Jay is the proprietor of YouBet bikes in Nevada City, CA. Kurt of YouBet also got a bike but of the Ti gravel type, and I just wrote a build report of his wife Carrie’s 650 steel gravel bike! Full house of Meriwether’s there! Jay’s bike started with some very rough hand drawn sketches on a napkin as i distracted him from trying to work. He was envisioning a Klunkpacker…a bike with twin top tubes starting at the head tube and turning into seatstays back to the dropouts; lots of attachment points for gear; the ability to use it as a singlespeed or a bikepacking rig; new geometry that would be based off his dual suspension but for a 140mm fork and with a little shorter reach and wheelbase. He wanted short chainstays at 415mm with the new Paragon sliding dropouts that have the brake on the chainstay. This leaves room on the lower seatstays for triple bosses to carry gear or water without interfering with the disc caliper. It also allows the weight placed on these bosses to be as low and close to the centerline of the bike as possible when using a rack like the Tumbleweed T-rack. There are lots of bottle bosses to have a bolt-on frame bag, under the top tube and on top of the downtube. I made him a small puffy-stuff rack (a copy of the Salsa Minimalist that’s out of production) for touring that attaches as low as possible so the 200mm dropper can have full travel. The rack can attach in the front to a Salsa Rack-lock collar or a little lower down to a custom mount behind the seat tube on the twin top tube gusset. Triple bosses under the downtube are a little bit higher up and offset 5mm to allow cable housing to pass underneath the Anything cage as well as get the gear farther from the chainring. (I’ve found unless you’re riding a fatbike with a wide Q and chainline many bags will rub the chain when bouncing around.) He also had an idea for a brace to offset a handlebar bag from the head tube so I bent and welded a little titanium ‘handle’ that bolts directly to the head tube. Looks weird but does the job and the bag doesn’t squish the cable housing as much.
This was a fun frame to build and honestly challenged my brain and abilities. Jay visited the shop for twin-top-tube-day and helped figure out how to do this part of the build. It can be a bit stressful to have the customer present while building a frame since i’m usually alone and focused on the process and not on talking to anyone (except myself). But it ended up being really fun and I didn’t mess up too bad while he was here and have to re-do anything.
Too many nice parts to name but it’s a compilation of US made parts including White Industries cranks, BB, and headset, Paul’s Boxcar stem and dropper trigger, Forager Cycles’ Oyster Bar, Engin Cycles dual-bolt seat tube collar, Wolftooth Components singlespeed cog and Morse bottle cages. The paint scheme is actually powdercoating done by Dark Matter Finishing and it’s a clearcoat over a raw blasted rear end that makes it look grey, and a matte black front end. The downtube decal is that same clear over blasted steel with a silver outline.
One of these days we’ll have to have a Meriwether Cycles bikepacking mission so the bikes can all meet up and get to know eachother!
That is super cool!
Crazy good bike Whit!