Finishing Kit

It’s been said that having matching stems, handlebars and seatposts is like making sure your belt and shoes match… or something like that. It does just look better, and now that bar diametres are pretty standard (amongst three standards anyway) there’s not too many problems there. But to match the FRM crankset we have opted for FRM parts for these essential parts.

For the seatpost, we are using the ST M10 Ti. Ok, it’s not the most amazing name. But it’s a straight post, with ti bolts and a scandium body. And at 173g it’s lighter than just about any carbon equivalent, and cheaper as well.

It mounted up just fine, and FRM supply specific grease to use with the Ti bolts. They have a T25 head, so a proper set of Torx tools (or at least a T25) makes using these bits a lot easier. Depending on the age of your bike, you probably need a T25 and T30 already.

Handlebars are an easy choice on an XC/Trail 29er dually -wide and pretty flat. FRM have about six different handlebar models to suit XC or Enduro, and the Carbon 229 is one of the lighter offerings, at 150g for the 700mm wide ‘bar, with 7deg back sweep. Interestingly, the 31.8mm clamp area is offset. But not so you don’t steer straight, but so you can flip the bar to get 10mm lower if you want to. The graphics are doubled up, and the sweep is back, not back and up, so it won’t do anything funny to your ergonomis. This is a really Good Thing for shorter riders who sometimes struggle to get low enough on big wheeled bikes. Or for really short riders who struggle to get low enough on 26 or 27.5” inched bikes.

Lastly, the stem. A nice and short 75mm suits the geometry of the Whyte [use a link back to the frame preview], as they’re designed about long front ends, short rear ends, and s short stem to keep the input fast. The FRM Web Stem 6B Ti (again, naming leaves something to be desired) is a scant 100g for the 75mm model, but is limited to 85kg riders. It is CNC machined from Scandium, and all 6 bolts are Ti. The Italian made stem has a 7degree rise to run up or down, and is available in black. You can get fancy with the face plates though, which come in red, black or ‘Titan’. We chose black.