WAS IT WORTH IT? My Crust Bombora Build! 

4 years after seeing this video i finally pulled the trigger and bought myself a bombora. will be the first bike I build by myself. thx Russ

That colour makes my soul shine

Why are things soooo confusing these days ..... said everyone!!!! Thank you for saying that Bike industry needs to make it easier for folks

I like the name. It's a word used in Australia for a large rock formation protruded from the shore, frequently associated with waves either suitable or unsuitable for surfing. With the Aussie penchant for shortening names, every coastal town seemingly has a "bombie," pronounced "bommy," nearby.

Russ, you're the Crust to you're sweetie's Breadwinner! Enjoy the new ride!

Cool, Russ. It sounds like a winner. Congrats! And, thanks for sharing this info on the Crust Bombora with your viewers, esp. those of us who are still exploring which bike will be our next N+1.

Totally stoked. Cool bike Man!!

Gorgeous bike Russ and I think anybody who's been with the channel long enough knows your bound to swap components as you find better, but even so cannot knock the choices you've made because its a solid build. Have fun and enjoy.

Permanently enamoured by that paint job!! Infinitely drooling 😍

Awesome! Excited for you. Crust is a great company.

I love it. A great addition to your stable of nerdy bikes. I am also a huge fan of the Venture Max 44 on my CC w/straggler fork(yokozuna). It completely changed how I ride my bike(Chino Hills, Silverado) As always keep up the great work. Man that looks like a fun bike✌😄

Russ, It looks like a fantastic bike and although it may not be quite decked out to perfection, I think that half the fun is to get to continually tweak and upgrade until its dialed in to exactly what you love. You're starting with a sweet frame and it will only get better and better. Thanks for sharing.

Great build and colour! I'd like to hear more of the different tyre pressures you're running in future presentations. Keep up the good work. Thanks

Congrats Russ. Sweet ride!! And Fun vid!

Extremely nice setup. The color is one I really enjoy and couldn't have picked the color combo by myself. Great find of a bike.

I just bought the sunrace cassette and its good to hear it works great with the Rival derailleur, now to get it installed.... I'm gonna be running it with a 32t oval chainring on my Sutra

Sweet bike. Happy pedaling, Russ.

Agree with what you say about the venturemax bars - plenty of options for position - since changing up I've noticed an immediate difference in my stability riding fast or riding downhill.

I'm on the wait list for a bombora since about Sept. thanks to this channel. Word is hopefully end of Feb. or so. Congrats on the bike Russ

Sweet frigging build my friend. Congrats and thanks for sharing!

Excellent build! You spent the extra $$ in all the right places. Looks like a skillfully welded frame. Enjoy! It will be interesting to see how this build evolves over time.

Nice build! I have Force 1 on my All-City Macho Man and even though it's the best groupset I've ever owned, I think Rival is just as good. It shifts great and unnoticeably heavier. Maybe you can find a deal on a used Rival crankset. It's direct mount compatible so that should open up more chainring options if you want something smaller.

Happy for you. I am puzzled about cranks too. I use FSA Gossomer cranks on a bike with 40mm tires so frame spacing is not an issue. These are road cranks and I have at least 1/2" clearance at the chainstays. Super cheap FSA bb86 bb for carbon cranks (mine are alu). Cranks are 5 arm 110bcd running 46/34! I use 2 spacers, .5mm per side. BTW...they came with an external bearing, english threaded bb!

Beautiful, well appointed bike. I would proudly rock that faded pepto paint.

Congratulations!🎉🚴🏻‍♂️

Love that color, I'm not one for pink but that shade looks good. I've been looking for some bars like that with the shallow drop. Thanks for the review Russ.

Confusing for sure these days. Nicely set up Russ and those brakes are fantastic. Highly underrated, especially with their cables.

Congratulations, Sir. That is a beautiful bicycle.

Solid build, Russ. 👌

Sweet bike! Congrats!

Great video Russ! Loved the Philly Bike Expo ones also. I saw you and wanted to say hello but you looked busy. Any way, congrats on the new build. I pulled the trigger shortly after you did the Bombora review of Matt's bike. I went with the Yokozuna Ultimo brakes too. Been having some rubbing issues tho with the pads not centering over the rotor. Still trying to figure that out. Otherwise I love the Bombora! It is better than winning the lottery my friend! Cheers! 🍻😊

Congrats!

I think I want one.....Bike consult appointment coming soon! Thank you for all the info....

Wowzers! I love that fork with the bajillion options for racks. I feel like it’s the missing link on all the all city cx bikes I like to rock as commuters. I had my eyes on an endpoint with carbon fork-. But steel is real and with crust making its way to Richmond I’m all sorts of confused... haha love the build and that pepto bismo color is a show stopper

Nice bike you have there man,cheers from indonesian gravel grinder 🙏🏻

A quick ride on a Bombora from Matt at a rare demo pop up event in Portland. Loved it. Had to rip myself away.

Nice! hope to see the results of your attempt with an 11 50

I laughed out loud literally when you said that the enve's were like 4-5x the cost of the frame. I love you and this.

