Crust Bikes Scapebot Review: The Yes Man – Spencer Harding | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors.

The Crust Bikes “Scapebot” is the third iteration of the original Scapegoat. The frame fits a wide variety of tire sizes and has a unique geometry that is both modern and harks back to the golden age of ATBs. True to form, Spencer has been using this bike as his touring rig for years and decided to put the most outlandish tire clearance claims to the test. Check out his long-term review of the Crust Scapebot below…

I was initially reluctant to review this bike for a few reasons. Reviewing a frame, especially the Scapebot, is hard and usually too open-ended a proposal. Also, I bought this frame for myself when I was in the market for a custom frame, so my nitpicks might be the nittiest of picks. That’s my full disclosure; I already own this bike and it will be sticking around for a while. That being said, there is A LOT to discuss in regard to this weird-ass bike.

With my attempt at a do-it-all touring/trail bike, the Orbea Loki, feeling tired and frustratingly unable to easily mount bags and racks, I wanted a bike that just said yes. Enter Crust Bikes’ “Yes Man”, the Scapebot.

26” fat wheels? Yes.
27.5+ plus tires? Yes.
29+? Also yes.
Mounting points everywhere? Yes.
Almost any rack you can imagine? Yes.

Crust Scapebot Quick Hits

Sizes: S (26+ specific), M, L (reviewed), XL
Colors: Macintosh Tan P453 (reviewed), Purple/Pink
Tire Clearance: 26 x 3.8” (singlespeed only), 27.5 x 3.8”, 29 x 3”
Boost Spacing Front and Rear
Headtube: 1 ⅛” straight
Bottom Bracket: 73 mm
Seatpost: 31.6 mm
Price: $1,175.00 (frame only)

A Little Scapebot History Lesson

I have had the distinct pleasure of touring with Goat, the namesake and designer of the original Scapegoat frame, which was one of Crust’s first offerings alongside the DFL (now called the Evasion). The original Scapegoat was meant to suit an incredibly niche set of needs set out by its creator. The main hurdle was running fat tires on standard spaced bikes. The frame was being developed at a similar time as the original Tumbleweed Prospector, which was also trying to fit fat tires, Rohloff hubs, and standard parts. The bike was weird, it required custom wheelsets, and it made Goat as happy as could be – it was, after all, his dream bike.

You could hear Goat coming on tour, his massive tires groaning under the power of his bare feet on the pedals, pushing all that gear and bike, singlespeed no less, up all the hills of the GDMBR and Baja Divide. His setup was eccentric, unique, and exactly what he wanted. He perfected his ideas around touring riding across the Americas – all of it. The most conspicuous part of the kit was his flip-flop sandal pedals. Goat never wore wear shoes, so he made custom pedals to suit his needs, which should come as no surprise.

The second iteration of the Scapegoat saw a swap to the new standard, boost spacing, and even more MTB-y geometry. The second iteration was a more reasonable bike but still retained the chainstay yoke and room for the full-on fat tires.

The current version was iterated on by Nick Kuszyk and redubbed the Scapebot. In its third iteration, the frame received a more in-depth update: shorter reach and lower stack height, a higher bottom bracket, and a significantly steeper 71º head tube angle. These were the pleas of Nick to Crust Bikes in an attempt to rein in such a wild bike. Nick confesses the bike is “still insane” and I agree.

Geometry by RRobots

The Scapebot is an odd bike as far as geometry goes, but to simplify the frame, it is basically a rigid ATB (all terrain bike). Imagine your classic 80/90s rigid MTB brought into the future so you can use some modern parts more easily – namely boost-spaced wheels, thru axles, and disc brakes.

Most strikingly, you’ll notice the massive headtube due to the frame and fork being non-suspension corrected. This allowed Crust to create as much space in the main triangle as possible while still squeezing in room for 29+ tires.

