Jim's GT Tequesta Specifications

Review and upgrade history

(or: what happened when I actually tried to use the bike)

At $490, the GT Tequesta was a bargain introduction to MTBing; durable frame, decent components, very good ride. Comparable bikes from other manufacturers tended to be considerably more expensive, and the component upgrade to LX-level started at about two hundred dollars' more.

Frame review

• The seat stay extensions make the bicycle difficult and painful to shoulder, so portaging is not particularly easy.
• The seat tube extensions rob space from the front triangle, making it difficult or impossible to mount a full-size frame pump and providing an obstacle for seat-tube mounted water bottles.
• The rear brake cable is routed underneath the top tube and must corkscrew out and around the seat tube to get to the rear brake. While this is not too unusual, the triple-triangle design results in very short effective seat stays so the loop must be tighter than usual and brake performance is degraded as a result. On small frames this is quite significant -- it isn't possible to get a straight pull on the brake straddle cable so good brake alignment is not possible with the standard Shimano cable carrier. By using a fully-adjustable carrier I was able to improve the situation, but the cable still clogs easily in mud.
• The frame does not fit on rear-mounted bicycle carriers without some contortions.

The stock STX componentry was a mix of good and bad and virtually all of it was eventually replaced.

Brake review

In February 1996 I managed to strip the hex nut used for adjusting the pad, however, and was so irritated that I replaced the cantis with Onza HOs. The Onzas offer very easy adjustability and slightly more power in the front, plus they have much more adjustable spring tension so I was able to boost tension a lot to help in muddy conditions.

In the process of making a lot of these changes I learned quite a lot about canti design and the influences of different changes. For a short discussion of different canti designs, see my canti design discussion.

After damaging my Girvin fork in a crash and switching to a Z.2 Atom Bomb, I was unable to keep my cantis (a special-order bracket is necessary and the downtime was too long to wait for it). I was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the V-brake age, switching to Avid SD2.0L levers and 1D 2.0 brakes.

V-brakes are indeed a lot easier to set up; pad alignment took maybe 10 seconds per pad, making even the super-easy Onza brakes seem difficult. Setting up the levers for maximum leverage best approximated the feel of my old canti system; they're so close that there was no acclimation time.

The only downside I've found with the 1D brakes is that the bolts are not really 5mm; I don't know what they are, since they're not English either. They're really easy to strip. Luckily they're cheap and easy to replace if you do strip them. Still, that's kinda cheesy.

The Avid levers have a much nicer feel than the Dia Compe levers; they're very ergonomic and well-suited to my one- or two-finger braking style. On-the-fly leverage adjustment is nice too. Strongly recommended.

Wheel review

The new wheelset, Mavic 217 rims laced to a XT hubset, has provided excellent service since December 1995. The rear was damaged beyond repair as a result of a 45+mph flat (May 1996, see picture); the rim was dented in six places from heavy impacts, but was barely knocked out of round and got me to the bottom of the hill. It was replaced with another identical rim which has been flawless.

Chainring and cranks review

When the granny and middle ring were showing significant signs of wear (late 1995) I decided to upgrade the rings, purchasing a set of Real rings, at which time I learned that the STX version of "Hyperdrive-C" is not compatible with the standard version; the cranks supply only the small bolt circle with the middle chainring doubling as a spider, so you cannot replace the middle ring with a standard chainring unless you have an adapter (Pace sells one, but they are difficult to find in the U.S.). I chose to replace the crankset, and found a good deal on a OEMed Sugino 700, which has worked beautifully. The Real rings offered improved shifting performance but no other noticable benefits.

When the Shimano HG-91 chain broke and was replaced, in early 1998, the wear in the 32T ring was made obvious by a lot of skipping. I was unable to locate a 32T replacement locally so I went with a 34T, which was really too large for me. Surprisingly the granny was still working well, way beyond its expected life.

The granny finally gave up the ghost in the fall of 1998, although I continued to ride it until April, 1999 (and just swore at the chainsuck a lot). The replacement unit wasn't nearly as well made as the original -- it's just stamped steel (looks like stainless, but maybe it's coated), whereas the first one was machined. Blah.

While I was changing the granny I decided to go back to a 32T middle in the hopes that I could use the middle more. Unfortunately not even the mail-order houses could locate one! I ended up going with an XT instead.

Shifting performance of the XT middle ring is noticably better than that of the Real. With the Real rings I usually had to hold the shift briefly during upshift, but the XT just clicks into place. Nice. The XT unit doesn't seem as well made, however; we'll have to see how long it lasts.

Chain review

About two years into the life of the chain it snapped, five miles out on a freezing day. The break was in the middle of the chain, nowhere near any of the places where it had been rejoined. The chain had not displayed significant stretch, and this is the only time I've ever had a chain fail -- usually I replace them when the chainrings are showing significant wear.

I replaced it with a Sachs M-55, which worked fine for about a year until I replaced it along with the cassette and lower two chainrings.

My current chain is a Sachs PC-51, which has the new Power Link. I'm a little dubious about the reliability of the link, but I sure do love how easy it is to break the chain and rejoin it -- I can do it with my bare hands! That sure makes it easy to clean.

Derailleur reviews

In mid-1998 I broke the barrel adjuster on the XTR derailleur, snapped it right off. It continued to work but got a lot harder to tune. Finding a new barrel adjuster took some effort, but Third Hand had one and it's back to running like new.

