My Waltworks V1 has been ferried back to me from Emma-Lee’s shop and I couldn’t be happier with the WZRDly work. The brazed stainless steel rack is the perfect combination of solid and gorgeous and I love how she blued-and-cleared the scars from adding rack and fender mounts to my frame and fork so that the layers of evolution come through.
There’s Walt’s fantastic welding, Toxik Harald’s beautiful paintwork, the various wounds from my hack-level riding, and finally the mounting points that Em added to make my underutilized mountain bike into the perfect ATB. Even the category of bike is recycled and if you’re interested I wrote more about how I borrowed the concept from Pi Mason, who borrowed the concept from bikepacking.com, in my last piece about rigid mountain bikes.
Suffice it to say, this is my ‘yes’ bike. It’s meant for pavement and gravel, commuting, adventures, light single-track, and also more aggressive single track should it appear when I’m getting from A to B.
I think my favourite photos of my V1 are these shots that Deniz took for an NSMB piece called Scare Yourself. This iteration established many go-to standards that I’ve run on my rigid mountain bike since. CushCore inserts (Plus front / Pro rear), WTB Vigilante 29×2.8″ front tire, big brakes, a 16° handlebar, long dropper post, and single-speed gearing driven by the best experience, not my ego.
Carried over from the Scare Yourself photos are my silver Chromag 50mm stem, the bar geometry (the old bar was retired), and my wheels. The front hub is a King 20mm reduced to 15mm, the rear hub is a Project 321 single-speed hub, and the rims are some very badly beaten Velocity Dually 29″ rims – that experienced rigid MTB life before I started running inserts – that just keep on ticking despite having a handful of dents pulled out of each of them.
Some highlights of my V1 ATB Redux? I’ve had this pre-clutch XTR 9-speed rear derailleur since it was new. My friend Craig helped me swap the stock cages out for some super-short Saint cages and it’s done duty on various mountain and commuter bikes since, including a brief life as a single-speed tensioner on a full-suspension bike. It’s mated to an XTR 9-speed shifter that feels better than new after years of use and six good cogs from a used XTR 10-speed cassette that had worn out low gears.
The crankset is an FSA Afterburner with just a bit of heal rub, a Wolf Tooth CAMO spider, and a stainless steel chainring that’s been through years of single-speed use with some multi-speed miles thrown in and the pedals are a pair of easy-to-rebuild Squidworx units I reviewed previously. Touchpoints are completed with an SQLab saddle and a pair of Swayze push-on grips.
These Formula Cura2 brakes have been kicking around since 2018 and still work great after a full bleed. I haven’t used them for a while and the lever feel is remarkably crisper than running the same master cylinders with Cura4 calipers. Whether that’s good, or bad, or something that’s easy to adapt between will depend on the rider.
The tires are an experiment. I’m hoping the combination of light-casing 2.6″ WTB Rangers and CushCore XC inserts will provide enough support when I air them down and roll fast enough when I don’t. I considered a few less knobbly options as well but with recovering from injury I really wanted something predictable on gravel and more-than-gravel adventures.
That’s, of course, the next level of redux here as I slowly pedal my way off of the injured reserve list starting on pavement, and starting today. The V1 MTB hasn’t seen much action in the last couple of years and now it’s promising to be the bike I ride the most in ’22.