29er trail bike

So I had made a rather sweet but flawed 29er downhill bike, and a very functional but less plush trail bike. The next step was to attempt to take the best of both worlds and create The One Bike.

Of course it's impossible for even the biggest, best and most innovative bike companies to make a bike that is perfect for everything.

But what do they know?

I decided that the solution to all my bike desires would be a 29er trail bike with 5" travel. With 5" travel my high-pivot design would require no chain routing so would hopefully be as reliable as my previous trail frame, and with the 29er wheels we'd hopefully have some of that amazing plushness that big wheels are famous for.

I invested in some proper chromoly bike tubing this time and set about making what I hoped would be a master-piece:

Again, I couldn't help but do a bit of colour coordination with the build:

Unfortunately I just didn't get this bike right. The rear drop-outs were not aligned well, the weight was still above what you would really want to drag around all day and the fit was wrong - the main problem being that the top-tube length was too short. This bike works but just was not the dream-bike that I had hoped it would be. It also seemed to be the wrong combination of the previous 2 builds - rather than having the solid build of the trail bike and the confidence inspiring feel of the 29er DH what it really felt like was numb, boring, not-that-plush, unmanouverable AND unstable. I simply hadn't designed or built this very well.

In order to address this I started reading every article about 29er design that I could find, and signed up for a welding course...