During the redesign, Nick wanted to raise the bottom bracket, an aspect of bikes that gets lower and lower each year. Due to this, I erred on the side of a smaller frame since the XL is truly an XL and I was concerned about too much standover height. Crust’s geometry chart doesn’t state which size wheels were used to measure the standover height and bottom bracket drop, which made my sizing decision difficult. I love a tall bottom bracket height, but the Scapebot sits on the tall side, even for my taste. Considering the wide swath of wheels and tire choices, the choice to make the bottom bracket higher was justified. I primarily wanted to build this bike with 29 x 2.4” tires to keep it consistent with a large chunk of my stable, so this exaggerated the BB height. I have not tried 29+ as I think it would be comical how high the BB would end up.

Another stark contrast to modern design is the head tube angle at 71º almost matching the 72º seat tube angle – square road geometry, anyone? This steep headtube angle was chosen to make the bike better for front-loading while touring. This carries the load more vertically and avoids the “flop” feeling of slacker head tube angles. I’ll dive more into how it performs in this regard later. I’ve found that I wish the head tube were a few degrees slacker for those occasionally steep moments while off-road touring.

The size large frame with a reach of 412 mm is short for a flat bar bike. I’m all torso and short-legged, so the reach immediately felt compact. My initial build had me using a 90 mm stem and a setback seatpost to feel comfortably stretched out. In its current state, some Ritchey Buzzard bars have evened out my body position on the bike – expect a proper review of the bars soon. With the reach number being short, I imagine it would be possible to build the Scapebot as a drop bar bike. Comparing the Scapebot’s reach of 412 mm to a Salsa Fargo’s reach of 385 mm, the difference is ~30 mm. This feels within reason to be adjusted for a with a shorter stem. I have zero ambitions of building a drop bar touring rig, but the option seems within the realm of possibility for the Scapebot.

Crust Scapebot Frame Details

I have to start with the amazing head badge and art littered around the tubes. Crust never disappoints with their head badges and detailing. The Scapebot will free your inner robot from the confines of this modern age and reach cyber nirvana via your ablaze Macintosh…

Let us start with that fork. Now, the fork accomplishes A LOT of specific things. It is boost spaced and fits up to a 26/27.5 x 3.8” tire as well as 29+. It has a zillion mounting points for racks, bottle cages, or whatever you might want. The lower legs have 3-pack mounts, the upper legs have forward-angled bottle cage mounts, and there are rack mounts on the crown and mid-fork. Whatever you want to strap to this fork, it just says yes. The crown of the fork is understandably wide to accommodate the possibility of massive tires and thus mounting racks requires some tinkering and long M5 bolts. Oh, and it’s designed to use IS tab mount brake adaptors – while antiquated, this will be crucially helpful later in the review. The sheer unique dimensions of the fork make swapping to another fork out of the question, and maybe that’s for the better since it’s a feat of ingenuity.

The main triangle has two sets of 3-pack mounts on the downtube, one inside the triangle and one on the bottom near the bottom bracket. The seat tube sports the usual bottle cage mount. I find 3-pack mounts on the inside of the main triangle to be useless as I will just be using them to mount my frame bag. The much-revered third bottle cage under the downtube is usually a recipe for whatever is strapped there to get ripped off while offroad, but I found that with the BB height of the Scapebot, this mounting position was quite useful.

The rear triangle is finished off with rocker-style dropouts to allow adjustments for wheelbase and chain tension. My only gripe with these is that my Paul Klampers don’t fit when the axle is in its most forward position. Getting a multi-tool in the tight space between the seatstay and chainstay to adjust the brake caliper has drawn consistent ire from me.

Touring With the Scapebot

Before I even built this frame up I ordered a custom framebag from Rogue Panda. Luckily the bike was already in their database and the team whipped up an amazing framebag for me in a few weeks. I went ham on most of the options since this bag will probably never leave the bike while I own it. I had the lower half of the bag specifically sized for an Apidura 3L bladder which covers 90% of my water needs. Having that space so economically used for water frees up the other two-thirds of the frame bag.

My first tour on the Scapebot entailed packing a large custom BXB Right Height front bag, Swift Zeitgeist on the saddle, and my Rogue Panda frame bag. I have long been a fan of front-loading a touring bike and I wanted to test Nick’s design choices with the BXB Right Height bag. I packed what I considered heavy for myself on our Northwoods trip as it was a casual comfort tour. With a majority of my gear high on top of the front rack, the bike would get that high-speed shimmy wobble occasionally and felt flexy if overloaded. The tall front load pedaled comfortably in many instances but hit a tipping point toward unpleasant and squirrely if the load became too heavy too high up.

