Yeoleo Carbon 29er

It's been a while since I last posted anything. I've been busy with a few home projects and bike builds. The latest bike build was a chinese carbon hard-tail 29er from yeoleo. I had a customer contact me wanting me to assemble a bike for him. He stated he was purchasing the frame directly from china. Initially I had some reservations about a no-name chinese made plastic bike. Those reservations were quickly erased once I had my hands on the frame. The frames build quailty seemed to be on par with anything from Trek, Cannnodale or any other plastic bike maker. Truth be told, the majority of plastic (carbon) bikes are made in china anyway. The only issues I saw were the headset cups, which were aluminum, had been painted. The paint had to be cleaned away before installing the headset, which was quick work with a park headset reaming tool. The frame came with the headset, which was a generic integrated tapered headset.

 The frame he chose had the BSA threaded bottom bracket. The threads were clean and required no chasing before installing the BB cups.
The rear of the bike required a Shimano 12x142 E-thru rear axle. This axle is different from the other x12 axles in that it is a few mm longer and comes with a nut on the drive side.
The frame requires a top pull, high clamp, 34.9mm clamp style front derailleur. A low clamp front derailleur will not work on this frame due to the massive downtube/bb shell area.
After finishing the build, I was impressed with the initial ride quality. Though I wasn't able to take it on any serious trails, it felt as stiff and responsive as any top brand carbon frame I've assembled. The final build ended up at just over 27lbs.
I'll keep you guys updated with feed-back I receive from my customer.




Specs
Frame: Yeoleo 29er Hardtail
Fork: Rockshox Revelation XX
Crank: XO Carbon 2X
Front Der: Sram X9 2X10
Frear Der: Sram X9 Type 2 10 spd
Shifters: Sram X9 2X10
Brakes: Avid Elixir CR
Rotors: 160MM front and rear
Wheels: WTB Frequency i23 Team
Tires: Maxxis Ardent LUST
Pedals: Truvativ Hussefelt
Stem and Bars: Raceface Turbine
Seat Post: crankbros
Saddle: WTB

American Classic Hubs

Recently, I've had several customers show interest in having me build up wheel-sets using the American Classic hubs. I am giving my professional opinion of the hubs. I cannot say that I recommend these rear hubs for anything other than race-day use if you are a heavier rider or are rough on wheels. The reason I say this is the method of which the rear hub pawls engage the free-hub body. These hubs are reverse from pretty much every free-hub in existence in that the pawls are mounted inside the hub and the gripping teeth are on the free-hub body itself. The problem is that the teeth of the free-hub body are aluminum being gripped by the hardened steel pawls. This steel vs. aluminum causes rapid wear of the free-hub body teeth, causing engagement issues. Below is an example of a new free-hub body and a free-hub body that was used for one season by a rider that weighed 190 lbs. In the top picture, the new free-hub body is on the top with the used one below.