Craig, more commonly known as 2nd Life Bikes, brought this Stayer ATB to the Bespoked Manchester bike show. While this bike was built for him by Stayer, you can also go on one of their Frame Building 101 courses and build one yourself. Or, build whatever wild dreams you have. It’s £1,500 for the week long course, and a fairly simple frame like this will cost around £450 in materials. You don’t need any prior experience – they’ll tell you everything you need to do to leave at the end of the week with a frame that you can ride and say you built yourself. Then it’s up to you to choose the components to add, which is where I picked up the conversation with Craig.
First of all, I think you do some interesting things, so tell me a little bit about the interesting things that you do?
Craig: My background is in retro builds. I quite like picking up old frames, old parts, and kind of clumping them together. My motto is saving old bikes. I like trying to get old, battered old bikes back on the road. And old steel frames ride incredibly well even to this day, so I like trying to revive them and bring them back.
And so, why did you decide that you wanted this bike?
This is the Stayer StAyTB, which is essentially a love story of late 80s, early 90s mountain bikes. When Sam [from Stayer] first told me about the geometry and the idea behind it, I wept slightly. It was exactly what I could have dreamed of, but in the modern day!
It has all the thru axle dropouts, it has nice standards with the headset and the seat post, so I can fit normal things in there instead of spending months looking for an odd side seat post that was only made once! So, it’s like that kind of dream feel. Plus, it’s brazed as well. The steel brazed feeling, once you’ve ridden a bike like that, there’s nothing else like it.
Tell me about your component choices?
The stem I’ve got on there is Hope Straight, I think it’s the 090. It’s quite a nice, light stem, but I like the length with the geometry of the actual bike itself. The handlebars I’ve changed several times now, from the Ritchey Coyotes in silver to the Ritchey Coyotes in black, and now I’ve got the Buzzards, which I’m now pretty happy with. This bike, I wanted to build it in a way that it could lap up miles without really feeling too heavy, so it keeps me in a nice upright position and comfortable for real long days on the bike.
The brakes are the TRP Evo Slates, I’ve not used them before. I actually just found them at a really good price. They’re 4-pot brakes, so I wanted something quite strong, but they ended up being super nice to kind of set up and really reliable as well, so far as well.
I’m quite famous for running DMR grips. The Death Grips are the only ones I run now. Anything else feels a little bit strange to me. The same with the V8 pedals from DMR.
The racks front and back are both from Velo Orange. The front one is the Flat Pack rack. I wanted something more for soft luggage like tents and sleeping bags, things like that, to put on the front. The one I have on the back is the There And Back, which eventually I’m trying to get my friend who makes my custom bags to make me something that fits on there as well.
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I love my top cap. That is made by Sam in the Stayer Workshop. We do sell these on the website as well. This is our Crack Fox one. Our workshop’s in East London, and there’s some really ropey foxes that live around the area, so this is a homage to them.
I should probably mention the spacers as well. The spacers are the It Will Rust spacers, again made in the Stayer Workshop.
I thought something horrible had happened!
No, that was purely by design. The patina will be very beautiful over time. Especially with my background in retro older bikes, as soon as he showed me some, I was like, I need those on my bike, thank you very much!
What about that little feed pouch?
My friend Chris from Zola Works made it for me. This is a very new project of his. He’s just made a few bags. He’s trying to get into more custom work, so it won’t have ‘lines’ necessarily. He’s more into doing the more custom stuff.
The frame bag is also by him. He made this for me a few days ago, just because I wanted it ready for the show. I’m really excited to start tinkering with it.
Is that two sections or all one section? What’s going on inside?
It is two sections. You have two zips so you can go bottom or top, but it does have a removable middle. I think most of the time I will run it as two when I’m on longer trips, where I have food and tools and things like that. For the day-to-day rides, I will rip it out and then I can just fill it with shopping and clothing and stuff as I’m out and about.
We’ve done pedals, but what about those cranks? I know that there hasn’t really been a nasty accident that has happened to them and there hasn’t been an apocalypse yet, so what’s going on there?
