Tantan GR039 'All Road', Nextie wheels, Campagnolo EPS V2

[Miller]

Short video (1:34) showing my new bike built round a Tantan GR039 Gravel frame.

[Miller]

[bmCube]

Very nice build!

[Miller]

@bmCube, thanks!

The genesis of this bike was the feeling that I wanted a road bike that I could easily take off-road. I've been exploring unsurfaced routes round here for a few years now and could see a few places where an excursion down a trail would join up nice bits of tarmac. That meant more tyre clearance. My attention has been caught by recent bikes like Cervelo Caledonia and large clearance all-road machines from 3T and Open. I flinched at paying those prices however, this would not be a no-expense-spared project, so investigated the Chinese vendors.The Yeoleo G1 Gravel frame was attractive but at USD1000 or so not so cheap and then they took it off their website. From this forum I discovered it could be had from other vendors as the GR039. In late summer I noticed that the GBP-USD exchange rate was favourable so eventually I stopped dithering and ordered a Chameleon GR039 from Tantan. Their package included frame, forks, seatpost and integrated handlebar, giving me the option of going with fully integrated cabling. In December this arrived.

[Mockenrue]

How did you get H11 EPS shifters to work with Chorus EPS derailleurs?!

[Miller]

How did you get H11 EPS shifters to work with Chorus EPS derailleurs?!

That's a knowledgeable question which is fully answered at the below link, scrolling down to the 2019 responses.
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=147292&hilit=EPS&start=30

The answer involves soldering.

[Miller]

I stopped dithering and ordered a Chameleon GR039 from Tantan. Their package included frame, forks, seatpost and integrated handlebar, giving me the option of going with fully integrated cabling.

I had some concerns about this build and one of those was that I had never done full internal routing before. I was transferring the Campag parts forward from the previous Miller bike. That meant rehoming the hydro brakes. I didn't want to go to the effort of routing hoses through a frame only to find the hoses were too short. I bought one new EC-DB003 Campag brake hose. I ditched the existing front brake hose, transferred the existing rear hose to the front H11 shifter, and put the new brake hose on the rear shifter. This was straightforward and you can watch it in this short vid.



Campag hydro differs from Shimano in that the hoses are the other way round: the banjo end is at the shifter, not the caliper. No idea whether this is better or worse but it does affect the build in that hoses need to be fed from front to back. And I did hit a roadblock one frustrating evening: as I was trying to pull the brake hose through it kept catching on something inside the chainstay a few cm behind the bottom bracket. I think there's a mould flashing in there, in a really inaccessible place. I slept on that, annoyed. Next day I glued a strip of sandpaper to an old bit of compressionless brake outer and managed to jam it via the BB shell into the chainstay so I could use it as an improvised flexible file. It made some carbon dust and enough space that on the next try the hydro brake hose came through without any more fuss. It was totally worth having the additional brake hose length gained by the new hose.

Other than that, the internal routing was a faff but not stupid difficult. The underside of the handlebar has a fairly big recessed area so you can wrangle hoses and wires. The headset spacers are solid alloy parts with a left and right that clip together. They create a cable channel in front of the fork steerer. Everything routes through the top bearing. The front brake hose enters an opening in the steerer and emerges above the caliper. The rear brake hose bends round the steerer and onwards through the down tube. WIll there be a future issue of rear brake hose wear against the fork steerer? Time will tell.

One unforeseen consequence of this cable routing arrangement is that the handlebars have no resistance, none, to swinging through their full possible rotation. All these years I realise that gear and brake cable has been putting a soft limit on handlebar rotation. Not any more! I have to be careful to not let the bars swing round and thump the top tube. Bar tape is Supacaz, not very stretchy and not the easiest to apply.

[Miller]

Someone mentioned in the Chinese frame thread their dissatisfaction with the design of the seatpost that comes with this frame. As the parts that clamp the saddle rails are very limited in how loose they can be, there are swappable clamp parts for 7mm rails and for 9mm rails. Parts for both options are supplied. The complaint was that the 9mm option doesn't work; they don't open wide enough. I can confirm that as supplied, this is absolutely true. Nevertheless, to me the design looked elegant. Time to get the file out again. Through quite a lot of filing on the clamping parts, and the wedge parts, and with a longer locking screw, I made the seatpost work for my 9mm carbon-railed Fabric Scoop saddle.

The fallback option would have been a new seatpost; as the frame takes standard 27.2 posts that would have been easy. Clamping of post into frame is with an expanding thing on the top tube in front of the post which locks the post securely without slippage.

[gerryc89]

Amazing! Do you mind telling us how much it was inclusive of shipping? I can't see prices on their site.

I see mudguard mounts on the frame, but none on the fork?

[Miller]

Amazing! Do you mind telling us how much it was inclusive of shipping? I can't see prices on their site.
I see mudguard mounts on the frame, but none on the fork?

The package was frame, fork, handlebar, seatpost, thru-axles, spare der hanger, computer mount. This eventually cost me GBP675 delivered to my door. Dollar price was USD887. I was prepared to pay import duty but no demand ever arrived. I think it's tremendous value. The Garmin mount is a bit crap, mind.

Good spot about mudguard mounts, it's as you describe. I'm not intending to fit any though.

[Gary71]

Great build and finish. Thank you for sharing.
What are your thoughts on the one piece handlebar stem? Weight, shape, feel etc

[Miller]

Thanks. It's a 420 x 100 bar and it weighs 322g. I was surprised how light it was. Seems nicely finished and the cable routing was easy as there's good access underneath. I don't think it's the stiffest bar out there, I can make it flex if I lean on it side to side, but I've not noticed that while riding. My one concern was lack of adjustability, and if the bar was separate I'd rotate it up a smidge, but I'm getting along with it fine. And the bar's organic shape is a pleasure to look at.

[Miller]

EPS 11-speed is no longer offered by Campag but I've very much enjoyed using it for a few years and I wasn't willing to throw it away for this build. The design low gear is 34 x 29, not impressive by modern standards. I wanted lower. I've found the Chorus 12-speed 48-32 chainset is a good match for EPS 11-speed, so that would help, and I was also intending to try the hack for getting EPS 11-speed to cope with a 32t rear sprocket. This involves taking the cage from a medium cage mechanical rear mech and grafting it onto the EPS mech. This gets you an EPS mech with more chain wrap capacity. My aim was to get to 1 to 1 gearing, 32 x 32.

I had an unused Athena mechanical medium cage derailleur so I did the swap. It's very straightforward with only one bolt to undo to get the cage off the rear derailleur. What I did notice, in the course of this, is that the mechanical rear der cage is a piece of bendy crap by comparison with the rigid cast alloy parts from the EPS mech. Nevertheless it all works very well as you can see in this short video (if you want to know what EPS sounds like this has nice audio).



So, aim achieved? Not so fast. The frame turns out to limit how low the front mech can go before the front derailleur cage hits the chainstay. The 48-32 chainset is too small and even in its lowest possible placement the front mech is too high above the 48 chainring. I had to use a 50-34 chainset instead so I have a lowest gear of 34 x 32. Here's a photo where you can see that the front mech cage is nearly touching the chainstay.

[kroem]

Very nice! I have the same frame. But, weight?

[liam7020]

I have a TanTan GR029 in the same chameleon blue built up into a cross bike with GRX810 and hand built Stans Grail rims. Superb value for money!