This means I can pedal through most rock gardens and my foot positioning is less of a concern if I hit any rough stuff at the end of a long day.
Next are the longish chainstays (440mm min, 460 max) which make for a really stable feeling ride and gives me enough heel clearance that I can run panniers when I set out on overnight trips. First is the relatively upright riding position, with the 155mm heatube giving a stack height of 660mm! I’m a leggy rider (6’0, 35″ inseam) and have found a more upright position means that I can do longer (100km+) days without fatigue. There are a few points of difference with this design compared to what was available off the shelf at the time. I rode well over 1000km in the first month and it’s one of my favorite bikes ever since. I assembled it in my mates garage on new years eve and we hit the local trails the next day. The frame finally arrived by late 2020, just as things were opening up here post-pandemic. Some rear rack mounts were added last minute, it was powdered a deep blood red, boxed up and sent across the pacific. A few months passed before I received a picture of the frame, ready for paint. Darren tweaked the design accordingly and I sent him a deposit. I’d been riding a lot more trail during Covid and figured I wouldn’t be touring as much for a while so I was now after something a little more trail oriented than what we’d initially planned. After a little back and forth we had a design nailed down.Then Covid hit and the project was put on hold.īy the time I was ready to recommit my idea for what I wanted had changed. I sent Darren a description of what I wanted along with a sketch and he drew up a bike for me. I had been riding a Crust Dreamer he built for a few years and I loved it but wanted something a little more off-road capable. In late 2019 I contacted Darren Larkin to see if he could build me a custom frame. This bike has been heavily inspired by some of the bikes/content featured on this site so figured it’d be a nice one to share.
Submitting my custom Larkin as a Readers Ride. Let’s check out the bike and build kit below! He shared with us his custom Larkin Cycles “Nightmare,” the opposite of his Larkin/Crust “Dreamer” tourer. This week’s Readers’ Rides comes from Ben, aka Bushtrucker here on the site, from down in Australia.
0 kommentar(er)
