riding bikes with harry mack and today we're checking out
his bike which he entirely made out of parts from aliexpress it's such a big
it's kind of like the challenge of building like an underdog bike which i really like
as well and everyone's like don't do it it's stupid and that makes me want to do it more
um so yeah and it's kind of worked out everything is from aliexpress apart from the saddle
crank set and bottle cages oh and top cap so it's a brand called elves i don't know if people call
it elves or elves it's about e-l-v-e-s so elves i don't really know how to pronounce it it's a
chinese company and it's a genuine brand that's like really really big in malaysia and like most
of asia like philippines it's like it's massive over there so it's like a well-trusted brand in
terms of aliexpress it's an expensive aliexpress frame but it's a cheap frame for more standards
how much was the frame 800 quid i think just under 1 100 grams for an aero 54 centimeter frame
it's pretty good it was more to do with like the color that i really liked i love the color
the paint job's actually well done as well yes but no so they haven't clear coated the white bit the
white paint so like this strip here they haven't clear coated um which isn't good so i'm gonna have
to do that myself like what what you're not paying for is like the finished quality of when you buy
from my express um so like the whitebear hasn't been clear-coated the inside of the frame was a
little bit tacky there was a sharp piece of carbon coming off from the inside of the headset i had to
do that myself but i'm okay doing that myself but it's like you're just not paying for the finished
quality of a frame from specialized or whatever we always are from aliexpress as well which i've
got recently 82 on the back 60 on the front very very deep very aero very fast the brakes
so i say i never buy fake stuff from aliexpress which is mostly true but i did however buy fake ee
breaks from aliexpress so they're branded with a legitimate brand's name yeah but they're actually
fake yes right okay and the reason why i did that is because they had such good reviews and people
were saying they're machines so well they're literally identical um they break amazingly and
they're like 20 grams heavier than the original just 20. so they're already 100 grams lighter
than your race and they cost 100 quid versus 600 that's pretty nuts the stuff that works exactly
the same group set obviously sends an empire so it costs you're running that as well i'm running
it i've got the 12-speed version you've got the rim brake 11-speed brake 11-speed vlog yeah um
i guess both are the same because they're just actuated brakes this school or room you're running
the same kind of shifters um i've had mainly good things to say about it there's been a lot of like
little things about it which haven't worked out things rattling loose a bit um
you know like the hoods are loose they kind of came loose almost you know stuff like that just
like loads of little things the derailleur b screw isn't tight enough not the b limit screw not the
b limit screw but like the yeah but where bolts on to the derailleur is loose so like the railing
light is at an angle a bit my one doesn't do that so it goes to show how different the parts can be
depending on the batch you get the qc isn't quite the same yeah well the qc is definitely not the
same yeah there was a bit on your shift at this bit that like stuck out and was but like for me
that doesn't happen yeah so again you're just not paying for a finished quality but the stuff
works great and it's light and good and i've won races on it already so it's a good bike balugo
i may i don't knows and i like throw some weird aliexpress them carbon stem yeah the boats match
their frame though that's why i went for it but it was one of the only stems i could find in
that was carbon negative 17 and 120 though i went for it um but i think i'm going to change the 130
soon um but the reason why i have it so much longer and lower is because i can't slam it
because of the internal routing here so i'm having to get a much lower standard to kind of compensate
for that is that a problem with the design of the frame there's two ways you can do the
internal routing through the stem here but then also through the down tube the down tube would
have been the one that works better but i wanted the kind of internal cabling completely internal
look so i chose to do it through here which is much trickier it causes a few more issues
and there's a tight bend and obviously with cables you don't they don't like type ends there's been
a few issues but it's okay at the moment um we could run smoother but yeah i chose to just do
that i don't mind getting a bit the stem that's kind of a bit higher and lower so the bars yeah
aliexpress as well with 30 36 centimeters so very narrow very narrow um with the shifters turned in
which a lot of people are not going to like um just to kind of really just get that aero um
aero positioning on the bike um because before i had like a climbing bike i didn't have it i
didn't have a skin suit i didn't have anything and then recently i was like i kind of just re i don't
know i just i was at hillingdon and i was just not doing very well and i was talking to people
and they were just like just get arrow everything and i was like okay you know if you can save the
amount of energy you can save from running aero setup and aeroframe aero wheels skin suit you know
aero socks everything every like there's no point doing marginal gains you were just doing one or
two so i thought just to do everything and then you save like 50 watts which is stupid and what
sort of result has all of that had on your race results good i know the answer i've done maybe
five races on this bike and i've won two of them and i came second in another one elite races and
yeah it's you can feel how much faster especially the wheels the wheels make a massive difference
because before i was running i think 40 mil from rear this is 82 on the back and 60 on the front
so it's a massive massive difference and you can really feel it
especially in the flat they're not that great for like you know technical circuits but
that's fine finally what was the total cost of the bike i think it was about
it's gonna blows people's minds and i say i think it was like it was in between one and
a half and two but closer to one and a half which for a bike looking at it like this
you can't comprehend that for one and a half brand new from like a western white brand you're not
you're getting nothing i haven't weighed it with these wheels but with the other wheels it was 7.4
things like the brakes have stayed massive they've saved hundreds of grams just by the brakes
you know compared to ultegra that will be 200 grams heavier i think but i think it's more
about the aerodynamics rather than the weight because the bike that i had before was lighter
but this bike's faster early express massive man well i think it's fair to say you've got a pretty
good build here but you need to know what you're doing with the parts to actually build it into
something good and you've obviously been doing a lot of research into parts that you can buy
from aliexpress before building this if you turn up to a bike shop with all these parts yeah they
might just turn you away every single thing that i bought on here i've researched i've done
i've read reviews and you know re like i've done everything that i can to research it as much as i
can i've spent an embarrassing amount of time researching the parts for this bike but you
know buying something that has reviews you know on our express not just buying random parts that are
i don't know if they're good or not you know people have bought all this stuff before and
it's had hundreds of reviews so that's why i bought them just like with the brakes i
didn't i wouldn't have bought them if i didn't see people have reviewed them you got the good
stuff here though harry knows how he knows i'm just here to provide snacks that's what that's
what i'm here for thank you you've been providing me snacks since 2015. if you enjoyed this video
there's a playlist on my channel called nice bikes full of lots of other nice bikes so check it out
subscribe to this channel subscribe to harry's channel which i'll put in the description down
below where he's doing lots of short videos all about his aliexpress builds and other
bike related things price doesn't matter you proved it yeah but with the help of of the bike
of the wheels copious amounts of epo yes that and that loads of chocolate
you