That looks like a very nice build. As my British mother would say, "ride it in good health." I was not familiar with those bars. I just bought a frame for a new build (which is not even here yet); I may look at those bars. I was thinkin' Salsa Cowbell. But I still haven't fully settled on drivetrain, wheels, etc. If the bike is done for Spring, I'm ahead of the game.

Now you just need to give us a review of the Crust Scapegoat!

Same issue with my bike with the Apex 1 cranks. I realized after the fact, but if you move up to the Rival 1 cranks - it can remove the entire spider and go Direct Mount. Which basically you can fit any size chainring you want - including ovals.

Love the bike and your channel! They have a flat mount to post mount brake converter if you decide to use the same brake for both front and rear. Not sure if yokos have a design that wouldn’t allow it however.

My cross bike has a Force 1x 110 BCD spec and I run an easily found RaceFace 38t ring on it, paired with an 11-36 cassette. Mountainbikey gearing for cross racing, but still versatile enough for adventure and road, although it gears out at about 32mph on road descents.

Really nice! This video answered a lot of just odd questions (i.e. Ritchey handle bar width feel, brakes, tire etc). I think that wolf tooth components makes down to a 34T in 110 BCD. I have used these chainrings for MTB but don't know about the road performance.

I love the fork it looks classy

VentureMax 👍have these on both bikes and love them. As you say great hand positions.

Nice rig. Its about how i set mine up as well

Very nice Russ.👍🏻

I feel like people ragging on the color simply don't get it-

I found a Bianchi Ocelot from the 80's. It is a lugged double butted CrMo tubed frame and fork. It does have a slightly relaxed chainstay and a neutral angle on the fork. The wheel base is 1048mm. I too have gone with a 110bcd crank with a 34T chainring and a 11-34T cassette. I am running on 26" x 1.75 Schwabe touring tires, no name sealed bearing hubs and good old weimann 519 rims. My cockpit is based on a wald 2" riser with 15* back sweep a friction thumb shifter (never did like how finicky index shifting was). And good ole shimano altus cantilever brakes. So that is a long winded way of saying I came to about the same place as you, only a little cheaper. The trick is finding a frame that has these dimensions. So far the winners are the Fuji touring, the Trek 520, and the Surly pack rat. For the money the Fuji wins out hands down!

Nice build.

hell yeah! Reasonable

Great review, tipping the scale towards grabbing one if the last XXL Bombora's. The real question for me is, what is that hat?! I must have it!

Wow, same tires I have! Makes me feel like I'm not so low bike society. 😆

Poor man's eagle... I use an E*thirteen TRS Plus Gen2 9-46 11-speed cassette with a 36t Drop Stop ring from Wolftooth. This gives me a pretty low climbing gear and enough top-end speed for road riding. The cassette is a lot less expensive than most 11-50 options (and it works with a GRX derailleur without needing a Wolftooth Road Link). You do need a SRAM XD driver to be able to run it and you'll probably want to drop your chainring to something like a 32-36t.

Awesome videos! Love you channel. If you can get your hands on a lightning bolt to review that would be awesome!

It's a beauty.

Nice build,all it needs is bar end shifters for me.

I am super curious about how this SRAM Rival derailleur will handle 11-50 cassette. Looking forward to see that video!

Looks great! Sorry to hear the Apex crank got ya- I managed to realize the same only through furious researching...almost made that same mistake. Yes, why IS everything so damn confusing? I feel that manufacturers reeeaally don't help when they could easily lay specs out up front making things more plain. Sram is terrible about this for instance. Looking at the crankset product pages for instance, detailed specs and compatibility info is incredibly lacking. Even when you dig through their rather confusing support vault, the PDFs offer VERY little info, and you are left to do the astrophysics yourself to deduce what is and isn't compatible, or how to adapt a part to your frame etc. For this reason I bought a BB30 rival crank and BB for my Bombora (usually BB30 fits BSA frame) that I now have to sell. Had to use the GXP.

Looks great! I was surprised you went with the bombora instead of something that can run a wide range double.

i can eat dinner on that cassette lol. nice build russ!

beautiful bike...

Thanks for the review. I'm waiting until the next run of frames to get one. I also just added the new Surly Truck Stop bar to my cutthroat. Have you seen this bar and have any thoughts? First ride this weekend.

Sweet ride Russ! Congrats. Too bad you can't keep the hoops. Oh well...

To be clear, a 110 bcd crankset can take as low as a 34t chainring. The confusing part is how the Apex cranks use the less common 4 bolt pattern instead of 5 bolt (used by Rival and above). Random internet searches tell me the 4 bolt Sram pattern is proprietary, unfortunately.

Cool build. Been thinking a lot about a gravel bike. Currently ride a jamis renegade exploit. The more i think, the more i keep thinking wheels! 650 b's with a nice hubset and great quality. Can always transfer them to another build if need be.Hmmmm.

Steel: love it. Especially the fork crown. It's a Pacenti?

