ULTIMATE HARDCORE HARDTAIL 💥 NICOLAI ARGON / MTB BUILD

guess what's happening in this video new bike day let's build this bad boy [Music] well as you may have seen on my social media i have been gathering parts for a new hardtail build which is the nikolai argon here it is delicious delightful it's going to be a wee hardcore hardtail with pinion at the bottom you see this frame has some very nice details as do all the nikolai's these massive welding marks are quite impressive and we've got some really beautifully machined chain stays at the back here the drop outs and the belt tensioning slider here are quite a thing of beauty so we can actually move the whole axle all the way along clamp it up very nice let's get building hey next up out of the box is some hope goodies is that the right way around it is excellent so here we have some nice e4 brakes the adapters the rotors in the bottom and seat clamp which we can put straight on so i'm going to take that and also headset because we need to put that in there seat clamp's an easy one so let's just stick that straight on there all the pieces of the hope headset the tapered headset because it's big at the bottom and small at the top all right let's grease her up and slip her in oh and it also has the head doctor bit so instead of ramming a star nut into your fork steerer you use this thing that expands inside the fork steerer and you can screw down into it to tighten the headset magic solutions i love the shimano grease it looks like the same color as the the hope the green bearing on the inside nice would be better with a brush but i am not that fancy okay let's crank her up see that it's all sitting nice and straight very nice squeeze it in very nice oh yes look at the grease squelch out squelch out the side tight is that as tight as it should be yeah there we go that says tight there excellent pop that off make sure these come with us and we have one headset cup set inserted bob on can we focus here yes look at the the grease around there just take the excess off and put it inside for where the bearing is going to go i'm i'm putting a scottish amount of grease into the bearings here next out the bag or the box should i say it's some forks now these are my old forks that i replaced with the marks and we have a pre-installed mud hugger and yeah everything's kind of good to go so let's fit these bad boys onto the frame as always a liberal but controlled application of the lube got to not overdo it because that gathers dirt but also not underdo it because then you get dirt and crud and water all the way through and that's the good forks in smash that down and what bit might we stick on the top here i know oh yes actually i couldn't help myself and i have already attached it to the handlebars got a nice little red hope free ride stem i believe it's 35 mil looks good let's stick it on oh perfect there we go sometimes takes a little bit of encouragement just to settle in nice i think it's time to crack out one of the most crucial parts of the build goes down here let's see what's in the box here we go pinion pinion all in a box in here we have the gearbox here it is what a unit what are you in it some bit of kit this is the pinion p1 9 xr which is a nine speed version with an extended range that gives it the same kind of range as the 12 speed which is a tad under 600 for this one but with only nine gears and it saves a little bit of weight by removing one whole set of the gears to bring it down to nine which is fab and i thought i would change it up for this build and see what this one was like because i think the 12 gears is perhaps unnecessary and the jumps between them are not all that necessary either i feel like my legs can cater for an awful lot more power um variation and speed rather than the pure road bike cadence model of uh power delivery so let's give this a try let's bolt it on and see how it goes it's pretty easy to install this actually three bolts on each side and we're done here are the bolts right here is the pinion box the the drive side is this side here with a little spline on it and the brake side is the side with the gear cables that come out so we're putting it on this way and generally all we do is put these bolts in here now from what i remember we put the back ones in first okay and then the other ones go into place pretty straightforward pop bit of an interference fit just at the front here to help steady it you'll notice that there's plenty of loctite on these bolts already and that's just to make sure that they're not coming loose at any point because you're basically putting your whole weight and force through these bolts here as you're stood on the pedal so delivering all the bikes power through these six bolts so they've got to be strong okay just need to put the cranks on there actually i've got to put the front cog on as well so next out the box are these amazing carbon drive cogs from gates and this is the one that goes on the gearbox it's beautiful single piece machining it really is quite incredible actually my previous video i did on fitting one of these that if you twang it it rings for ages okay that goes on there super nice looks beautiful very shiny and this lock