Fairlight Secan 1.0 gravel frame- 61T

[mstateglfr]

I dont see any production threads about Fairlight or the Secan frame, so here is one in case anyone is interested or wants to reference info later.

I rode a Black Mountain Cycles Monstercross frame for a handful of years and loved it, but wanted to try a carbon fork and disc brakes. That led me to consider the Black Mountain MCD and add a Whisky fork, but the Fairlight Secan was the same ultimate cost, flatmount, and the design details hooked me.

The Secan geometry was spot on for what I want on gravel and mixed surface rides. Its basically a wide tire road bike and the geometry plus steering almost exactly mirrors my main road bike. I am in Iowa and gravel roads are just unpaved roads here so I dont need heavily progressive geometry, a dropper, or anything like that. At 6'5. the 61T option worked.


I bought this frame mid-2019 and took delivery in August. I added the Hope headset and seatpost collar in matching orange and pulled everything off my Black Mountain frame. It was initially built with the Gevenalle 2x11 shifters I had and I purchased some Juintech F1 brakes plus compressionless housing.
Here it is on my first ride- I was in the Driftless region of Iowa and rode past where Field of Dreams was filmed. It was a really remote ride, hence the large bag.


After a year, I sold the Gevenalle shifters and Juintech brakes and put some 105 hydraulic brakes on and changed the 46/34 crank out for a Praxis Zayante 48/32. The Zayante gearing works great with the 11-36 cassette I have since I ride pavement to/from gravel and all the climbing around here is either gradual or steep and short.


Since fall 2020, I have changed the saddle to a different C17, added a Whisky carbon seatpost, put on King Iris cages, and use Panaracer GK SS in 43mm tires. Oh, and a small bar bag was added at some point. Below is the current setup, unchanged for the last year.





Some numbers-
Frame weight actual- 2335g
Fork weight actual- 450g
Initial ready to ride weight(so pedals and cages) without bags- 10775g so 23.75#
Current ready to ride weight(so pedals and cages) without bags- 10740g so 23.67#

It is not a lightweight and I did not try to build it light. I wanted quality components that werent too heavy and werent too expensive. Just a good balance overall. I think I hit that.
The bike fits me perfectly, which means there is a lot of seatpost and spacers showing, but I really like the geometry and dont notice the weight. A similar sized carbon gravel bike with this spec would be a little over 2# lighter.

Some easy places to save weight would be if I went with a saddle weighing 100g less, wheels weighing 200g less, pedals that weigh 70g less, and bars that weigh 70g less. Again, these would all be easily accomplished...heck I have 3 of them sitting in my garage now that I think of it. That would put the bike at 22.70#.

Just some numbers to document for those on the leggier side of life, or for those who arent, just know a mid-level build will certainly weigh less than what I list here since the frame is smaller!

[72gmc]

I've looked at the Secan and the Faran recently. The design details appeal to me, too, and the geometry of either frame looks more road bike than back country bikepackin' bike to my eyes.

Would you say that's true? And what do you think of the ride when you're on paved roads?

[mstateglfr]

Originally Posted by 72gmc

I've looked at the Secan and the Faran recently. The design details appeal to me, too, and the geometry of either frame looks more road bike than back country bikepackin' bike to my eyes.

Would you say that's true? And what do you think of the ride when you're on paved roads?

My frame version doesn't have fork mounts, but more recent ones have 3 on each side for anything cages. I do have rear rack mounts though and the frame is perfectly fine to be loaded up. I've done a handful of commutes with a pannier - the bike rides as it should. Just mentioning that since you brought up bike packing.

Agreed though, this is in my eyes more of an unpaved road bike than adventure bike. It fits 47mm tires and is clearly built to be strong enough to handle gear, but geometry is more on the go fast feel side of things.

The fork offset, head tube angle, and tire width of my frame results in the same trail measurement as my main road bike. So in terms of steering feel, they are very similar. And the chainstay length is the same on both too. Add in a decent amount of bottom bracket drop for the Secan and yeah it largely mimics my main road bike.
Admittedly, my main road bike is a 20.5# steel frame bike and is not something designed for unrelenting crit riding.
But still, that bike and this are pretty similar in geometry.

I like the Secan on pavement. It is not quick to get up to speed, but it has 43mm tires so that shouldn't be a surprise. I do think that if I had 32mm quality slicks on the Secan, it would feel quicker on pavement. <--- not exactly groundbreaking observation.

