Building a Salsa Fargo: Starting from Scratch

Right after I came back from a biking trip across Spain, I started to dream about other biking adventures. Soon, I found myself building a Salsa Fargo. How did I land on this frame choice? Read on!

A lot of the research I did about bike touring led me to information on a “new” breed of bikes. These bikes are comfortable, able to perform well even when loaded with cargo, and are fun to ride. Some people call them “adventure bikes”. I was skeptical of the gimmicky title.

Friend from work:
“What kind of bike do you ride?”

Me:
“An ADVENTURE bike”.

Silly.

I first heard about Salsa bikes a few years ago when perusing around the internet searching for endurance race videos. In particular, I was inspired by this one video about a public school employee who works with behaviorally and emotionally challenged kids training to finish the Dirty Kanza race. I could relate to this guy in the sense that I also have a demanding day job, and I use biking as therapy. But that was it at the time, I didn’t think of anything else about the Salsa brand.

I dug around online forums and magazines and a lot of references lead me to look into the Salsa Fargo. Initially, the Fargo checked a lot of boxes: slack geometry, reliable frame build, fit for carrying a heavy load, and the price tag wasn’t too steep. The only thing I didn’t like right away was the idea of running drop bars on a bike that is supposed to keep me comfortable on multi-day trips. I thought how a regular road bike or even a sturdier cyclocross bike would have never survived the 800km (500 M) I had pedaled in Spain. Never. But I had a preconceived idea of what a drop bar bike should be, an idea that the Fargo does not conform to.

I found out that one of the local shops was a Salsa dealer and had a couple of their bikes in stock. Luckily, I got to take the bike for a spin on a warm -4C (25F) winter day. The biggest size they had in stock was a large and that’s the one I rode. I’m a tall guy and the large frame size wasn’t a great fit, but I could see how that bike would be fun on a dirt trail or fire road. After the test ride (on pavement) I was kinda sold on the whole drop bar mountain bike idea, but not completely convinced.

I wanted to build the bike myself just to see what it is like to build a bike from scratch. I knew I could perform some basic bike maintenance, like swapping out dirty bar tape and fine tuning twitchy gears on my bikes, but would I be able to build a complete bike from scratch? The idea of customizing the components to my specific needs was alluring. Picking a bike off the rack is boring, building one sounds a lot more romantic.

Sourcing the Parts

Buying the frame/fork/handlebar went like this:

Me:
“Hey Jon (bike shop guy), I wanna put in an order for a Fargo frameset”

Jon:
“Cool. Let’s take a look here…. What size?”

Me:
“I think the XL. The L seemed smallish”

Jon:
“OK. Yeah, they have it in stock. It will be here in less than a week”

Wow. That was easy.

Next step was to put together a list of components and start sourcing the parts. That wasn’t as easy. Ordering all the parts from a local shop is probably the most convenient way, but sadly, the most expensive method also. “We don’t have it in stock, but we can order it for you” was a common answer to my questions. “It’s OK. I’ll keep looking” was my default rebuttal.

It turns out that prices can vary greatly between retailers, it also turns out most retailers don’t keep a large number of options in stock and parts can sell out quickly. This means that I had to check availability and prices pretty much on a daily basis.

I took advantage of the long Midwestern winter to take my sweet time to buy the parts. Figuring out if a component will fit in your bike wasn’t as hard as many people claim it to be. The internet has all the answers. It took me a good 3 months to source all the parts, I was making sure all the parts would fit together and waiting for sales.

I ended up buying parts from several online and physical retailers and was even lucky enough to find a great mountain bike store while visiting Germany. I noticed some bike parts in Europe are cheaper than in the United States, specially when you can take advantage of getting sales taxes refunded.

Here’s the build list, including where I bought the parts.

