), we incorporate singlespeed drivetrain on this bike. Just like its 29" sibling, the frame is using 135mm rear spacing, long-slotted track ends with built-in tension adjuster, and built-in derailer hanger (along with removable cable mounts) so there is still a possibility to run gears should Yuta changed his mind in the future. We run 42/16T ratio on this bike, using stripped-off 170mm Shimano Sora 3300 triple crankset, KMC 810-SL 3/32" chain and Da Bomb 9-to-1 singlespeed cassette adapter.

The chain features anti-drop design so it will give you a piece of mind should you run them a little bit slacker.
Yuta didn't give us his Eggbeater SL for this photoshoot. You might recognize these pedals already.

With those oh-so-shiny rims we don't want to risk ruining the sidewalls by of using rim brakes, and Yuta's concept was to build this bike as the first cyclocross bike in Jakarta ever to use disc brakes. Using mix of available parts he already have, we took an extra mile of using special Travel Agent cable pull adapters from Problem Solvers to deal with the cable pull difference between the brake calipers and brake levers. In case you didn't already knew, you can't mix short cable pull brake levers (such as dropbar brake levers) with long cable pull brakes (such as V-brakes and mechanical disc brake caliper), just like what Sheldon Brown explained. God rest his soul.

A Shimano M465 caliper mated to 160mm Zoom rotor up front...
...and a Zoom caliper mated to 160mm Tektro rotor in the rear.
Tektro RL-340 brake levers on 460mm wide dropbar. Wrapped underneath those BBB tapes are Shimano cables and Jagwire outer casings.

The rest is a mix of budget parts, but the exception is this Selle Italia saddle stamped with Specialized logo. It's not expensive, but we have no further information about its model name. The only thing we know is that this saddle was produced somewhere back at the '90s.


Dry singletrack, appropriate sized frame, and my own pedals installed. I have to repolish those rims after the photoshoot. It was worth it.

3 comments:

  1. solid build,..akan lebih rame kayanya CX kedepannya ya.

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  2. Fantastic build! Steel frame CX surely can stand the rough roads of Jakarta. What is the total weight of this build, if I may know, Sir? One more thing, how does the single speed drive train hold up with the vertical dropout at the back? How do you mitigate the loose chain issue?

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