Bike testing has always been an integral part of our work at Singletrack. Yet we thought we’d do things a little differently this time.
We wanted to give you an idea of some of the bikes we like to ride when we’re not testing the latest 36-speed, carbon full suspension wünderbikes. The bikes we like to get out on a sunny summer evening and just ride without having to think how well the tyre contact patch is performing or whether we can feel the promised mid-stroke ramp-up on square-edge hits.
This article first appeared in Singletrack World Magazine issue 131
- Price: £560
- From: Greg Fuquay
Fuquay frames (say ‘foo-kway’) were made in the UK between 1991 and 1999 by American Greg Fuquay from a small workshop outside Ipswich. An Alabama native originally (and now, again) Greg had originally been posted to Suffolk by the US Airforce, where he maintained planes, but he had trained with legendary frame builder Ben Serotta and brought those skills with him when he set up a small frame building business near his adopted home of Ipswich.
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Not only were mountain bike frame builders rare in the UK in those days, but Greg was the first UK builder to TIG weld his frames rather than fillet brazing, like his contemporaries Dave Yates and Chas Roberts. Being a one-man operation and having to do everything from answering the phone (this was mostly pre-internet, remember?) to making frames and boxing them up meant that production was small and Fuquay frames were a reasonably rare sight on the start lines of mountain bike races of the time. However, the bikes had a huge appeal for riders who were after something light and technical and more US-influenced than the more traditional UK-built fillet-brazed custom frames of the time.
From a personal point of view, I’d got to know Greg in the very early ’90s through the Thetford Forest-based mountain bike scene and we hit it off well enough that we were talking about working together to expand his business. That fell through, but a direct consequence of that found me stumbling into my first job as a mountain bike journalist, so I have much to owe Greg for. I ordered this bike soon after starting my job at Mountain Bike World magazine and it ended up being reviewed by the great Steve Worland in a subsequent issue.
The Bike
This bike was custom-built for me in 1994, after a full measuring-up session with Mr Fuquay. The frame and fork are TIG welded steel, using a Ritchey Logic tubeset, an upgrade on the regular CMR (Chromoly Multi Radius) that Greg would offer at the time. Up front is one of Greg’s ‘Gumbo’ rigid forks – and boy, is it rigid. This was from a time of contradictions: riders would want the stiffest fork, like an Accutrax, Pace, Koski or Gumbo, and then search for the most compliant Answer Hyperlite handlebar to soften the ride. The frame itself uses slim, dainty Ritchey Logic Prestige tubing, beautifully welded by Greg. The wishbone seatstays are particularly pleasing and they proved a sturdy place to mount the newfangled V-brakes when they started appearing in 1995 or so.
Up front, there’s no missing the chunky, welded four-piece steel Fuquay Gumbo fork. The steerer was threaded as the newfangled threadless ‘Aheadset’ still wasn’t that commonplace at the time.
The geometry is typical of the time – a 71°/73° pairing for super-quick steering and a reasonably aggressive position. The reach as best I can measure is a fairly contemporary 440mm or so, with a 23in/585mm effective top tube. The elephant in the room is the 135mm Salsa quill stem, which was just how bikes were back then. For the time, though, the jaunty rise was dramatically tall for a time when riders were slamming stems. To add to that loft, there’s the Salsa/3TTT riser bars (complete with stiffening brace) to keep the front end a little higher and the 600mm width allowing a certain amount of control. Fashion dictated that if you had riser bars, you couldn’t run bar ends, so I was spared that ignominy.
The colour of the bike is now a thing of legend. After my suggestions of ‘sort of purple/maroon/burgundy’ were deemed too vague over the phone, I went to a supermarket and looked for something that was the colour I wanted. ‘Walkers Smoky Bacon crisps!’ was my instruction to Greg, who duly bought and ate a packet, sending the empty wrapper alongside the bare frame to the paint shop.
Originally, the components were an exercise in nonconformity: GripShift X-Ray shifters driving a Mavic road rear derailleur, a Suntour XC Pro front mech and a Middleburn triple chainset on a Royce titanium bottom bracket. Wheels were Hope Ti-glide (in red, of course) with 26in Mavic rims. The brakes were originally Paul’s or perhaps WTB cantilevers, though early XT V-brakes soon made an appearance on it, complete with ‘zip tie’ mod to keep the parallelogram brake arms from rattling around.
Tyres for this current millennium have been 2.1in Onza ‘Porc II’ Porcupines, although originally the front tyre was a MASSIVE Panaracer Dart 2.2in beast.