A well-deserved bicycle with a enviable build! You'll have to expound on just how supple your Specialized tires are!

A Rival1 crankset can be had second hand for a reasonable price. Then you can either use the spider + 110 BCD chain ring (Sram X-sync or FSA Megatooth for example), or a direct mount (MTB style) chain ring like Sram Black Box or Wolf Tooth to go smaller than 38t. If the 11-50 works, I guess you wont really need it though. 🙂

It looks sweet! I'm pretty sure wolftooth makes a 36t and 38t for 110bcd. I recently went 1x and got 104bcd cranks so I could run a 32t for bikepacking and a 38t for "racing"

Nice! you should bring it to nutmeg 2020 :)

where are these fine steeds welded at? love to see the shop tour video where they make them!

Hold the phone! The rear brake is flat mount, and the front is post? That's wild! I love crust, but that seems like a huge oversight.

Gx crank for the win. I have apex 1 on my vaya and I run a gx 36t chaining

Love my Yokozuna's

Good vid. But check out some vids on doing bar tape - you need to know how !

SRAM Rival cranks have a removable spider so you can go direct mount and run a much smaller chainring, Absolute Black go down to 36 teeth with their oval rings, not sure about their round ones.

Congrats on the nice bike and build! Hey I am wondering why you chose to not install the Redshift Suspension stem? Cheers!

Thank you for sharing your review. Have you ridden the nor'easter? If so, how does it ride? I saw that it has a lower trail number.

Thanks for the rave review on the Ultimos. Might get them as an upgrade for a bike I'm looking into. Is there a good place to get them?

Thanks for the review. How come you didn’t include how much everything cost?

Race face makes a 38 and 36 narrow wide that well fit your crank

So Russ, now that you have ridden it a lot in various builds I wonder how much of that front end chill and suppleness from your initial review would you attribute to those carbon wide bars on Matt’s personal builds what you chose to run. Is the suppleness in the bars or fork? Certainly the width was a big factor in the control but is control still mostly the result of the trail? I am thinking of building a rando bike but I like flat bars and wondered about this frame set. Thanks for all your work from a patreon supporter.

I look forward to when you can throw on some 2.3-inch tires and tell us what that is like.

If I squint it looks like someone put drops on an early 90's Stumpjumper. Rad paint colors and all. Which is a great idea.

Congrats Russ on your new ride! I wondered whether 1.) you considered a non-hydraulic less expensive cable brake caliper on the rear and 2.) why is the derailleur cable end loop so large? Anyway, have much fun, and thanks much for all your bike efforts and info.

Vero nice colour

I believe AbsoluteBlack's oval rings go down to a 38 tooth for the Apex 1 BCD!

Love the build Russ. I was looking to possibly pick up a frame when they are back in stock. At 5’6” do you think I should go with an extra small size frame. I usually ride a 50cm frame. Thanks in advance and love the channel!

Hi Russ, thanks a lot for the many reviews of the many bikes on your channel, you are the go-to guy for me for the past weeks looking for a bike to build up. You have reviewed the Surly Midnight special before, just curious why you settled with this instead?

Good review Russ! Can you please tell us whether you like those loaner Chris King-Enve wheels? :)

i have a sram Rival compact road double(34/50) 110bcd and when was searching to go smaller, I was told I can't but if I converted it to a 1x setup I could get 32t 110bcd chainring. I've also seen 38t 110bcd chainrings for Rival. Which carbon Ritchey seatpost is that? Is it one of the springy carbon ones? Bring it to SoCal we're still in spring like weather here. Have you tried Evasion out of curiosity?

nice

I'm built like Jack Skellington, I'd prefer the Lighting Bolt Canti, a little more expensive more rake, but I already own an AD Vent Noir for my road bike.

Hey Russ Is that the standard rival rear derailleur medium cage that comes with the 1x ? Crazy u can fit a 11-46 to it. We have praxis front cranks with 38T single on our Norco XR steel but a few more teeth on the rear end would be ideal for our bike touring. Dave

Wow, 11-50 on a Rival long cage? I find even with the stated capacity of 11-42 you have to get the chain length just right to maintain tension in the smallest gear without over-tensioning the largest gear. I can see squeaking in an 11-46 without too bad an issue, but it seems that 11-50 would leave either not enough tension on the smallest cog (perhaps okay on perfectly smooth terrain but don't let the chain hop & jam at high speed) or too much tension in the biggest cog leading to rapid wear/noise/friction (pulleys, chain, cassette). I tend to be a pessimist, so let me know how it works out if you try; I certainly like the concept! The B-screw seems to have plenty of capacity though.

Hi! I would like to know, what is the size of the Ritchey Comp VentureMax gravel handlebars do you use?

Nice review post buy! Interesting about the brakes as well. How do the Yokozuna’s compare with the Paul Klampers? And you have specked a 1 x build this time? Interesting to understand why - rather than a sub-compact with a wide range cassette? I am considering a Crust Romanceur at the moment - any chance of a review of one of them as well 😁

So, now we can look forward to some Sugar Wheel Works custom-built wheels, right?