nut put the washer on first which slips over there and then the lock ring also has lots of loctite on it pre-installed and dried ready to be tightened up threaded on so reverse thread this drive train pieces can often be reverse threads so we're tightening it up anti-clockwise which is a bit weird and to tighten it up i need to put the other crank on here which is a big 10 mil allen key job don't you know lube it up you got to lube it up all [Music] right putting that through there and tightening i'm trying not to slip and cut my fingers on everything now we need to put some significant torque through this one so i think i'll use a little bar extender here there we go so a little bit of power just check it here this direction make sure it's all nice and tight in there give it a last crank up okay it says put 40 newton meters on that felt like 40. there we go just make sure they're pointing in opposite directions because we don't want two cranks pointing the same way or any skew with kind of point still twanging nice small cog at the front and give me a nice ground clearance from here as well because we're not running a bass guard anymore although i think i might get one made that fits onto the bottom of the pinion gearbox here just to protect that we don't need the tensioner at the back because we ain't got suspension on this bad boy okay so next out the box are my sixth element wheels these are the massive chunky carbon rims um that i used to run on the geometron but i'm going to put them with the red hub to match the red stem on the hardpale the rear i've pre-installed with the gates carbon drive cog and it's a single speed trials hub because you don't need the full size cassette body carrier on a belt drive system because there's only one cork that means that you can have more engagements in the hub on the trials single speed hub as well as a stiffer wheel because the flanges are further apart and the wheels symmetrical very good we also have tires b tires the snap world cup edition which i've been running on the geometry on for a while now and they are absolutely fab loads of people have been asking for these and they seem to be getting a bit of a reputation for some extreme grip and good wearing as well look at the the novels here are a little bit deeper than the standard trail version and the update to the world cup edition and has now got these slightly more reinforced and square side knobs so we'll get these mounted up and get those wheels on the bike i'm so confident i'm not even going to try and blow it up first i'm just going to put the sealant straight in and blow it on with just hands do i even need to take the valve core out quite probably not first time no problemo straight on the rim has it popped yet nope still to pop down there oh missed again more beautiful hope goodness to put on these bad boys going for the big numbers as well two or threes love me the big breaking tower although joe but joe barnes actually mentioned a really cool point the other day that i hadn't thought of before was that if you run smaller discs with power for powerful calipers then they heat up faster because it's a smaller disc smaller material and and that means that your your brakes work faster quicker better when they're wet interesting point what a faffet is putting in rotor bolts let's zoom in on the favage faffa zoom i should have brought my [Music] power tools okay duck now we've got the tires blown up the rotor on let's stick this bad boy in the fort and i know some of you will be like oh what's he doing put the wheels on at this stage they're only going to get in the way well a screw you guys this is my build video and i'm going to build it the way i want and i want to see the wheels on so the wheels are going on my specially adapted t45 axle look at that very nice it's only got a 27.5 wheel in the front but i think in the future i'll be changing these bad boys and getting the old 29er on the front to make it a mullet as well because i'm really enjoying that setup and now for the rear put the back wheel on quick bar spin all right look at that she's got the wheels on what other little bits in the box have we got let's go and have a look got a nice saddle to put on grips and stuff and the dropper post let's get that on the packaging on the bike yoke dropper is sensational bike yoke revive because you can revive it on the go that's the whole point don't need that bit anymore oh the all the good stuff oh it even comes with a cable nice one forgot about that and the clamp and the lever is all sweetly packed all the way in there what a package here is the post itself super duper actuation smooth as butter let's slot it in i'll hook it up with the um cable and the lever once we get the brakes on nice box okay here comes the left brake lever very nice here comes the front brake little darling so for the saddles we've got the airgun sm mountain bike for men and it has a little blue bit on the back which isn't my normal color but it does actually have little blue bits on the tires and on these forks so i think we'll be matching in quite nicely there we go quite easy to get this saddle bolted in you don't need to take the clamp completely apart to fit the saddle