New project 29er underway

[The Rose]

I just sent Wade from vulture cycles my order form all filled out and ready to go. A 29 inch SS is in the works. I can't wait. A full on custom ride! Who would have ever thought I'd be riding one? I'm very excited about the Bike. Now component selection should take me a while, not to mention coming up with the pesos for said components.

[wooglin-at-home]

Too cool! Will you go with a Vulture fork? I'm in the same boat right now, trying to pull together all the parts. I think between what I'm scavenging another bike and what I've bought I'm good to go, but I'm still waiting on my wheels from Speedgoat.

[DirtRagArt]

Ok, I'm curious... Why are you guys so into the Vulture frame?

[The Rose]

yeah, Im gonna go with a Vulture fork, I want a totally rigid back to basics bike. I found out about vulture frames a few months ago just looking around the dirt rag ad section in the back, I initialy was looking at the wily cycles reto cruiser 29'er, but after talking to Wade from vulture I was sold. Here is a guy who is just really into bikes, I guess I talked to him about 45 min, throwing ideas I had about the bike and he gave me a brief history of his company. Plus for the price of a quality steel hardtail, you get a totally custom columbus steel ride. How great is that? I still have to come up with a color scheme, I was thinking about half white and half black divided right down the center of the bike with a down tube that has the same patern as the ol' van's checker board slip on's. hehe we'll see what Wade says about that one. :D

[wooglin-at-home]

I've seen a lot of Wade's stuff on the mtbr ss board, and have heard a lot of the folks over there sing his praises. If I was going custom he'd be on the short list. Still might get a fork down the line.

[The Rose]

if you take the time to look he's all over the net. I got a hold of the bend bulletin web site and there is a little article on him there. I was looking at a bunch of 29 inch bikes from the karate monkey to high zoot custom jobs. I could'nt bring myself to get the monkey. I have built a few surly frames up for friends and the quality just isn't there. One had a chuck of metal left in the down tube which was too big to get out and the other had brake mounts that where offset ( one was higher than the other). And i'm not a rich guy so the real high dollar customs where out. Thats when I started looking into vulture. and for 875, for a full on custom steel bike I don't think I could have beat that anywhere. So I'm real excited about this and can't wait to get this bike into my hot little hands.

[DirtRagArt]

Thanks for the honest answers, guys. That's kind of what I suspected...I saw how excited one MTBR board was about the raffle frame. Little Noah (former intern) was from Oregon and often said he wanted a Vulture. Hell, I want one. Those diamond stays look stiff, and I'm pretty set on disc brakes (boo hiss, I know) so I would go with the eccentric bb.

Anyhow..it's awesome to hear that you saw his classified ad and that it at least had some influence. I'm always dealing with those dudes to get their ad artwork squared away, and just about every one of them is cool as hell. I almost feel bad that we have to charge them. Almost. While some of them live in sheds and struggle to get by, at least they're doing what they enjoy. It's also awesome that some of them sell just a few bikes at a huge profit and enjoy life. (Interestingly enough, they often manage to stop needing to advertise, which further lowers their overhead, but never the price.)

The pricing game, however, is also interesting. Many small builders need to price themselves high just to keep the demand for their work down to a manageable level. That, or they outsource, which slows down the delivery time and occasionally leads to miscommunications. I hope Vulture can keep their prices low, but I'm betting they go up soon. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

That said, when can we expect some pictures?

[The Rose]

Im gonna ask Wade to send me pics of the work in progress and when I get them I'll post them. I'm also gonna go disk so the eccentric BB is going to be installed. :cool: