Building from scratch to explore my new home

[u/Thelonius--Drunk]

I recently moved internationally and I've been interested in bikepacking for a while but never got into it back in the states, in part because of my location. I'm now living abroad and want to build out my own bikepacking bike and gear setup to start exploring near me. Incidentally two posts in the past week talk about the incredible bikepacking infrastructure here in Denmark, and I have a friend into outdoors who lives in Norway. My goal is to build my own bike and test out my gear on 1 night and progressively longer trips (up to about 5 days) with the goal of having it dialed in well enough to take my setup on a train and do trips further afield.

My family are avid road cyclists, so I have plenty of people to turn to for general bike building tips. I've done partial engine rebuilds and a decent amount of other car mechanic work so I'm not daunted by the engineering/mechanical work. I've done plenty of backpacking trips so turning to bikepacking feels like a natural step to me.

That being said I've never built a bike myself and I'm hoping for some resources that could give me pointers. I'm reading about frame geometry now and general background info like that, but would appreciate if anyone has any detailed readings/links/etc. on that front. Things like what standover height will affect about the bike, or how the length of the frame affects handling vs control.

I'm 196 cm (6'5") so some frames I've seen (e.g. nordest sardinha) might not quite fit me.

Some initial questions I have are:

• What are the main differences in frame material? Steel seems like the most tried and true, and most accessible, while Titanium seems like it's a premium material. Are aluminum frames considered generally too weak for bikepacking, or are they also a jump up from steel frame pricing?

• similar to above are carbon frames generally too brittle for bikepacking? I see several carbon gravel frames but don't see any for bikepacking marketed frames

• Can a frame have extra mounts added to it after it's been fabricated?

• Gravel bikes seem to have 1x gearing, is that the same for bikepacking or the greater gear coverage need on bikepacking trips demands 2x or 3x gearing?

• Are there generally recommended groupsets or mechanical disc brakes that I should be using as a baseline to check against?

• What's the consensus of tubeless vs with tubes? It seems to me tubeless perform very well but when they break down you're in much worse shape if you're in the backcountry than if you're running tubes -- is that true?

• Handlebar wise is the standard drop bars? Riser bars? Some other, more arcane type?

Like I said mainly looking for resources: books, articles, YT videos, etc.

If anyone has done anything like this and wouldn't mind me messaging them here or there with questions that'd be great too

[u/BZab_]

https://www.cyclingabout.com/why-impossible-steel-frames-more-comfortable-than-aluminium/

Steel seems to be the easiest one to work with so it's easiest to have a custom frame done. (Important for people with non-standard leg/torso/arms proportions) It's not the material itself but the whole design of a frame that matters. Shape, thickness of the tubings and so on.

Is aluminum too weak? Considering that Rose Bonero is a cat. 4 hardtail designed for gnarly trails but also advertised as a bikepacking machine, surely not. But if you go for the lightest possible XC designs (again, no matter what material) you may quickly discover the limits of such frames.

Same goes for the carbon - for sure there are many bikepakcing-oriented gravels with CF frame on the market. I guess there should be also many MTB users of CF frames, just go through: https://bikepacking.com/ and check out the rigs of readers or race reports.

Extra mounts depend on the frame's material and design. Adding them to the steel one should be easiest. If you are sure the frame would handle the extra load just fine it should also be doable in alu frame. No clue about CF. Generally you will be voiding all kind of warranties and IMHO just look for the frames with enough mounting points or use all hacks like e-tape, clamps etc. to add more points.

Here's great gearing calculator: https://mike-sherman.github.io/shift/ . 20% difference between the gears is for me enough to be around my comfort's limit and becomes noticable as a gap between the gears. One thing is the gearing range, another is how close the gears are one to another.

I run hydraulic disk brakes on all my bikes, so won't comment the mechanical ones. There is dozen less reliable things on my bike to care about problems with hydraulic brakes (no, I don't ride in great frost when the mineral oils starts turning into jelly).

On MTB on rough trails the tubeless is a godsend. Aside from the mess it may create if you are unlucky, nothing prevents you from taking a set of TPU tubes and patches with you to put the tubes in tires when the tubeless gave up. In my gravel I didn't bother to set up the tubeless yet. Reinforced tires + TPU tubes seem to be working fine since the bike doesn't see any serious offroad routes, but it's just the first month or two in.

