The Wood River Wrangler

The Wood River Wrangler

The Trails Don’t Work Unless We Do

The Story

The Wood River Wrangler is the second bike of the year that was painted and assembled for a non-profit. The Wood River Trails Coalition is an organization in Blaine County, Idaho, and their mission is to create, maintain, and sustain the local trail network. They do this vital work by coordinating community events and dig days, materially and financially augmenting the local Forest Service trail crew, and serving as a community advocacy organization seeking the improvement of trail conditions and access for all trail users (not just bikes!).

Every year, the WRTC has a raffle featuring a high-dollar mountain bike that makes its way into the hands of an excited trail user. For several years I’ve been a trail volunteer with the organization and have come out to events to shovel, rake, lop, and push rocks up hills. I have also been a small financial donor, but wanted to kick things up a notch this year and donate a completely custom shitbike to raffle off.

The hope was to add a unique bike to the raffle mix in order to drive some more ticket sales and incentivize folks who maybe were interested in something different than a killer trail bike.

Design Goals

The goal of the Wood River Wrangler was to build something that could be used just about anywhere! A bike that would be at home on the local bike path on the way to the grocery store, night rides down to the bar, any of the many gravel roads that cross our backyard, or maybe even some easy trails.

I wanted to give it a capable component mix that could put up with a lot of “deferred maintenance”, and a killer paint job that fit right in with our natural environment and small western town. My original idea was to go with a mocha color with gold accents, but my wife found the color-shifting paint that ended up going on the bike. This resulted in the color-shifting green over gold. I’m really happy with how the paint color turned out.

The Donor

The donor bike to this project was a Traitor Crusade V2. This was a flat-bar gravel bike that a friend (and board member of the WRTC) had sitting in his garage, and he was nice enough to donate it to the cause. He wasn’t the original owner, and it was clear that someone else had taken a swing at making a shitbike before him. Originally sold as a drop-bar singlespeed, this cro-mo bike had been converted to a flat bar with gears and some other interesting parts substitutions. The steel frame is beeeeefy, and I’m sure will hold up to any abuse that may have come its way.

The Problems

One problem with this build was being unable to source small parts from the original manufacturer. Since the donor bike originally came as a single speed, it didn’t have any housing stops on the frame for geared operation. The Traitor Cycles website notes that they sell screw-in housing stops that thread into special inserts in the frame. It’s difficult to tell if Traitor Cycles is still in business or not, but I shot them an email asking for the part anyway. No response received. The result of missing this small part is that I had to run a length of housing all the way from the shifter to the rear derailleur. It works just fine, but it’s definitely not how I would like it to look.

Another issue was brakes. I had an old pair of SRAM Guide R brakes that I thought would be really fun to toss at this bike. It seems that lots of folks have opinions on the Guide brakes (and SRAM brakes in general), but I thought that it would be pretty cool to put a chonky quad-piston brakeset on a bike that would spend its life on mellow grades. But it turns out that these brakes didn’t age well in the parts bin. The pistons were sticky, the reservoirs and handles had return issues, and the rear line was too short! These issues were solvable, however. And I solved them by using a set of Shimano M615s instead 😀

The last issue is a bit of a nitpick, but if you hold a strong light up to a couple of small areas on the frame, you can find tiny bubbles in the clear coat. Grumblegrumblegrumble

The Outcome

I think that the Wood River Wrangler turned out great! I am particularly happy with the green-brown-kindapink color-shifting pigment that ended up going on the bike. I am also really happy with the Surly Moloko bar. It gives the bike some serious character. I do hope that the addition of the Wrangler to the WRTC raffle helped sell some additional tickets that will help the organization continue to do its great work in the Wood River Valley. And I hope that the person who won it is excited to ride the Wood River Wrangler for many years to come.

Confession: I had a couple of tickets and was really hoping that my name got called…

Special thanks to professional photographer Ray Gadd for capturing some amazing photos of the bike that were used for marketing. His photos are the good ones below.