Yepp, I finally went with the Durin SL for last summer. With uncut steerer, it came in at 1399g. It went down to 1357,6g with cut steerer and some removed stickers. Not absolutely bad, although I wished for a bit better. It might have been an expensive mistake though. During the main race of the summer (about 245km and 15-16 hours) the fork became really hard and used maybe max 20mm of its 100mm travel. As if that wasn't enough, the rear wheel freehub body (Tune Kong) broke at 52 of 245km and I had to walk/run for 9km to get my spare rear wheel installed. Still finished 3rd!. Later, I finally got the titanium freehub from Tune. It was only 6 grams heavier than the alu one, but high €€€ for sure.
After that competition, I hardly used the bike anymore for the rest of the summer, but instead went with my hardtail (a 2005 Scott Scale, then at around 8.5kg) since I didn't have any long competitions left anymore for the rest of the year.
Also I sent the Manitou R7 fork for warranty repair back to Germany. It took like two months from them to repair it. It came back to me 60 grams heavier (they had changed everything apart from the lower legs, even moved the air valve from bottom to crown
), but it has worked flawlessly ever since. So, I installed it back to my Epic.
For the cranks, I finally got the Lightnings after a long wait but it took so long that I had already decided to go for the old trusty RF Turbine square taper crankset from the 90's
Yea, it's heavy and you might argue that 90's Sq Taper Crankset is definitely not to be used with 2000's carbon frames, but I sure like them. Plus, you can get quite narrow Q-factor with a Sq taper set. I measured mine is 156mm, installed them using a Token Titanium 68/103mm BB (came in at 156.7g). Yes, the frame shell width is 73mm but it works perfect as long as you choose a BB which doesn't have a sleeve on the left side cup. Leaves at least 2.5mm clearance between the left chainstay
So, I finally found the red Turbine set on eBay - 50g overweight
-, and with TA 36/24 rings, Token BB, alu/ti/steel bolts the whole set sits at 739g including everything. Not super light, but good enough. And relatively cheap too.
For now, the bike sits at 9,34kg in snowy winter setup: 2.4" & 2.25" Rocket Rons and a SLX 11-28 cassette. With 2.1" Rons and my modified DA 11-27 cassette we will be at 9.0kg in the summer again.