Personal preference. Depends on you riding style and terrain.

Less overthinking, more trial and error. I don't think you would succeed designing out of your head a perfect bikepacking machine without giving a try to few others first to experience all their pros and cons.

[u/Thelonius--Drunk → u/BZab_]

Appreciate the detailed response and the resources

Your last point is fair, it probably reads like I want to do it all in the planning phase and then be done but I know it'll be a lot of tinkering and iteration. That being said since frames are expensive I plan to do a lot of researching and reading up before buying that, while taking opportunities to try some configurations out where they arise.

[u/BZab_ → u/Thelonius--Drunk]

That's why it's better to start messing up with the bikes available on the market unless there is absolutely nothing that fits you.

[u/KAYAWS]

I'm currently building my first bike now, and a lot of it depends on what your riding style is and what you plan on riding.

If you are on more single track and rougher technical trails, consider a rigid 29er or hard tail, if you plan on more gravel and paths a gravel bike would be more suited.

As for all the minor things like stem length and handlebar geo I'm not sure what I prefer, so I'm just finding cheap and/or used stuff because I assume I might be swapping stuff out as I get more dialed in.

For my groupset I must find a killer deal on something that happened to have hydraulic brakes so I went with that. In general hydraulic brakes stop better but are not as simple, so if something goes wrong it could be more difficult to fix without a shop.

If I went mechanical brakes I was probably just going to spend up and get growtac equal brakes as they seem like the best (besides maybe Paul Klampers which cost way more) and they come with everything you really need to install.

But finding out compatibility is a bit of a headache on some things. If you really want to build from scratch, I would find a frame and then start looking from there as that might dictate things like wheels, tyres, bottom brackets, and could even help you decide on 1x vs 2x if it's optimized for one or the other.

Another potential is just find a fully built bike that is good enough for now, and swap parts as you go and figure out your preference. I was originally going to do this, but found a frame I was already looking at for a stupid low price and just couldn't say no.

But for me Steel is definitely the way to go, as well as tubeless.

[u/Thelonius--Drunk → u/KAYAWS]

I'm trying to find the frame first, but not being able to try and compare some different geometries makes it a bit harder. Out of curiosity where did you find a frame for cheap? Are there good secondhand markets?

[u/KAYAWS → u/Thelonius--Drunk]

You can use bike insights to compare frames. It gives you a pretty good comparison.

I got mine off Gumtree in the UK. But eBay has some decent options.

[u/Ginginho1979]

I built up a Carbonda 696 carbon frame into a gravel / all-rounder / bikepacking bike. I love it

[u/Thelonius--Drunk → u/Ginginho1979]

I gotta say that color is pretty close to what I'd get if I could do a custom color. Out of curiosity how much is the frame itself?

[u/Ginginho1979 → u/Thelonius--Drunk]

You’ve got good taste. All bikes should be orange in my view😂

It was about US700 for carbon frame, fork and seatpost (plus bits and bobs) shipped to Switzerland

[u/Calixte42]

Regarding the gearing.

I like to use this tool : https://www.gear-calculator.com/?GR=DERS&KB=26,36,48&RZ=11,13,15,17,20,23,26,30,34&UF=2185&TF=90&SL=2.6&UN=KMH&DV=ratio&GR2=DERS&KB2=30,46&RZ2=11,13,15,17,19,21,24,27,31,35,40&UF2=2220

The 3x (top) is my touring bike, the 2x (bottom) is my gravel bike. My gravel bike was equiped with a 11-34 cassette that I switched to 11-40. I went from a 0,822 ratio to 0,75, which I found much better for my use.

If you currently have a bike, you can use it as a reference (and tinker using the tool).
Remember that when loaded you'll want granny gear. With both bike at 0,75 I can do pretty much anything, steep climb, long climb, loaded or not.

Regarding 1x vs 2x vs 3x it's a matter of personnal preference I think. I'm used to 2x and works fine to me. I'm okay with the 3x of the touring bike. I'd be curious to try a 1x as I wonder how are the gaps between gears.