Cannondale Habit

[JohnnyD-TX]

Certainly not anything retro on this bike, but it is surprisingly a fun bike to ride. The bike performs far better than my desire for riding any trails beyond the blue trails I tend to limit my older Cannondale bike too. Although I did ride a nice little black trail on the 2001 Jekyll with the Lefty.. The looks at the trail head were so funny. I only wish I rode with a GoPro so I could share them with everyone.

Best $750 dollars spent on unwanted warranty replacement frame. Almost everything was source from sellers on Pinkbike.

 

[warrior4life]

How does this ride next to the Jekyll? I've been looking at older Jekyll's recently. Wonder how they'd be for the occasional XC race? My handling's good, been MTB-ing since the 80's good, I'm let down by fitness. Plan is to get fit again so I can climb and buy something cheap to get around on. I'm considering the Super V or Jekyll.

 

[JohnnyD-TX]

How does this ride next to the Jekyll? I've been looking at older Jekyll's recently. Wonder how they'd be for the occasional XC race? My handling's good, been MTB-ing since the 80's good, I'm let down by fitness. Plan is to get fit again so I can climb and buy something cheap to get around on. I'm considering the Super V or Jekyll.

Compared to my Jekyll(both of them), the Habit is in another league. Despite not really liking the aesthetics of modern MTB's and 29" wheels. You can not disagree that the bikes are a vast improvement in ride quality and ability. Which is why I decided to bit the bullet and buy a frame and build it up the way I wanted. I also got the added bonus of still having to deal with infamous Cannondale quirks due to the Ai offset rear wheel and 83 mm bottom bracket. However, doing a little reading I quickly figured out what I needed and got an amazing performing bike. Gotta love Cannondale and their sneaky "proprietary" parts/features!

I'd say the Jekyll would be perfect for light to moderate XC trails. The Lefty DLR that is installed on my "01 Jekyll works great and I find the 100mm of travel to be more than enough for light to moderate XC trails. The 2003-05 Jekyll's got 130 mm of front and rear travel. Like I said, I've taken that bike down a black trail a few times and it still performs OK enough, but I'd not recommend it or do it frequently simply because of the age of fork and rear shock even though mine are well maintained. It's super hard to find replacement parts if something should fail. Although, based on what I've seen of the prices and available bikes in GB and Europe, you'd have better chance of finding something than I do here in the US

 

[coomber]

Nice. I have liked these since Ratboy posted loads of videos playing around with one

 

[coomber]

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/bike-check-josh-brycelands-cannondale-habit.html

 

[JohnnyD-TX]

https://m.pinkbike.com/news/bike-check-josh-brycelands-cannondale-habit.html

Thanks for the link to the Pinkbike article. I saw it when I was doing research before buying the bare frame I built mine up from. I love that color.
The article that SOLD me on building up a Habit though was a BOTD at vitalmtb. I sort of copied the formula of increased travel for the bike too. I put on 210x52.5 rear shock for 137 mm of rear and the Bomber Z2 is now set at 150 mm up front. Just enough travel to tackle anything I am willing to attempt at my age now, but not enough to damage the bike. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to get the correct SRAM crank for it. SRAM and Cannondale both swore up and down that only the Cannondale Ai offset crank will fit. Guess what I found out through actually measuring the spindle off of another Ai offset bike? The length is the exact same as the DUB wide cranks, the Ai offset is only that they use the 3mm offset "boost" chainring instead of the normal 6mm one. The BB is just your normal DUB BSA 83 mm but with an add 5.5mm spacer on the drive side. The funny part was that I finally found a Cannondale "specific" part that was actually cheaper than the normal part when I purchased the BB the Ai spec one was 5 dollars cheaper than the regular BSA 83mm one from SRAM.
Of course Cannondale has now ditched the Ai offset on the 2023 models, since they now come with a UDH and are compatible with the new SRAM transmissions, so I am also thinking they changed the BB shell to 73 mm too. I just haven't went to the near by Cannondale retailer and checked for myself. Doesn't matter to me though, since I am MORE than happy with my GX Eagle and good old fashioned cable shifting.