Back in the 2000s, riders would often buy a frame and build it up with their choice of parts. That way, you dodged the outdated cockpit kit and cheap tyres that came on most complete bikes, could fit components better suited to your style of riding (in the UK, often a single chainring) and, if you were canny with your purchases, might even save a little money.
But then manufacturers caught up and started fitting wider bars, shorter stems, better rubber and 1x drivetrains, so that most new bikes were pretty sorted. Add to that the rise of online ‘direct-sale’ brands, which brought prices down, and suddenly ‘self-builds’ didn’t make so much sense. Or at least, not from a financial standpoint.
Is that still the case, though, or with all the turmoil in the bike industry and the price of bikes soaring, could self-builds make a comeback? And, money aside, are there other benefits to this approach? We decided to put a bike together ourselves to find out...
THE SPEC
STEP 1 OF ANY BUILD IS DECIDING HOW MUCH TO SPEND AND WHAT PARTS TO RUN
1 THE BUDGET
Benchmark, not bargain bin
The first step was deciding how much to spend. Our aim wasn’t to create a crazy-cheap bike, but one that offered decent performance on a reasonable budget, so we looked at the top-spec alloy bikes from the big brands and used these as our benchmark. Pairing an aluminium frame with mid-range kit, these generally cost between £3,500 and £4,000, with the exception of a few outliers, so an upper limit of £4k seemed sensible, aligning well with our Trail Bike of the Year test (p42). We broke this down into