Shifter and brake lever reviews

The Dia-Compe brake levers provide increasing leverage through the arm travel, allowing wide pad/rim spacing without sacrificing power. The high power provided by these levers yields a mushy feeling in the braking system which many people do not like, but modulation is excellent.

The Dia-Compe levers were later replaced with Avid SD 2.0Ls; see brake review. In the process of upgrading the shifters to XT I needed to upgrade the cogset to eight speeds. This was done with an XT 11-28 cogset, which has worked fine and is significantly lighter than the STX unit. I noticed no change in shifting performance.

By the end of 1998 rear shifting performance had degraded noticably; upshifts were slow no matter what I did. Along with replacing worn chainrings (and because I wanted lower gears) I replaced the XT cogset with an XTR 12-32 steel unit. Shifting problems evaporated and I love the extra-low gearing.

Saddle review

Pedal and shoe reviews

The day I bought the Sidis I decided that I'd had enough of the Onza pedals and bought a pair of Shimano 747s. Compared to the Onzas the 747s were great in almost every respect -- click-in felt like there was a guidance system on the cleats, click-out tension was much more (and more easily) adjustable, and click-in and -out were very positive. The downsides were reduced float (still plenty, but nothing like the Onzas) and terrible mud performance. Get 747s in mud and they pack up quickly. Normally this means they won't click in, but occasionally they wouldn't clip out.

In the continuing quest for better pedals I purchased a pair of Time ATAC pedals in December, 1997. They combine the best features of both the Onzas and the 747s. Click-in is very easy and positive, although it requires a bit more push than did the 747s. There is a lot of float. Click-out is unusual -- it's gradual and feels kind of like you're snapping out of a rubber band. You can really tell when you're getting close to clicking out. But the best part is that these pedals shed mud like crazy. They're even better at it than were the Onzas. I was a bit worried about the lack of tension adjustment on the pedals, but this turns out to be unimportant. Unlike most other pedals the rear locking loop is fixed, with engaging and disengaging managed entirely by a spring-loaded front loop. This means it's impossible to pull out of them regardless of the tension, so they can use a relatively low tension for easy clip-in and -out without causing unexpected release. Overall impression after two months of use is that these things are incredible.

Fork review

There were many drawbacks, however, which led me to extensively retune the fork. For a description of the process see my treatise on tuning the Vector.

After tuning up the fork I was very happy with its overall performance in XC riding. When doing heavy downhill riding, however, the fork has a serious drawback: the fork rake shortens as the fork travel progresses. This effectively increases the head angle, making the bike less stable. The effect is very noticable in steep technical situations and can even be dangerous. Since I do little downhill riding and the fork generally works very well I lived with this shortcoming.

Unfortunately the Girvin forks prior to 1998 had a problem where particular side-loads could twist the fork out of alignment. A nasty crash on July 11, 1998 caused this problem on my Vector, and I used that opportunity to drop the fork in favor of something more traditional.

The new fork is a Marzocchi Z.2 Atom Bomb. If you know anything about the Bomber series you've heard that they're plush -- and every word of it is true. They're also amazingly tunable with just a few twists of the top knobs; damping in particular ranges from none to so seriously overdamped that it takes a full second to rebound. It's nice to have a fork work well right out of the box.

The Bomber lives for downhill rides; it just eats bumps alive in a way the Girvin never did, even when perfectly tuned and recently lubed. This is the most active fork I've ever seen. The downside of that is that it's easy to pogo when hammering; you have to get used to it. Also, despite widespread accolades for torsional rigidity, it's not very hard to induce brake rub when flicking or side-loading the fork. The Girvin never did that.

Bar ends review

The Onzas are made up of two pieces of straight pipe welded at an angle. They aren't long enough to completely wrap my hand around either part of the unit; I end up wrapping two fingers around each part. This isn't as comfortable as the one-piece unit was, although the short end of the unit is long enough that I can rest my palms on it to stretch out.

Overall I'd skip these next time in favor of something with a smooth bend, or even no bend at all.

Tire review

As a rear tire the Psycho was a total loss, and I quickly replaced it with a WTB Velociraptor. The Velociraptor is an incredible rear tire; it sticks to practically everything and even sheds mud well. Its weakness is high rolling resistance.

When the front Psycho wore out I replaced it with a WTB Velociraptor as well. I expected the same kind of dramatic ride improvement, but I was very dissapointed. The Velociraptor front works pretty well in the mud but its rounded profile and wimpy edge knobs do not help cornering at all; it's difficult to predict and washes out easily. Braking improved versus the Psycho but cornering degraded.

When I finally got sick of the front Velociraptor dumping me on the ground on every off-camber section I replaced it with a Specialized Team Control. This tire corners exceptionally well and has a much lower rolling resistance than the Velociraptor. The downside is that this tire is not very mud-friendly; it rapidly packs up. There is an "extreme" variant of this tire which is supposed to be better in this respect but I haven't yet tried it.

In April 1998 I bought a Continental Leader Pro at a NEMBA benefit auction, and replaced the Team Control a few weeks later. I was surprised at how well this tire works, particularly given its low-profile knobs. It slides out fairly easy in the mud, but it clears mud very well and otherwise just seems to stick to the trail. It has pretty low rolling resistance, too.