BKXC Custom OPEN Cycles Gravel Build That Went All Wrong...[Video]

Overview

We have been working with the man, the myth, the legend, BKXC since he was just a tadpole and watching him grow into one of the most popular YouTube Personalities in Mountain Biking has been a treat for sure. When he reached out to us about building a Gravel Bike for an "idea" we only had one answer... YES! But then it all went wrong... Turns out that raffles are illegal unless you are a non-profit and what do you know? We are not a non-profit : ( 

Brian's idea was to build a custom gravel bike that he could ride for a bit and then raffle off. Donating all the net proceeds to one or multiple lucky American Non-Profit Bike Clubs to help maintain local trails and keep the people riding! We still plan on donating the net proceeds to a good cause so if you have any good ideas or organizations that would benefit the mountain bike community, let us know!

A lot of thought went into this build and since 92% of the staff here at Worldwide Cyclery are purely Mountain Bikers, we put our boy Liam Woods in charge of working with Brian to get an epic build together.

Build

About the Build

Words of the man behind the build, Liam Woods:

"BKXC your favorite MTB youtube personality, riding gravel? Brian reached out to us to collaborate on a gravel build, with little knowledge about what he wanted, we were able to take creative reign on the build. Of course, we wanted to build around an Open frame, choosing to go with the lighter Upper model. The one thing Brian wanted to do for it, to be a great off-road machine while still efficient on the road. Next, we decided on a 1x drivetrain, I mean what is the use of a front derailleur anyway, so shifting and braking with Sram Force is the obvious choice. As we love our Industry Nine mountain wheels, we reached out to them to see what they suggested for a hard used gravel rig. The choice is their new UltraLite CX 235 TRA 700c wheel, weighing in at 1,395g for the set, and using their machined aluminum spokes, this wheel is possibly the best strength to weight ratio we could have chose. Last for the final bits, our good friends at Easton Cycling got us an EA70AX cockpit, with a wide gravel specific handlebar paired with a short 80mm stem, makes this the perfect front end to handle both gravel and pavement. Finally, the bike is pedaled by Easton's EA90SL crankset with a 40t direct mount chainring, super light crankset and damn does it look clean on this blacked out bike."

"For the cool custom bits, I really wanted to have a dropper post on this bike but needed it to look good as well. Choosing KS Lev DX post, with internal routing was the easy part, the second part was I needed to take the ratchet mechanism out of the left-hand shifter to activate the post. Since we decided to go 1x, but still bought a standard Force Hydro shift/brake levers, we had an open lever for the dropper post. The removal is actually really simple and just required the removal of a c-clip and a pin holding in the ratchet part of the shifter."

"Once removed we have a free moving left-hand lever, that feels just like a dropper post remote. Hooked up and functioning, Brian will now have a stealth dropper post on this gravel rig. With the wheels, Industry Nine offers custom colors on most of their wheel options, so taking advantage of that we went with a simple but elegant black, gold and silver combo. With a flow yellow Ergon saddle and Easton handlebar tape, there is a splash of color on the otherwise black bike. Finished off with some clean shrink wrap cable routing, some protective mastic tape for chain slap, and some Worldwide Cyclery stickers, Brian now has a gravel bike ready to keep up with all of his adventures."