Unpacking.
Bike arrived yesterday. Here's a pro tip for anyone who orders a bike online. When your bike box arrives inside a second box... be worried. I opened the plain outer box (after the UPS guy had left) to discover significant damage to the State Bicycle box inside.
That's the axle nut from the front wheel sticking out of the hole. It's supposed to have a plastic cover protecting it, but that was gone. Sooo... right off the bat, I'm thinking "great" I'm going to have to send it back. Turns out, though, there was no damage. Whew.
Set up and initial thoughts.
- Frame: Heavy Hi-tensile steel. Paint is decent but contact points (rack mounts, dropout/axle interface, seat post collar/seat tube, etc.) cause it to flake pretty easily.
- Wheels: Needed to be stress-relieved and trued out of the box. We'll see how long it lasts before needing to be re-trued. Sealed bearings spin smooth. No binding, play or grit. Tires measure 25mm, but I am so used to 28s or 32s that these look really narrow.
- Drivetrain: Square taper crank, also with sealed bearings, is secure and spins freely. Tightened both the fixie cog and the freewheel in back per the instructions. No problems. Freewheel sounds like a beehive chasing you...
- Headset: This was overly compressed and grinding out of the box. Pulled the fork to discover almost no lube on the races or headset bearings. So, I took apart everything, wiped out the small amount of old grease and applied a generous helping of Phil Wood and reinstalled the forks. Much improved.
- Everything else: Seatpost and saddle come as one unit and installed easily with some grease. Comes with plastic pedals. Brakes are pre-attached to the frame and fork, all you need to do is install the levers on the handlebar (packaged separately).
So, all in all, aside from the spokes needing some love and attention, it all went together as expected. But, of course, I was never going to use it as a stock bike:
Here it is after applying some items from the parts bin:
- Brooks B-17 instead of the narrow stock saddle
- Lezyne black bottle cage (there are bosses for one bottle on the downtube)
- Velo Orange Cigne stem ('cuz I likes my bars high)
- Shimano brakes and Kool-Stop pads (I used the stock cables and housing that came with the bike)
- VP platform pedals.
A few laps around the block made me realize that the 44/16 ratio was fine for just me tooling around, but if I'm going to add racks and panniers, I might want something a bit easier to pedal. So, I found a RaceFace 1X chainring (130BCD, 40t) and swapped it out for the stock one. Now it's 40/16. I also had to remove a link from the chain to keep proper tension. Fortunately, the stock chain comes with a quick-link so it made the process pretty easy.
Once I had a decent roller, I went to work on the racks:
They went on with a little modification. For the front, I needed to put in a spacer on the lower bolts at the bottom of the fork. The fork bosses sit on the inside of the fork blade (meant more for fenders) so the spacer allows the legs of the front rack to clear it. On the rear rack, it was the typical problem of the rack mounts on the seat stays running right into the brake calipers. I've had this issue on multiple bikes in the past. The solution in this case was to take a round metal file to the mounting arm of the rack to carve/curve it around the brake caliper to allow it to function.
Overall and Next Steps:
Overall, for $324 (with the bullhorn bar option) I would say you get what you pay for... and maybe a little more. The quality seems decent. The looks/aesthetic are pretty good I think. Most folks could ride the bike right out of the box and have a decent commuter. The test for me will be in durability over time. My concern is the spokes and the freewheel holding up to both my weight and the weight of a load of groceries.
I have two changes I'll want to make that will require some additional money.
Tires: There's nothing wrong with them. They are 25c as spec. But for me they feel way too narrow for the kind of riding I'll be doing. State recommends no more than 28c so I will start there and go larger if they'll fit the frame.
Handlebars: This one is on me. I ordered the bullhorns because I liked the look of them. What I didn't realize (though it's right there in the description of the bike) is that they are more narrow than the 46cm drop bars I'm used to. In retrospect I should have saved $25 and stuck with the standard riser bars. But if I'm going to get something else, I'm toying with either trying to find a wider bullhorn (preferably a 46cm if such a creature exists) or, I might go with a trekking bar to get the extra width and hand positions.
So, that's the State Bicycle Co. Ghoul thus far. I'll update later once there's something new to report.
