Bike Build: Salsa El Mariachi Steel

What do you do when you have a box full of 29r parts and need a bike to race this season? Oh and the buget is limited. Buy a steel frame! To future proof this bike a little I decided that there were 2 features the new frame had to have. First of all it needed to accept a tapered fork steerer (because that's what I have waiting for the frame). Secondly, it had to be single speed compatible to serve a different purpose in the future.

After a little research I settled on a 15" Salsa El Mariachi frame with an FSA headset with 44mm bottom cup for the fork steerer.

The frame is compatible with the ZS44 semi integrated headset standard allowing you to use either a straight 1 1/8" steerer or a tapered 1 1/8-1 1/2" steerer just by changing headsets.

The 'Alternator' dropouts will allow me to run this bike as a single speed in the future since I am likely to treat myself to a certain Canadian company's rumoured Carbon dually 29'r next season.

One of the great things about this build is that I only needed to buy 3 items to complete the spec. The frame is an obvious one, I've already mentioned the headset and lastly was a bottom bracket as the donor frame was a fancy pressfit jobby. Pretty much all of the donor bikes parts were usable here.   

The Hope Mono Mini brakes came from another bike but they are my favourite of all-time. Still going on the original pads but when you design for the UK's horrible weather there isn't much Perth can throw up the Hope's can't handle.

I've also had these Salsa Pro Moto carbon flat bars with 11deg sweep for ages but they just keep going and are super plush. Shimano XT 2x10...need I say more?

Stay tuned for a ride report after this weekend's Single Track Minds 4 hour race.