20 Years

20 years ago in the (northern hemisphere) spring of 2006 I bought a used Stirling Silver 2001 Gunnar Crosshairs from Karl at Klunk Cycles in Columbia, MO. It was my first dropbar bike, and I rode it off-road far more than on anything paved. In mid-Missouri there was the MKT and Katy Trail, somehow both gravel long before gravel bikes. Who knew? Aside from that, the Crosshairs saw singletrack and the annual MS150 where in 2006 I rode my first century and then my second century the next day.

So, what was the Crosshairs then, and what is it now?

The Crosshairs was Gunnar’s cyclocross frame. My 52cm has a 555mm top tube and a tiny headtube sitting at 72.5 deg. All this results in a fun bike off-road with a lot of saddle to bar drop and significant toe overlap. I was able to tolerate long hours on this thing in the past, but I find the aggressive bar drop a bit much on longer rides these days. Looking back at that photo from 2006, it seems I had significantly higher bars thanks to some spacers and that recalled Salsa CroMoto stem giving some additional rise. It looks like things have changed a little over the past 20 years.

This chart below is from the old Gunnar site and lists the original Crosshairs geometries prior to an update sometime in the early 2000s.

If memory serves, my Crosshairs was built with parts pulled from a Specialized cyclocross bike. Based on what I can find and my memory of the components, I’m going to assume it was a 2006 Tricross. The 8-speed 105 drivetrain was pretty good, but the wheels weren’t. The first upgrade was my Karl Klunk built Deore XT/Salsa Delgato Cross wheelset, and they stuck around for years until they were donated to a commuter bike build. The changes continued through a 9-speed 105 drivetrain that wasn’t really an improvement or the 8-speed, to the 2015 SRAM Force 22 rebuild that’s still here.

The most beneficial upgrade of any is almost certainly the tyres. Early 700c off road tyres weren’t great in terms of traction, longevity or puncture resistance. Patching punctures from thorns, goatheads, rim impacts or whatever else was a regular occurrence on my rides through the Adelaide Hills in the 2010s. However, finally swapping over to tubeless was a great improvement. I currently have a set of Hunt 4 Season Aero alloy wheels with tubeless Vittoria Mezcal 700×35 tyres. This combo maxes out the available tyre clearance on the Gunnar and is acceptable in most conditions. The Mezcals have proved to be durable, roll reasonably well on roads, and give decent grip on gravel and dirt.

I gave a brief summary of the drivetrain in the last post, and aside from the SRAM Force 22 drivetrain and Hunt wheelset, the Crosshairs has the original Thomson seatpost with a WTB Silverado Ti saddle, a newer Thomson X4 stem (the X2 slipped), Salsa Cowbell bars with Spank Flare gravel tape, a shiny silver Chris King headset (very nice), and a couple King stainless cages. I also have an old Fulcrum Racing 5 CX wheelset with some tubed Vittoria Corsa N.Ext 32mm tyres that have seen some use on the road and gravel.

I started tracking my gear on Strava in 2011, and since then the Gunnar has recorded just over 19,000km. As that last post may have revealed, I have a lot of bikes around and I can only ride one at a time, so the Gunnar doesn’t get a lot of use. Still, it does account for about 1/3 of all my recorded distance on Strava, and a few years ago I took the Gunnar out on a two-day, 265km bike packing gravel ride out to Warrnambool. These days I have a coupe dropbar MTBs that probably see more use off-road than the Gunnar, the recent addition of a more traditional road bike means it will now probably see fewer KMs on the road as well, and while it is my only cyclocross bike I believe my last CX race was over 10 years ago. Still, I hope to continue riding the Crosshairs and look forward to the next one.

What about Gunnar / Waterford Cycles themselves? Richard Schwinn announced the closure of both Waterford Cycles and Gunnar In 2023. More recently, Escape Collective reported the Waterford and Gunnar are revived under new owners. The new owners, Abracadabra Fabrication, have a new site up with a few framesets with familiar names. All these Gunnars a shown with the old Star Wars Gunnar downtube decals (nice.), but I don’t know much else about them.

What’s left to do? Here’s the Crosshairs now 25 years old, 20 years later, and still leaning against fence.