I (heart) Carte Blanche

Unlike some people, Al basically told me to do whatever I thought would work best for his new 36er – so here’s the current state of the art (keep in mind, he’s 5’10” tall – no huge dude by any means).

-69 degree HTA, 90mm rake fork.
-510mm chainstays, plenty of tire clearance, 83mm BB shell and kinked seat tube.
-Paragon sliders to allow geared/single use.
-1 1/8 head tube – I see no reason to do a tapered setup when the odds of being able to build a tapered rigid fork anytime soon are next to zero. Plus, it’s rigid.
-23.8″ effective toptube (yes, that’s right). Yes, there will be some toe overlap. Acceptable price to pay, IMO – if you’re riding super-gnar chundery switchbacks, you should probably not be on this bike. It’s for XC.
-33″ standover (it’s possible to get a little lower, but not a whole lot – once again, you gotta just deal – the darn wheels are just too big to have lots of standover for most folks).

I seem to be doing more and more of these – maybe it’s time to start hassling WTB about doing a run of a “real” 36er tire…

Addendum: Feldman points out, quite correctly, that for many people, the state of the art head tube would be a 44mm ID version with an inset/zerostack headset, to get the bars lower. Not a concern for Al, so not necessary in this case, but a great idea for smaller riders who run their bars closer to saddle height.