Sneak A Peak - Monstercross Disc - Black Mountain Cycles

By blackmountaincycles, Dec 05, 2017

Filed under: Black Mountain Cycles frames

A while back, I posted some preliminary details about the new Road Plus disc brake frame and now I’ll let the proverbial cat out of the bag about the new Monstercross Disc (MCD) frame. Bear in mind this is a prototype sample. It’s pretty close to what will actually be available next year. There might be some changes. Some minor revisions. Some, not a lot.

The main difference between the disc frame and the existing rim brake frames are somewhat minor in the grand scheme of things. The biggest change, besides the brakes, will be the overall shape of the frames. Both the Road + and MCD frames will have a much more pronounced sloping top tube. Stack and reach will remain pretty close to the original frames – about the same reach, a bit more stack. The amount of sizes will be reduced because managing inventory is easier with fewer sizes. With the new sizing, there will still be good transitions between sizes and a new smaller size. The Road + frame will follow the sizing of the MCD frame with regards to the sizes and sloping top tube.

Some of the details that are shared with the Road + frame are the segmented fork, frame dropouts. Both forks will get mid-blade eyelets for low-rider racks and braze-ons for a Nitto style small front rack. I’ll try to maximize the number of water bottles that will fit on the frame, but am not, at this time, leaning towards cluttering the fork up with braze-ons for bottles and cargo carriers. As you can see in the photos of the prototype, there are two bottles on the down tube and one on the seat tube with a fourth on the bottom side of the down tube. The bigger frames will have these bottle locations with smaller frames only fitting one on the down tube.

I decided to route the front derailer cable on the right side of the down tube eliminating the roller from the rim brake frame. The housing routes very naturally and cleanly from where it exits the bar tape. I’m a big fan of crossing derailer cables on older mountain bikes with down tube cable routing because the housing has a more natural, easy route from the shifter to the stop.

Tire clearance will be the same as the current Monstercross frame. The photos show a WTB Nano 29″ x 2.1″ tire which fits with minimal clearance. Okay in the dry, probably not so great in the wet. The bike as pictured is as I ran it during the Grinduro! race/event back in October. The tires were great during the downhills, but I think a 45mm tire would have suited me better overall.

Beyond the tires, I set this bike up with White Industries R30 cranks with 44/30 rings, Ultegra 11-speed shifters, XT 11s derailleur with a Tanpan S11 adapter, 11-42 cassette, Salsa Cowchipper bars, Pacenti SL25 rims with White Ind XMR hubs.

Dropouts and wheel axles are 12mm x 142 in the rear and 12mm x 100 up front – same as the Road +. The frame tubing is the same as the rim brake frames. The seat stays are smaller diameter since there’s no brake mounted to them.

Some may ask about the color. Did I color match the frame and fork to the color of the Pacenti logo? Nope. That was totally random. And turned out quite nice. I built the wheels quite a while ago. The fork was supposed to be blue to match the frame, but it got painted the same as the sample Road + frame. The seat is a sample WTB Rocket V that I got from WTB probably 13 years ago when I was doing product development for Haro. Never used it and it sat in a parts box all that time. It works on this frame/fork and the white bar tape is a good touch, except it gets dirty fast.

I’m pretty excited about this. I’ve got final drawings done and approved. Waiting for a quotation as of this writing. As soon as I get a quote and can figure out a selling price, framesets will get ordered and I’ll probably open a deposit/pre-order window sometime after the first of the year. I’ll post the geometry for the MCD and Road + along with any other updates soon.