It's for sure a gravel road bike with geometry to handle gravel roads more than a gravel road bike with geometry to handle sketchy twisting downhill washed out rutted fire roads with exposed boulders.
Hopefully that better explains how I see it.

[charliedid]

Cool bike and love the top cap.

[Tychom]

That really looks like a lovely place to ride!

At 6'3" I've recently ordered a 61R - should be with me in around a month. With some small amount of trepidation I would say - the 61s have slightly different tubing to the the smaller models so I'm hoping it still has some zing to it - I'm tall but not heavy.

I'm coming to it from a slightly larger 62cm original model Niner RLT9 (alloy) so this is going to be a few things - lower slung, shorter wheelbase, lower stack, but similar angles, yet heavier. I'm hoping the added weight won't be too noticeable, and largely overcome by it having sharper handling both on and off-road.

[72gmc]

Originally Posted by mstateglfr

Hopefully that better explains how I see it.

Well explained, thanks!

[mstateglfr]

Originally Posted by Tychom

That really looks like a lovely place to ride!

At 6'3" I've recently ordered a 61R - should be with me in around a month. With some small amount of trepidation I would say - the 61s have slightly different tubing to the the smaller models so I'm hoping it still has some zing to it - I'm tall but not heavy.

I'm coming to it from a slightly larger 62cm original model Niner RLT9 (alloy) so this is going to be a few things - lower slung, shorter wheelbase, lower stack, but similar angles, yet heavier. I'm hoping the added weight won't be too noticeable, and largely overcome by it having sharper handling both on and off-road.

Did you order the purple?!

Yes the tubing on your version 2.5 is slightly different from mine.
- For all sizes, the 2.5 has chainstays that are now .8mm vs the version 1.0 chainstays which are .9mm thick.
- The larger frame sizes on the version 1.0 had the same tubing as smaller frames. The 2.5 model has a larger top tube, but same butting. And the seatstays on the 2.5 in largest sizes are 16mm vs mine which are 14mm.

Whats really nice about the 2.5 model(besides the purple color and fork mounts) is there are 3 bottle mounts on the seat tube of larger frames. This is huge because you can move the bottle up a bit if you want. The bottles on mine sometimes feel like they are miles away, especially if I have smaller 22oz bottles that day.




So you have slightly lighter chainstays, slightly heavier seatstays, and a slightly larger top tube. Pretty sure that will be quite the wash in the end.
If you look around, no production frames are going to be crazy light. The DZB downtube in the Secan is used in other steel production gravel frames too, as it is needed in order to pass fatigue testing.
I really do think geometry is more important than a pound or two, and dont think thats me justifying. At least I hope it isnt me justifying!

[72gmc]

Originally Posted by mstateglfr

I really do think geometry is more important than a pound or two, and dont think thats me justifying. At least I hope it isnt me justifying!

Across production and custom bikes, I've had some of my best riding on "lower grade" tubes that were put together the right way for me.

[yinzerniner]

Originally Posted by 72gmc

Across production and custom bikes, I've had some of my best riding on "lower grade" tubes that were put together the right way for me.

I just got my Fairlight Secan 2.5 in 56R and honestly the bike details are better in person than even the design book. Even though some were negative on their decision to go offshore for welding and some parts of production it doesn't seem to have affected the finished product.

As for the geo think it's awesome that they offer a Regular and Tall fit. The tall gives that much more of a relaxed position for people who want to bomb down single track, while the regular is more of an all-around where you can influence ride quality via a ton of tire fitment choices. Also the head tube might seem a bit steep for a gravel bike, but since it also comes with the fork mounts it'll be a welcome geo choice for those who like front-loading.

Will probably post my own thread on the build process to stop hijaking the OPs thread here. I was torn between purple and white, and glad to see someone posting pics of the other color choices.

[Epicus07]

I too have a post coming soon…. Currently applying Frame Saver

IMG_4378.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[raisinberry777]

Looks stunning! I'm agonisingly close to buying a Strael in that same colour.

[Tychom]

Originally Posted by mstateglfr

Did you order the purple?!

No I wimped out and went with the black. I already have one purple bike, the black model was available almost immediately and I'm in a hurry to move over to a new frame, plus I wanted something understated this time around.