An important part to bicycle mechanics is just organised hoarding – or at least I think it is. That old brake caliper may be needed one day; the same goes for the bolts off a broken derailleur, or that 25.4 mm clamp diameter stem. It pays to keep this stuff, as long as you can find it again.
This logic has made me increasingly reluctant to get rid of old parts unless they’re going to a good home. And unfortunately, that same logic has become applicable to complete bikes. Some of these don’t see any use, and yet, I can’t bring myself to let them go for the sum someone would be willing to pay.
And that brings me to my beloved Salsa Chilli Con Crosso – a gorgeous cyclocross race bike from the late-2000s that is seemingly worth more to me than it is to anyone else. It’s largely been collecting dust as modern gravel bikes have it beat in just about every regard. Still, the perfect storm of feeling bored one rainy weekend and my yearning for a fun short-journey bike sparked the process of making this older bike new again.
One owner
In 2007-08, cyclocross was barely an emerging niche among a handful of Australian bicycle geeks. Having spotted a couple of these odd bikes at races, I was soon inspired by the booming US scene I was seeing online from afar. A young Jeremy Powers was creating some of the early vlog-type content, there were a handful of related feature films on DVD of the scene, and the nuanced tech of tubulars, gearing, and differing geometry fascinated me.
My first cyclocross bike was a cheapie from KHS. The aluminium frame was overly rigid and made you listen to every single bump on the ground. The low-end cantilever brakes hardly worked and screamed almost as much as I did in trying to use them. And the tyres were supple enough to easily pinch flat but not supple enough to grip. It was awful and I was hooked.
It was only a matter of months before I was looking to replace that KHS with something good. As an employee of one of the more exciting bicycle wholesalers at the time – and perhaps the only one importing cyclocross bikes – I had a long list of options: BMC CrossMachine, Surly Crosscheck, Ibis Hakkalugi, Ellsworth Roots. All available and all great options, but none were the right one. Nope, I wanted the Scandium-aluminium cyclocross frame raced by the Clif-bar team in the USA. It was light, sleek, had the geometry I wanted, and was decently priced, too. And it sure didn’t hurt that it matched my Salsa Podio road bike of the time.
A special air-freight order was placed with Quality Bicycle Products in the USA (the parent company to Salsa Cycles), and soon enough, the frame was mine – the only one officially imported into the island of Aus. Like the frame, the build was to be light, a little bling, and also surprisingly economical. I had a first-gen SRAM Force 10-speed groupset (before Red was introduced) off a previous road bike. I had staff access to the company catalogue that included Ritchey, RaceFace (dabbling in dropbar stuff then), DT Swiss, and Crank Brothers. And I had an order of first-gen Hutchinson cyclocross tubeless tyres and TRP wide-set cantilever brakes on the way from cyclocrossworld.com.
Lightly used
The result was a gorgeous green machine that weighed right around 8 kg, including pedals (a pair of 4Ti Crank Brothers Egg Beaters to be exact). I kept the green theme going with matching green Salsa FlipOffs quick-release skewers (in the titanium variant), a Crank Brothers headset (a short-lived product line), Hudz rubber shifter covers, and aluminium bidon cage bolts.
I absolutely loved the dual-tone green paint. This generation of Scandium-aluminium frames offered a surprisingly good ride quality. And it was a cool enough build to be at the centre of that company’s well-distributed annual catalogue. I owned a handful of nice bikes, but this was my favourite to look at.
Despite all the good, this bike and I soon had a rocky relationship.
Just a few months after building it up, I and approximately 10 other crazies entered a 110 km mountain bike marathon race on cyclocross bikes. Stubborn and foolish, I didn’t change anything on the bike for that event. I ran 33 mm low-treaded race tyres. My hands were supported by a single layer of Fizik microfibre bar tape and unpadded gloves. After I got over the trauma and physical bruising, I struggled to enjoy riding this bike thereafter. More than a year went by and my hands would hurt at the thought of it. And yet, I just couldn’t bring myself to let the bike go.
Over the next few years cyclocross continued to grow in Australia and from time to time I’d pump up the tyres and bring the Chilli Con Crosso out for a few laps. It would see just enough use that I’d occasionally seek to improve and rebirth it. Out went the basic TRP canti brakes, in came the gucci Avid Ultimates. Later on I’d gut the internals of the first-gen SRAM Force left lever, updating the derailleur to a newer clutch-equipped 1x model, slapping a spare XX 11-36T mountain bike cassette on, and fitting a single ring up front. At some point the original DT R1.1 rims got a little too dinged for smooth braking, and I rebuilt some old Ritchey hubs (DT Swiss 240 internals) onto some proper Stan’s tubeless rims. By this time, disc brakes were the status quo and had withered the resale value of the Salsa to near nothing. Soon, it was largely relegated to a dark corner of the shed.
