Free is good
I’m going to have to delay assembling the bike kit for a while, it appears, because I managed to score a free GT Talera frame set (and immediately discarded the fork, because it’s heavy and ugly) which I am going to try to build up from parts lying around the basement (plus a used fixed-fixed hub, if I can find one that uses 130mm spacing, because I want to try it out a fixed-gear bicycle.)
It started out as a 26" bike, but it has buckets of clearance for 650b (or even 700c, if I wanted to use disk brakes and have it be a 650b winter/700c summer bike) wheels, even if they’re fitted with Grand Bois Hetres. The axle to crown measurement on the fork is huge, to the point where I can put a 700c low-trail Electra Ticino fork onto it without messing up the geometry at all (right now it’s tipped forwards a little bit but that’s because I haven’t moved the bearing race over to the new fork and I’ve got a 700c wheel under the back just to keep it off the ground – when I get a 650b wheel in back and have reinstalled the headset it will level back out.)
I believe I’ve already got everything I need to build this into a bicycle sitting in the basement (except for a fixed-gear hub, but I might just lock a freehub and use that instead) so I’ll be able to get a nice low-trail porteur fixie for the cost of enough tubing to build a front rack :-)