Yeti 575 Buildout
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Step 1: Choosing the Frame
This is the first and most important step, as your choice of frame will determine what kind of bike you end up with and how much it will cost. Decide whether you want a cross country, all mountain, trail, downhill, free ride, or all purpose bike. For us, we needed a beefy trail bike for the unforgiving forest trails at home but which fits right into our monthly trips to the mountains. Therefore, we decided to look for a 6-inch travel bike (pertaining to the rear suspension) on a frame which supports 140mm-travel forks for the downhill rocky mountain rides. But we didn’t want a pure downhill bike on our trails in the rolling hills back home, so we settled on the Yeti with almost 6-inches of rear travel (5.75”) with a Fox RP23 shock enabling the slightly stiffer pro-pedal mode for riding the home turf. The head tube angle is designed to easily accommodate forks beyond 140mm of travel. There were a few other frames which fit the bill, but we liked the cool white Yeti mascot. Honestly, we borrowed a friend’s Santa Cruz Blur LT and rode it one weekend (in the Santa Cruz mountains of all places) and decided the rear just didn’t have the plush response we needed dropping down the hillsides, and its head tube angle wasn’t slack enough for our purposes. We were also still spooked by the incessant creaking of the main rear suspension pivot on this and several other pre-2008 Blur LT models our friends rode. Santa Cruz claims to have addressed this in the 2008’s, but at the time of our buildout, they still weren’t available. Yeti provides their frame specs online so you can match your physique to the proper size. We went with medium, found one of their online dealers and had the Frame in hand a week later. Oh, and we picked up the Fox Talas 32 RLC Fork along the way. The adjustable travel modes make a huge difference when riding varied terrain, as the shorter travel settings aid climbing tremendously and the longer setting is needed for flying downhill on rocky, rooty terrain.
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