Although we considered for a short time a new bicycle frame, we gave an opportunity to that old one. It is worth it. A Kona Nunu frame (born in 2003) has been a basement for that project. Custom airbrush revives the whole bike, which is the main goal of the project.
I must honestly admit that the overall frame design has been entirely under Andrejka`s responsibility. She selected the main theme (imaginary garden with plenty of butterflies), and colours (bright pastel colours) and closely co-operated in the process of components selection.
Previous black and white designs were replaced with the modern and "trendy" white colour using a FOX bright white tone. A separate design element on the frame is the name of the owner. Here we were inspired by Asian culture. A complete photo gallery of the frame is here.
I start with the Chris King NoThreadset headset, Hope seat post clamp, and Hope Ceramic bottom bracket. All are blue anodized. Moreover, we continue with the blue anodization of Middleburn RS8 X-Type cranks, namely on the spider of the right crank.
Another separate chapter on the meaning of the design is silver components. The Thomson Elite stem and seat post or Specialites TA Chinook chainrings and silver Middleburn chainring bolts seem to us like an ideal choice for that bike. Silver design highlights a 9-cog Shimano Deore XT cassette and the KMC X9SL chain.
The "blue sea" exception consists of green anodized tune AC16+17 quick releases and the green Race Face Deus XC lowrizer handlebar, cut off to the desired width. With this "green offensive," we break the small domination of blue. The theme of white continues with the silicone ESI Chunky grips and Selle Italia SLR saddle with titanium rails.
I`d like to stop by and consider a bit of Shimano Deore M475 mechanical disc brakes. Andrejka has used them a lot and she didn`t want to replace them with a hydraulic version. Initially, the brakes were painted black and fitted with common stainless steel bolts. Colour anodization would have been risky without any further warranty of quality, therefore we decided to re-spray the brake callipers in white and use titanium bolts. Just to say in the end, the brake pads - Kool Stop.
White tuning continues at custom-painted CenterLock adapters by Alligator assembling Alligator Aries rotors. We chose white Jagwire Ripcord L3 brake housing. The brakes are mechanical, thus we had chosen white PowerCordz brake cables.
A 3x9 drivetrain is well-controlled by Shimano XTR SL-M952 Rapid Fire shifters. The shifters are good to co-operate with a normal-cage Shimano XTR RD-M971 rear derailleur and with a Shimano XTR FD-M952 Differential Plate front derailleur (the best front derailleur ever, though). This I have tuned with titanium bolts. The Extralite UltraLevers brake levers in the cockpit were taken from the previous bike setup. A part of the white design is Jagwire Ripcord L3 gear housing and white PowerCordz synthetic shift cables.
The last chapter of this "revival" story is about wheels and tyres. We decided to reuse Mavic Crossmax SL Disc factory XC wheels. Andrejka thinks they fit very well with the overall bike design. In season 2014, we draw on Schwalbe Racing Ralph UST tyres and replenished them with NoTubes sealant.