FRAME	2016 Salsa Fargo - XL	Motorless Motion (LBS)
FORK	Salsa Firestarter (carbon)	Motorless Motion (LBS)
HEADSET	Chris King Inset 7	Wiggle.com
STEM	Truvativ Stylo T30 - 90mm; 5 degree rise	Amazon
HANDLEBAR	Salsa Woodchipper 2 - 46cm wide	Motorless Motion (LBS)
BAR TAPE	Fi'Zi:k Performance	Amazon
BRAKE/SHIFTER LEVERS	SRAM Rival	Trail This (LBS)
BRAKES	Avid BB7 Road	Amazon
CABLES	Jagwire Road Pro Racer XL Kit	Trail This (LBS)
FRONT DERAILLEUR	SRAM X0 2x10 High Direct Mount	Ebay
REAR DERAILLEUR	SRAM GX 2x10	Hibike (LBS - Germany)
CRANKSET	SRAM GX 38-24T	Jenson.com
BOTTOM BRACKET	SRAM GXP	Jenson.com
CASSETTE	SRAM 1050 - 11-36T	Hibike (LBS - Germany)
CHAIN	KMC X10	Trail This (LBS)
SEATPOST	Truvativ Stylo T30	Ebay
SADDLE	Specialized Phenom Expert - Ti Rails	Erik's Bike Shop (Sorta LBS)
HUBS	SRAM X9 (wheelset)	Jenson.com
RIMS	WTB i23 Frequency (wheelset)	Jenson.com
RIM TAPE	Stan's Yellow Tape	Motorless Motion (LBS)
SEALANT	Stan's Notubes	Amazon
FRONT TIRE	Specialized S-Works Ground Control 2.3"	Hibike (LBS - Germany)
REAR TIRE	Specialized S-Works Fast Trak 2.2"	Hibike (LBS - Germany)
PEDALS	Still to decide

The Build

I took the frame to a LBS to get the headset in place. The 2016 Salsa Fargo frameset comes in matte black with orange graphics. An orange Chris King headset seemed an obvious choice.

I didn’t really plan it this way, but most of the components are SRAM. It just happened that they matched the specs. SRAM makes it easier to match Road and MTB components though. Mixing Shimano and SRAM pats for gearing is not really possible without workarounds since Shimano and SRAM shifters pull different amounts of cable.

Laying out the components on the workbench made it easy to see what needed to be accomplished. Looks pretty simple from this angle.

I started the build on a Saturday morning. It was a very slow Saturday morning and It took me a while to get everything organized. By the time I actually started putting things together, it was time to crack a beer open. A nice quadruple ale just made the job even more fun.

The 29er hoops were ready. Tightening the rotor bolts (all 12 of them) is a bit of a tedious job.

 

How does this work anyway?

I learned a few things on my own that would have been nice to know before I put the frame up on the stand to start the build.

Installing a headset can be a bit of a pain. I built my own tool to press the cups into the frame but they were not going in straight no matter what I tried. I took the frame to my LBS and the mechanic installed the headset in 30 seconds… with a rubber mallet. I guess the 10 bucks I paid him was the price of experience.

You know what else can take some time? Getting your tubeless tires to seat appropriately. One rim I had to use 3 layers of Stan’s yellow tape, the other one only 2 layers. Go figure. At one point, I broke out a sweat while pushing the floor pump as fast as it is humanly possible. Some people use an air compressor…. slackers….

Road-style shifters (brifters) don’t have built in barrel adjusters, nor do mountain bike rear derailleurs. I had a real “oh crap” moment after I routed the cables and tried to fine tune the tension on them. I know I can install inline barrel adjusters but it would have been nice to do that before crimping the ferules to the end of the cables.

Finally Done

Tire clearance on the Firestarter carbon fork is pretty massive as you can see here. These are Specialized Ground Control 2.3″ tires and you can see there’s plenty of room to spare.

There’s room to grow in the rear triangle also. Specialized Fast Trak 2.2″ and plenty of clearance.

Woodchipper bar on top of the tall headtube. I still have to mess around with the break/shifter levers to get it to a nice angle. Some work to be done here.

My choice of using mechanical breaks is twofold: 1) Road hydraulic levers are very expensive; 2) Servicing mechanical breaks in the field is a lot easier than dealing with bleeding hydraulic fluids.

I find it nice to have a very low gear when touring on dirt roads. Fire roads, a lot of times, don’t follow a smooth grade like most paved roads; the 24T granny gear will help me on tougher short hills.

The Conclusion

I can’t wait to take the Fargo places I have never been to before. All in all, building the Salsa Fargo from scratch wasn’t that hard. Yeah, sure.. there are a few things that I missed along the process (like installing barrel adjusters) but now I know these things. I’m sure this experience will come in handy in case I have to perform some maintenance while in the field.