On a few recent overnights, I swapped the Right Height bag for some smaller modern panniers. I mounted the panniers to the top rail of my Tumbleweed T Rack which got them mostly out of the way of bushes and rocks, still putting the weight lower, but not as low as on a low rider rack. By bringing the weight down lower I started to get the ride characteristic I believe Nick was seeking. The steep headtube’s quick steering is slightly dulled by the weight and becomes more even-keeled as the bike feels less flexy and top-heavy. Of course, I could spread the weight out even more with a rear bag of some kind, but I have not found it necessary with the capacity of the panniers and my frame bag.

One big reason I decided on the Scapebot is the flexibility it affords for packing whatever I need, whenever I need it. I can add racks for a big trip on smoother ground, or go sans racks for a more modern bikepacking setup with all the bags I could want. I yearned for a bike that just said yes.

What Would Goat Do?

I decided if I was going to review the Scapebot I needed to do Goat a solid and do right by his intentions: fully fat, singlespeed, and barefoot sandal pedals.

First, I was going to need a very silly wheelset. I want to thank Velocity for their generosity and willingness to build such an eccentric wheelset for me. I asked them to lace some 80 mm wide HED fat bike rims to standard boost-spaced mountain bike hubs. This would allow me to run a single gear, 26 x 3.8” tires, and a standard boost hub.

The next challenge was chainline. This was when I was trying out a bunch of the Shimano Linkglide and CUES parts and had gotten myself on a square tapered bottom bracket kick. I achieved a ~50 mm chain line with a standard 73 x 123 bottom bracket which worked great for the 29 x 2.4” tires. When mounting the 26 x 3.8” tires, this chain line was insufficient. I did some internet sleuthing and found a 73 x 127 bottom bracket and snagged it. This pumped the chain line out to around ~52 mm which was better but still tighter than I’d want to pedal for a distance.

I decided to go hard and find some bike co-op tomfoolery to fix my issue. I needed a wider chain line for the 26” fat wheelset, but a boost chain line for standard wheels, and the idea of swapping bottom brackets was unappetizing. My idea was to find an old 3x crankset with a small enough BCD to use a 30t chainring that could be mounted in two positions. I struck gold, per usual, at BICAS (our local bike co-op in Tucson): a $12 set of old Stout cranks with a 104 BCD. Luckily Wolf Tooth happens to make the only 30t 104 BCD chainring available and, like Velocity, they were very generous in assisting this very silly idea. In the end with the chainring in the outer position, I achieved a 60 mm chainline that made plenty of room for the fat tires.

Finally, I had the right chain line for either wheelset. Now I needed the last piece of the puzzle; Goat’s signature flip-flop pedals. While I was at the bike co-op I luckily found the exact Shimano 600 pedals Goat used for his flip-flop pedals. I’m not much a of flip flop guy, so I used some old Bedrock sandals instead. A few mornings of tinkering in the shed and voila, I had some barefoot sandal pedals.

I won’t lie, the way the Bedrock pedals are weighted makes them damn near impossible to use, but once your foot is snuggled in the pedal, the combo is quite comfy. Admittedly, the fat wheelset will be a niche-use item, and even with the proper chain line, the tire clearance is tighter than I could readily recommend. My dreams drift to bike rafting, and the need for a simple and floaty tire (on both land and water) for short and specific riding moments. I found one weird quirk when mounting the 26” fat wheel into the fork: I could not install the wheel without removing the brake caliper. The tire was simply too large for the tapering fork legs. This was the moment when the IS tab was really handy. I removed the caliper and adapter, put the wheel on, and then bottled the caliper back down. This minimized readjusting that would be necessary for a post mount. I felt nostalgia for the old days of mounting a way-too-big tire in your short-reach road bike calipers.

Playing with all the chain line options has been a fun exercise in tinkering and I’m excited about what came out the other end. Being able to run both wheelsets on the same set of cranks and bottom bracket combo makes this bike all the more appealing. My opportunities for proper fat biking are slim, but I love having a monster truck in the stable even if it’s only part-time.

