I admit I don’t ride this bike very often anymore. This was the first bike I had when I really started falling in love with riding. It was a great bike for getting into the sport, but as I’ve progressed through the sport, other bikes are doing it for me.
My parents helped me buy this when I was 23. My dad told me to go for a Specialized Stumpjumper Hardtail (because that’s what he had and knew), and after finding this bike for a good deal on Craigslist, I drove up to Napa to pick it up. It came as a 2x, and from early on, the front derailleur really sucked.
Nonetheless, I got out on this relatively a lot early on. I’d ride it in Tilden Park before and after work when I lived in Berkeley. I’d take it home to the Peninsula on the weekends and take Dirt Alpine up to Skyline or roll around Arastradero. It certainly held its own when I lived in Truckee for six months, and I mainly hold onto it for trips up there and the that there’s no pressing reason to get rid of it.
After barely touching it in 2023, when I did my first full road season as a Cat 4, I was trying to figure out why, and I came up with these conclusions. 1 – there’s nothing technical in the off-road department in the Peninsula that warrants riding this instead of a gravel bike. 2 – it’s much nicer to ride a gravel bike on the road to the trails instead of this. 3 – the shifting sucked on this bike. 4 – this bike is heavy and slow (maybe in support of point no. 2).
I decided to poke around for parts on eBay. This bike came as a 10 speed, and having really liked my 11 speed drivetrains on my Tarmac and Crux, I thought 11 speed would be my go to instead of 12. I learned about how 12 speed has been the standard in mountain bikes for a while, but I delightfully found some much cheaper 11 speed Sram components that I assume were made in the brief period in between the reigns of 10 and 12 speed MTB drivetrains.
The installation was relatively simple, the shifting was much better, the bike was slightly lighter, and the bike was much more enjoyable to ride. Yipee! Oh how simple it was……until it wasn’t.
The snag with this conversion was the bottom bracket. This bike was made in 2015, and I bought it with all the stock components on it. Getting the stock crank off was the hardest part of the entire conversion before this BB snag – after not being able to do it at home putting a torque improving pipe over the crank arm, the bike shop I was taking a class at also couldn’t manage to quickly get it off. I ended up figuring out a way to jump on the pipe I put over the crank arm with all of my body weight and alas, it came. I found this bike in Specialized’s bike archive online after narrowing down the year it was made, and the page specified the crank was custom and the BB was PF30.
I ordered a 1x crank for a PF30 BB and voila, my bike would be ready to ride. Wrong (as so happens with so many bike projects). The crank didn’t fit the bb and would come loose shortly after riding after installing the crank arms and lateral retaining piece on Sram cranks. If I torqued the crank all the way to the 54 Nm spec, it would not turn freely.
I took the bike into Summit Bicycles, which is the first time I have ever brought in one of my bikes to a bike shop for service, to have a go. The mechanic gave it back to me the next day and said that he thought I was torquing the crank down too much, and I skeptically took the bike home to try out. It didn’t fix the issue anymore than I had, and I was left feeling ever regretful for my one trip to a bike mechanic.
After deciding I needed to replace the BB for a more recent model, I waited a while to replace it. I rode the bike in Sun Valley, Idaho, in December 2023 when there was no snow for our ski trip for Christmas, and got a crazy amount of peanut butter mud into the BB, basically wrecking it. Perfect time to get a new BB!
The replacement was simple to do at home with the right tool my dad happened to have. Installing the new BB was nerve wracking until I realized I could be pretty brute with it, and the cranks have been turning great ever since!
In 2025, I’ve been contemplating doing an XC mountain bike race, so I’ve scoped out a dropper post. That’ll most likely be the latest addition to the Stumpjumper.
Specs:
- Crankset- Sram NX X-Sync 32T
- Rear Derailleur and Shifter – Sram NX 1×11 Group
- Shimano Ultegra 11 Speed Chain
- Shimano XT-M8000 11-42 Cassette
- SRAM PF30 Bottom Bracket
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