The 606 Project

In 2010 KHS introduced the first off-the-shelf aluminum-framed 650b-wheeled bicycle. The 650b wheel size has been around for decades, but was only adopted for mountain bike use in the mid-2000's. User's of the 650b wheels often used them on 26" wheeled frames (I'm not a huge fan of this because it rases the bottom bracket height, and I prefer lower bottom brackets), had custom made frames (much like my Groovy Cycles 650b frame), or were able to buy one of several steel 650b frames that were available from Haro, Vicious, or Rawland. As I was interested in building up a frame to use as a light "race" bike, the aluminum option worked best for me.

I should start off by saying that I'm not much of a racer - that is to say I'm not particularly fast - but I do enjoy participating, and I like the idea of having a bike that could win a race if I were fast. I'd been racing a Yeti ARC and was happy with it, but made the mistake of swapping from a '97 frame to '96. On paper these bikes looked almost the same, but in reality they rode very differently. Although (in theory) the only difference in the frames was the head tube length, I could never get completely comfortable on the '96 frame, and I'd already sold the '97 to pay for the '96 (oops). So I needed a frame to replace the Yeti.

Initially I was looking for a light weight 29er frame as I prefer the larger wheels (29" and 650b) to 26" wheels. There were few frames that seemed to be light-weight, had the geometry that I prefer (i.e. top tubes that aren't a mile long), and didn't have hideous hydro-formed tubes. While searching, I stumbled across the KHS. It had the geometry that I was looking for (shortish 23.6" top tube, and a fairly low 11.7" BB height), it was aluminum (which I was hoping would be fairly light), and it had 650b wheels (which I actually prefer to 29" wheels on a hard tail frame). It wounded perfect! Unfortunately it only came as a full bike, and not as a frame. Still, for the price, it was cheaper to buy the KHS as a bike, than buy a custom aluminum Rock Lobster frame (which I'd also considered). Selling off the unwanted components would also help recoup some of the initial cost, as most of the bike would be built up with components that I already had. So started the "606 Project" - my project to take a bike that weighed 29 pounds out-of-the-box and turn it into a 24.5 pound racer (the goal).

More to come...

- el