Things to Consider When Building Your Scapebot

The strange measurements of this “insane” bike make for a few distinct component choices I’d like to note – first, the short reach. My first remedy for this is of course a longer stem, there are plenty of them lying around in our current long reach/short stem bike geometry era. My first setup needed a 90 mm stem and nearly straight bars to get my fit feeling good. If you want to run sweepy bars, I would plan for an even longer stem. Longer stems also make stem bags easier to attach, so that’s not necessarily a downside. Currently, I’m using the Ritchey Buzzard bars which sweep forward and then back, keeping my reach similar while incorporating some sweep for my wrist comfort. With this setup, I’m running a 60 mm stem and zero setback seatpost which has made my fit feel more balanced.

Secondly, the highhhhh bottom bracket. I originally built the Scapebot with 170 mm cranks due to some unforeseen product choices and I quickly found that these put my riding position too high. I swapped to 175 mm cranks, brought my saddle down a bit, and felt more IN the bike. I still very rarely strike my pedals even with 175 mm cranks. My advice: don’t shy away from longer cranks on the Scapebot.

Third, sizing will depend on your desired wheel size. I mentioned earlier that I planned to build the bike with mid-size 29er tires. This inherently raises the bottom bracket compared to smaller wheel sizes. Without knowing how the standover height was measured when picking out the frame I decided to be conservative and get a size large so I would have some flexibility. I like the current standover height, but the reach and stack height feel too small as a result. I have a long torso and short (for my height) legs. The Scapebot feels like it was designed for long legs and short torsos, so a bit of a mismatch out of the box.

If I could start all over with what I know now, I would build this bike with some wide 27.5″ rims (Velocity Duallys come to mind) and just stick with that one wheelset. Due to the smaller wheel size, I would probably size up to an XL frame. I would still be able to run large 3.8” tires which would measure slightly smaller on the 40 mm rims, but would function just fine at low pressure. This would also give a bit more clearance than the 26 x 3.8” tires on fully fat rims which have millimeters of frame clearance. I strove to try the outliers of what the frame was designed for, to see if the grass was greener, and as with most Crust Bikes, I believe the Scapebot would shine brightest with a 27.5” wheelset.

If I Could Make My Own Scape_____

I mentioned almost 3000 words ago that I was in the market for a custom frame when I decided to go with the Scapebot instead. A few economic pressures forced my hand more than anything as the Scapebot was going to be one-third the price of a custom frame. I like my Scapebot, but as you can see with all of the tinkering, it’s been hard-won affection for an admittedly strange bike.

So what would I change? I would drop the bottom bracket just a hair (5-10 mm) to put the rider a bit more in the bike frame, and suggest running the ever-so-fashionable short cranks if needed. This may sound crazy, but I’d lengthen the head tube, once again, just a bit. The current high BB requires a lot of spacers to get the bars close to even with the saddle, so evening out that relationship a bit would feel nice. I’d prefer a sliding drop-out to the rocker for easier disc brake access. I would swap to a tapered headtube so other forks could be used. Finally, I’d slacken the head tube angle. I think ~68 degrees would be great. If I were to go further, I’d want to pair the change with a steep seat tube as well. I’m very intrigued with the geometry of Ronnie’s Rosé frames that came out some years ago. Maybe there is a “reined-in” version of those frames in my future?

Are You Done Talking Yet?

Let’s wrap this up…

Should I have bought a custom frame? Most likely. Do I love my Scapebot, with a few caveats and nitpicks? I do. Should I have embraced 27.5” wheels instead of forsaking them as some bygone thing of the past? Yes, I should have. Mistakes were made, I went on the mother of all square tapered BB quests, and I had fun the entire time especially when I was riding the Scapebot instead of dwelling on how to make it all fit together. We’ve been on a journey already and I feel like this is just the beginning of our quest.

Pros

Wide choice of tires and wheel sizes
Huge main triangle for frame bag
So many rack and accessory mounting points
Says yes to almost anything you want to do
Great colors, dull and nerdy (Macintosh tan) to flashy and vibrant (pink/purple)
High bottom bracket