From the start, the whole bike creaked like a banshee and the shifting was vague, at best. The brakes mostly polished the rims in the wet, while wearing through expensive brake pads. And the cranks? The combination of a Ti square taper bottom bracket and machined aluminium cranks was a match made in creaky heaven. Without a slathering of anti-seize, every pedal stroke was like throwing a Victorian metal bedframe down a fire escape. Coolness obviously came at a cost.
There was only so much top-shelf artisan wankery that I could endure in the name of art and being quirky, so I eventually stripped most of the ‘trick’ components off into a bucket and just ordered up a complete Shimano XT three by eight groupset. This has proved silent and trouble-free for the last 20 or so years.
The Ride
Climb aboard. Marvel at the relative lack of weight as you move it around (it tipped under 25lbs in its racing heyday) and set off. The forward-leaning commitment from the long Salsa stem is immediately noticeable, as is the relatively tiller-like steering. Despite the steep head angle, you still have a long lever of a stem to control it. The bar width feels right for the bike. Much wider and you’d be spreadeagled, with even more weight over the front axle.
Climbing is quick! The Fuquay sprints from the line and the laughably teeny 26in wheels are instant to spin up to speed. Traction’s not bad either, given that the tyres are inner-tubed and running 40-odd psi.
Change up a gear, via the positive ‘click’ of the Grip Shift Attack shifter, as the track flattens and… well, not much actually happens. It turns out that the eight-speed 11–23T road racing cassette, so prized in the NEMBA cross-country race days, has such a narrow range that it takes two shifts to even notice a change in gear ratio. It also has the detrimental effect of giving a 22/23 lowest gear from the 44/34/22 triple chainset, which isn’t ideal for the jagged profiles of a rugged Yorkshire ride. On a tour of the Lincolnshire Wolds, though, it would probably be ideal.
Riding twisty trails, the bike is razor sharp. The kind of ‘move your eyebrows to steer’ sharpness that only a regular road bike rider will be comfortable with. This is essential in the lost age-old art of ‘picking a line’ where the difference between a smoother but longer line is noticeably faster compared against a straighter, rougher line on the same bike.
Stomp on the pedals out of the corner, line up for the next one, jam on the brakes and… nothing. Well, nearly nothing. Riders used to the one-finger power of modern discs are in for a shock. Old V-brakes, rubbing on alloy rims, especially in the wet, need a whole world of relearning and anticipation. Even the rear ceramic-coated Mavic rim just makes louder scrubbing noises instead of being quicker to slow you. If ever there was an excuse to carry speed…
However, talking of speed, as you’d imagine, riding the Fuquay Logic fast on rough ground takes some getting used to. Rocky trails jackhammer your arms and blur your vision; line choice becomes more ‘fluid’ as your control over exactly where you’re going diminishes. In short, it’s a pretty knuckle and eyeball-blurring experience. However, on the right trail – those wild garlic-lined, deep woodland singletracks, or that single chalk line running through a sunny, arable field outside Hastings – it’s an appropriately fast and engaging ride.
Overall
The Fuquay Logic was built for the riding I did at the time – which was a mix of sinuous Suffolk, rooty singletrack, endless Salisbury Plain and South Downs chalkland and some classic British cross-country racing, and the bike was ideal for the job. Suspension at the time was 60mm of (barely) oil-damped, elastomer travel, 75mm if you were a downhiller. Lines had to be picked and followed through.
Obviously, bikes and geometry and just the scale of riding have come on hugely in the last quarter century. Give this a slightly shorter stem and some drop bars and it might do OK as a modern gravel bike. For now, though, I keep it in its ready-to-ride condition to remind me what we used to ride, but also how awesome it is to have a bike that was hand-made for you.
Frame // Ritchey Logic Prestige steel
Fork // Fuquay Gumbo rigid
Hubs // Shimano XTR
Rims // WTB Laser/Mavic X618
Tyres // Onza Porc II 2.1in
Chainset // Shimano XT 44/34/22T
Rear mech // Shimano XT
Shifters // Shimano XT RF+
Cassette // SRAM 11-23T
Brakes // Real brake levers, Shimano XT & LX V-brakes
Stem // Salsa Moto 135mm
Bars // Salsa 3TTT alloy with ‘moto’ brace
Grips // ODI
Seatpost // Unknown 27.2mm
Saddle //Unknown
Size tested // Medium
Sizes available // Custom
Weight // Approx 24.5lbs
While you’re here…
If you think your bike is the bee’s knees, tell us about it and maybe we’ll feature you in our Readers’ Rides series:
