This 7.2kg XC rig will body shame your mountain bike
Open One+ gets the full weight weenie treatment
Published:
How much does your mountain bike weigh? We’re pretty confident it’ll be more than this one. Fair Wheel Bikes of Tucson, Arizona is better known for its high-zoot roadie builds, but it does fat tyres too.
Based on Open’s One+ frame, which weighs in at 923g in a size large, this no-expense-spared build features all manner of weight weenie exotica and comes in at 7.2kg including pedals.
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The One+ sports a hyper-niche German:A Xcite Zero 29er fork with 100mm of travel, which weighs just 1,102g despite its 36mm stanchions.
The wheelset is from Alchemist and it uses the company’s own hubs and carbon rims, laced up with Sapim CX-Ray spokes for a total weight of 1,248g.
Fair Wheel saved 28g by swapping out the frame’s stock headset and seat clamp, and shaved a whole 5g off the shifter with an aftermarket barrel adjuster and replacement bolts.
The gear cable is a standard Shimano item, but it’s housed in Alligator Mini I-link outer for a total weight of 21g.
With a steep head angle, longish stem and fixed post, the Open has quite an old-school Euro flavour.
Nevertheless, the build aimed to achieve minimum weight without compromising on “functionality and race-worthiness”, so that meant usable tyres (Schwalbe Rocket Rons) and a normal cassette rather than an aluminium weight weenie special.
For a full breakdown of this build including the weights of literally every component, head over to the Fair Wheel Bikes blog.
Authors
Matthew Loveridge (formerly Allen) is an experienced mechanic and an expert on bike tech who appreciates practical, beautifully-engineered things. Originally a roadie, he likes bikes and kit of every stripe, and he's tested a huge variety of both over the years for BikeRadar, Cycling Plus and others. At 174cm tall and 53kg, he looks like he should be better at cycling than he actually is, and he's ok with that.