The cranks are Specialized. I believe they would have shipped with the Rockhoppers. I think I paid £15 for them on eBay at some point down the line. I had them in the shed for a long time and I actually put them on another bike and I spray-painted them with this web spray paint effect. It was for another project a long time ago. I just needed something that I knew was going to be the right size just so I could build this up to try it out. Then I put it on there and they haven’t come off yet. I really like them. The BB is quite old as well. I don’t know where it’s from. It was in the shed somewhere. It was the right size. I put it in there and it stayed in there so far. I think I’m going to ride both of those components to death before I change them to something else. Out of everything on the bike, that section definitely looks a little bit more me.
Choice of saddle?
This is the Brooks Cambium. This is the orange as well. I was very weird with some of the colour choices on my bikes and I’ve added a couple of orange accents to the hubs and the headset. I thought I’d add that to it. When I first put it on there, I hated it. I was like, that’s not the right colour. I put it back on there a few weeks ago and I’ve been riding around on it. It’s such a comfy saddle. It’s the first Brooks saddle I’ve actually put on one of my bikes. I understand why [people like them]. It’s very, very good. The colour has grown on me now.
Is that seatpost the right colour?
I quite like describing this bike as ‘orange and lime Tic-Tacs’. I’ve got the green chain ring as well, so there’s two bits of green.
But they’re not the same green!
Most people don’t notice that! But yes, they’re not quite the same green. But the Charged Chopstick seatpost is probably my favourite seatpost ever made for one simple reason. There are a few other seatposts on the market that have done it, but it’s the one bolt to change the seat on and off of it. And for someone who literally takes their bikes apart on a weekly basis, it just makes the job so easy. So I put it on there, and it’s another one of those components I put on there and then it just stayed there. I like it very much.
Saddle clamps are the thing in the bike world that needs work more than anything else. I hate changing saddles.
I totally agree and I think Charged nailed it years and years and years ago and I wish they still made them.
Why these tyres?
These tyres are the Regoliths from Kenda. I am quite into putting the biggest tyre on my bike that I can fit. And it’s never necessarily the right thing to do. These are 2.2s, which is a lot smaller than I usually do on my bikes. I work a bit with Kenda and they said, ‘do you want to try these ones out?’ This is the first trip I’ve done on them. I’ve only done a few road miles on them so far and they’re super nice and really good for rolling resistance when you’re going between trails. And this weekend coming, I’ve got a group ride that I’m looking forward to, which has quite a lot of mud and is hard packed. So I’m looking forward to that. My first thoughts are that I quite like them. They feel really nice, and they’re a bit narrower than I’d usually ride. So I’m looking forward to seeing how they cut through mud.
What’s your favourite design feature?
I honestly like the top tube on the bike. I quite like riding aggressive bikes with more slanted top tubes. So you’ve got a bit more movement on and off the bike, especially if you’re doing technical terrain. But this just fills me with joy. I love the way it feels and the way it essentially rides like an old retro mountain bike, which is what I’m passionate about. But now I get the benefits of all the modern parts on it. And it just honestly laps up miles. It just feels great.
Is there a retro bike that you would most like to discover hidden away in a shed somewhere?
I can’t tell you what model it is, just because I can’t remember! And I still haven’t found it. But when I was a kid, a few of my mates all had this same Saracen. It was a steel frame. It was kind of white with red writing. But I still don’t know what model it is. It’s the one that I Google regularly, just trying to find out what it is. To this day, I don’t even know if it was a Saracen. But when I see it, I’ll know it! And I potentially will be completed. That’ll be it. I’ll be able to finish collecting retro bikes.
No one’s ever finished!
I know that’s not true. I’m lying through my teeth for sure.
Is there a single elusive component that drives you crazy because you just can’t find it to finish a build?
For me, I mentioned it already about seatposts. It’s nearly always seatposts. I have a handful of Specialized Hard Rocks and Rock Hoppers and a couple of old Saracens as well that all have weird seatposts. One of them, because it’s slightly bent where it’s been in a shed for years, I can’t really measure it properly. And I still haven’t found the best seatpost to fit it. So it’s quite hard. Seatposts are really difficult to find and I wish I could find a set of every size that I could just always have the right seatpost.
Okay, thank you very much for talking to us. May your seatposts all fit!
Craig has a free ‘Crusty Cruise’ group ride going from the Stayer workshop out to Epping Forest this weekend, 3rd May. Find more details here.
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