in as you saw slides in and out nice and easily there you go simple as that job done of the coolest features about the the new nikolai setup is the external cable routing so all we do is clamp it down onto the frame and we've got these little things here little clamps that stop the cables going anywhere which is fantastic much neater stop saying scoffing on the fork crowns or anywhere else stops your cables rattling about as well right next up is the shifter we're going to fit that onto the bars pretty straightforward slide it on there we go good to go it slides under the lever this is the new shifter that was designed in collaboration with airgun and they've got grips to match so this is the little shorty grip that goes on the drive side goes on there and the long one was on this side well that was easy wasn't it a little capping all the way in and then i can tighten that one up which is very nice yeah this is the the ds2 shifter which has much better cable routing as you can see here there's a 90 degree cable exit and it goes under the levers which is really really handy okay okay we are ready for the last component which is the belt now this is a slightly different sized belt to what i'm used to it's a little bit smaller because it doesn't need to have the tensioner part here because it's the hard tail cog to cog no tensioner except we tension it with these sliding dropouts at the back here and we put it on here and we can split the frame just here normally i'd split it in the linkage on the geometron because we need to get it in behind the chainstay or the belt stay perhaps this should now be called easy as that just a little break in the frame because it's going to go through just like that hook that through there put it all back together okay another thing that i need to check is the belt alignment and i've got spacers on the freehub body here so that i can move the cog left and right but it actually looks pretty good the way it is i'm going to loosen the dropouts which is a six mil use the triangle allen key and loosen them off and on the other side the cool thing about the other side is that when you loosen it off the brake caliper actually slides with it so you don't need to worry about tightening that up then we've got the adjuster in there which allows us to basically tighten it up there we go so the belt is on and now we need to set the tension and on my phone here i'm going to get an app so search for gates carbon drive there it is carbon drive the app installing and i allow access to the audio because we are going to choose by twanging the belt what it sounds like when it's in tension okay so i'm consistently getting in the low 70s of the hertz low 70s hertz so that means that if i look at the recommended frequency it's 60 to 75 and i'd quite like as much tension as i am allowed to make sure that it doesn't come off so we're in the low 70s and that sounds bang on to me so i'm going to even out the drop outs tighten them up and that's the belt on so i've put the the cables on the frame attached them with the little clamps on the down tube brought them around added on the special little ferrules with the sleeve extension on them and to access the shifter there's a a little screw here a little boat i'm just going to undo that one open that off and then slide off the the covering this just comes off like that so as you can see it's getting quite dark now losing a bit of light so i've just cracked on and sorted out figured out which cable goes in which bit although i know it it is worth checking and i've now tensioned up the cables and i'm putting the final cable in and i'm just pinching that up as well because it's a real awkward mission to try and cut it neatly when there's tension in the cables the index ring back on or the housing clamp put the screw back in that's as far as it will go into one and all the way to nine so the indexing is perfect what a dude can you tell i've done it before okay for the finishing touches i've put some lights out can you tell looks much different in here now voila it is finished all we need is some pedals let's check those gears oh yeah easy gear straight through into hard gear water range okay let's unhook it see how it goes solid well there we are the nikolai argonne with pinion gates carbon drive hook brakes hook components six element wheels v tires mud hugger at the front the bike yolk dropper post air gun saddle air gun grips yeah what a machine i think you can see that it's a a very simple build with the gearbox drivetrain all you need to do is bolt it on pull the cables in and it's all a nice sealed simple unit need to do a little bit fine tuning and cable trimming and stuff like that i've got some plans for the forks i think we're going to get some nice special forks to put on the front of there get rid of that gold stuff if you guys enjoyed the video give us a thumbs up like if you like the bike and check over here for some more videos subscribe down here and i'll see you guys in the next one cheerio

Channel: Ramsay MacFarlane

Views: 221,654

Keywords: MTB, Hardtail, Hardcore Hardtail, Mountain Bike, Mountain Biking

Id: 1llqP8qQoQI

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 08 2020