“Crust Bikes”

Search Term – Change

Then and Now: Suntour XCii Vs. MKS XCiii Pedals

Radar By: john watson

Then and Now: Suntour XCii Vs. MKS XCiii Pedals

With the pandemic driving up prices of vintage mountain and road components, many people are turning to modern recreations of these staple parts to finish out their build projects. Whether it’s a Salsa Pro Moto stem or in this case, Suntour’s legendary XC “bear trap” pedals, there are modern components inspired by these classic components but how close are they to the original? In this post, John looks at what makes the XCii so unique and how close the XCiii comes to the original…

New US-Made Larkin Cycles Stems in Copper, Brass, and Nickel Finishes

Radar

New US-Made Larkin Cycles Stems in Copper, Brass, and Nickel Finishes

Speaking of Crust Bikes, they teamed up with Darren Larkin from Larkin Cycles to make these 1″ threadless stems. Yeah, you read that correctly, a 1″ threadless stem. Not many people are making these anymore but now might be a good time to ditch that 1990s aluminum stem you’ve been hammering and switch to a heat-treated Chromoly stem! Retail is $160 and shipping today from Crust Bikes.

Specs:
-Made in Los Angeles, California, USA using heat treated 4130 chromoly.
-Tig Welded
-Colors- Copper, Brass, Nickel
-Reach- 50mm, 70mm or 80mm
-Clamp Diameters- 31.8 only
-Steerer Tube Clamp Diameter- 1″
-Stack (Bottom of stem to center of clamp)- 60mm
-Weights- 50mm- 190g | 70mm- 198 | 80mm- 216g

A Look at the All New Wizard Works Pelagazam for the Pelago Rasket

Radar

A Look at the All New Wizard Works Pelagazam for the Pelago Rasket

I love my Pelago Rasket on my Crust Bikes Dreamer but one of the things I’m not stoked about it is the limited bag offerings. After reaching out to a variety of bag makers, requesting a “custom” bag for my Rasket, the team at Wizard Works threw its wizard cap into the arena and offered to help me out. Well, after a few months, my Pelagazam bag designed specifically to the dimensions of the Raskett, showed up and I shot some initial photos of this nifty bag this morning, so let’s check it out in detail below!

Grepp Makes Sustainable and Reusable Gripper Handlebar Tape

Radar

Grepp Makes Sustainable and Reusable Gripper Handlebar Tape

Grepp is a Swedish company that makes a reusable handlebar tape called Gripper. This cloth tape is woven in Sweden and is meant to be revitalized when it feels worn out, rather than pitched. The adhesive-free design increases the tape’s life-cycle: Once it feels a bit tired, you can give it a nice spa treatment. Simply remove it residual-free, give it a ride in your washer at 40°C, and reuse it as new. Available in olive, grey, and black from Grepp.cc or from Crust Bikes in the US.

Specs:
-Made in Sweden
-98% TENCEL Modal | 2% Natural Rubber Thread
-Colors- Charcoal (Black), Ultimate Grey, and Olivine
-Width- 27mm
-Thickness- 1.6mm
-Roll Length- 3m
-Weight (per roll)- ~76g

The Radavist’s Top Articles of 2020

Reportage By: John Watson

The Radavist’s Top Articles of 2020

Coming off a week of downtime after one of the most tumultuous years of our lives has brought clarity to this annual retrospective. To be honest, I had no idea what to expect as Covid-19 gripped the global community and changed life as we know it. We looked to our new home in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the surrounding areas for inspiration, pinged our good friends for their penmanship, and listened to communities that have been underrepresented in cycling. What resulted were a lot of articles that tackled some big issues and the realization that we still have a lot of work to do.

I’ve spent the past few weeks mulling over our content and have compiled a list of some of the most meaningful and fun pieces from the past twelve months.  Read on below for a selection of memorable moments from 2020, in chronological order…

The Radavist’s Top Ten Beautiful Bicycles of 2020

Reportage By: John Watson

The Radavist’s Top Ten Beautiful Bicycles of 2020

Each year I like to look at our content in its entirety and reflect back on bikes that took you, the readers of this website, by storm. Back in the mid to late 2000’s it was all fixed gears, then came the gravel bikes, the tourers, the MTBs, and the kooky, eccentric builds you’ve come to enjoy checking out in full-res detail. We’ve got some incredibly talented individuals contributing to this site and their hard work is something I cannot express my gratitude for enough. Going back through the 2020 content here at the Radavist, I am amazed at what we were able to accomplish all things considered.

For this year’s Top Beautiful Bicycles of 2020, we have compiled a great list of ten bikes, ranging from rim brakes to fixed gears, basket bikes, and more. This list is based on web traffic, commentary, and social media chatter, and each of these builds really brought something unique to our content. We omitted bike reviews here but included production bikes. Oh and I hope you like baskets!

Let’s jump right in!

The Radavist’s Top Ten Beautiful Bicycles of 2019

Reportage By: john watson

The Radavist’s Top Ten Beautiful Bicycles of 2019

Wow! What a year it’s been. In the past twelve months, we’ve shot roughly 300 bikes. From gravel races, to NAHBS, the Philly Bike Expo and our normal travels, we really captured some unique builds and we’ve got a good handle on the bikes the readers of the Radavist enjoy checking out based on some key metrics.

Every year we try to do our best to sort through twelve months of archives to narrow down to this list. The first filter is the comment count, which we start at 50 comments. Then comes page views, with the minimum number being 20,000 views. Finally, we look at the social media chatter; including Instagram comments and how many times was the post shared across various platforms.

What we end up with is a list that is filled with a plethora of interesting, versatile, and quirky bikes. The only editorial decision I myself made was to omit reviews of stock bikes. So no Santa Cruz Stigmata or Cannondale Topstone this round!

Check out the full Top Ten Beautiful Bicycles of 2019 below, in no particular order…

Endura Endura
Ripton Ripton
Thomson Thomson
Otso / Wolf Tooth Otso / Wolf Tooth
Brooks Brooks
Paul Paul
Esker Esker
Gravel Adventure Guide Gravel Adventure Guide
Rivendell Rivendell
SimWorks SimWorks
1Up 1Up