Carbon Beargrease XX1

Carbon Beargrease XX1

Well, there won't be many of these out there, but here is one that passed through the shop today. It belongs to a local rider who will be on the cutting edge of fat bike technology.

The Carbon Beargrease frame is as technical as any road or mountain bike frame out there in 2014. It features molded in bearing pockets for the headset and bottom bracket. It has internally routed cables, and an XX1 drive train. The carbon frame and fork is a tour de force of carbon wizardry. The tubing profiles and the sheer scale of the frame has to be witnessed in person to be understood.

Check out the green anodized bits that.....

The wheels feature through axles front and rear for the ultimate in torsional stiffness and precise tracking. The through axles themselves are DT Swiss RWS type which are very easy to use. The wheels slip into and out of the frame easily, unlike some other through axle set ups I've seen and handled.

All that stiffness is handled through a massive carbon fiber Beargrease fork that features a 51mm offset for nimble handling. Not only that, but that fork and frame are suspension corrected. (Yes......that is a hint)

Of course, the wheels have to look good too, just check out hose fancy anodized green hubs. (They are the very same used on the Muk 2, just with different end caps.)

.....match the green graphic on the downtube.

The XX1 drive train is a game changer. It is a top of the line drive train from SRAM. Best of the Best here. The technology is really amazing. There is no front derailleur. The chain ring has alternating wide-thin-wide teeth that mate with the chain perfectly. The reason for this is for chain retention. The theme of chain retention is carried over to the rear derailleur which has a clutch mechanism in it to help keep the lower part of the cage from flopping forward on bigger hits and bumps. This keeps the chain from whipping and coming off the front ring. Not only that, but it won't clatter off the chain stay either. Nice and quiet.

Need low gears? How about a 42T rear cog? (!!!) You can swap out front rings to get lower than you'd ever need to go, and the highest gear on the cassette is a 10T. This requires a special free hub on the hub, but it works very well. Oh yeah.....it has eleven cogs! 

The brakes are high end Avid and come with the two piece rotors which should prove to be great stoppers and quieter than the one piece rotors are. Those brakes will be stopping the Holy Rolling Darryl rims which are mounted with 45NRTH Dillinger tires which feature stud pockets in case you would want to use 45NRTH's excellent alloy/carbide studs. Those are really easy to install too, by the way.

All this goodness comes out to be about 26.3lbs with no pedals. Yes......it is expensive. We sold this one, and these will likely be non-existent for quite some time from Salsa. We do have two Beargrease Carbon x-9 bikes which have the same frame and fork with a 2 X 10 drive train instead of XX1. The price of those steeds will be just shy of $3500.00. We'll have a Large and Medium sized examples hitting the shop soon.