It would sit gathering dust until I got MicroShift’s Advent X groupset in for test at CyclingTips. That groupset needed mechanical brakes and a 1x chainring, and the Chilli Con Crosso was ideal for it. Once more the Chilli Salsa enjoyed its time in the sun; I had a hoot taking it under-biking a few steps further than I’d become accustomed to and managed to scare myself into smiling, too. Inevitably that review wrapped, and once more, the bike returned to its purgatory of being too nice for me to sell, but not quite modern enough for me to want to take it off-road with any regularity.
That brings us to the present time. I’d sold my commuter e-bike and now lacked a bike with flat pedals that I could just grab-and-go for short errands. The Salsa Chilli Con Cross wasn’t the only bike sitting in a dark corner that I’d struggled to let go of. And yet, something told me it was a shame not to use it.
From drop bars to flat bars
Digging through boxes of old, formerly-loved bike parts is a nostalgic experience. The uncut 580 mm-width RaceFace Next XC carbon bars and matching Deus XC stem (with a bit of flaking chrome) reminded me of the Giant NRS Composite mountain bike they were once a part of. The Shimano Flat Bar road brake levers helped to convince my dad that a return to road cycling was the right call for him. And cracking open my organised container of coloured Hudz cable donuts brought me back to a not-too-distant simpler time of bicycle mechanics.
Those simpler times include a generation of SRAM with Exact Actuation cable pull, so you could swap a dropbar shifter for mountain bike shifter with no concern. My hoarding had brought me agonisingly close to quickly bringing new life to this well-loved machine, and yet, an eBay sale from approximately a decade ago had let the future me down. I had once owned a polished silver first-gen SRAM XX 10-speed shifter. I’m sure I sold it for next to nothing, and now, all these years later, it was exactly what I needed to get this bike rolling.
Begrudgingly, I spent AU$70 on a GX 10-speed shifter via eBay. That’s likely more than I sold my vastly more premium XX shifter for in the past. And as I’m writing this I’m also realising I should have picked up a GripShift shifter. Either way, it’s a probably unhealthy reminder that I should have listened to those hoarding instincts.
My desire to keep this rebuild largely based on the parts bin extends to a pair of mould-stained ESI silicon grips and some age-hardened Specialized Terra Pro cyclocross tyres that are a little too buzzy on the tarmac. Still, there’s no denying there’s a fair bit of decade-old bling shining through on this thing.
I love this bike. It brings back memories of those old silly races … but if I’m being honest, it also handles rather terribly in this format. The narrow flat bars and upright stem combine with the quick angles to make a bike that’s more nervous than a Jack Russell Terrier left alone on New Year’s Eve. The big flat pedals encourage my feet to knock on the nearby front wheel. And the weight distribution is all wrong. Still, it makes me smile.
As it stands, it’s now a bike that fills a gap amongst my many other bikes. It’s also a bike that to me, and despite its age, remains that little bit too nice to lean unlocked against a pole while I run into the shops. Impractical for the purpose? Indeed! Thankfully I do enough short trips with safe storage to still use it (plus, I’ve hidden an AirTag within a 3D-printed saddle mount). Because the tinkering that can be done on a bike is never complete, I’ve got my eyes set on a way to carry things: I’m still thinking through the best options and am open to ideas!
This bike is no longer of huge financial importance to me (or really anyone else), but rather, in other ways, it’s now irreplaceable. I don’t think I’ll ever let go of this one. It’s a keeper. It’ll be interesting to see how I’m using it 10 years from now.
Build list
- Frame: Salsa Chilli Con Crosso, Scandium-aluminium
- Fork: Alpha-Q CX 20
- Headset: Crank Brothers Sage external (that amazingly hasn’t failed)
- Front wheel: Stan’s NoTubes Alpha 340, DT Swiss Revolution spokes, generic hub
- Rear wheel: Stan’s NoTubes Alpha 340, DT Swiss Revolution spokes, Ritchey OCR hubs (with DT Swiss 240 internals)
- Front tyre: Specialized Terra Pro, 700 x 33 mm (inner tubes inside)
- Rear tyre: Specialized Terra Pro, 700 x 33 mm (inner tubes inside)
- Crankset: RaceFace Cadence, 172.5 mm, 40T Narrow-Wide
- Bottom bracket: Raceface Cadence English threaded, Enduro bearings
- Chain: SRAM PC-1091R
- Cassette: SRAM XX, 11-36T, 10-speed
- Rear derailleur: SRAM Rival 1, medium cage
- Shifter: SRAM GX 10-speed
- Brake calipers: Avid Ultimate cantilever
- Brake levers: Shimano R770
- Handlebar: RaceFace Next XC, 580 mm width, 25.4 mm diameter
- Stem: RaceFace Deus XC, chrome finish, 100 mm
- Seatpost: Easton EC70, 27.2 mm
- Grips: ESI Chunky Silicon, cleaned but still mould-stained
- Saddle: Specialized Phenom Pro 143 mm.
- Pedals: Shimano PD-EF205 platform
- Extras: SpurCycle Limited Edition Fall-Color bell, Salsa Titanium FlipOff skewers
- Actual weight: 8.01 kg, with pedals
Gallery
Related reading: Staff Joy Rides – Building a cross-country weapon as a more versatile gravel bike
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