[smitty39]

You can make your X-Caliber a rigid bike.

I am currently converting mine to rigid singlespeed. I bought it as my re-entry to MTB, and quickly moved to a race-worthy XC bike. I wanted to give the X-Cal a purpose beyond a 10 pound overweight geared bike, so for me singlspeed made sense. Maybe you go 1x.

First order of business: FORK! I replaced the almost-5 pound boat anchor XC30 with a nice Niner carbon rigid fork and it totally transformed the bike. I went with a tapered steerer, which required the Cane Creek Conversion for the lower bearing. No big deal. I got the fork on closeout for about $170. This dropped over 3.5 lbs.

1x drivetrain - This drops a bunch of weight and clutter. Sounds like where you ride you could go 1x10, which is a pretty cheap buy from Jenson. Just north of $200 for a nice XT group last time I checked.

OR Singlespeed - drop maybe another pound beyond 1x10.

Budget permitting: Wheels - The wheelset spec'd on the X-Cal 7 (the 2015 version anyway) is 2300g. You can drop an easy 1.5 pounds (including tubeless conversion) for a relatively low amount of money. This is next on my list.

Do the things above and you've got a ~21-22 lb bike for not too much money.

The X-Cal frame is more than capable and worthy of building up, in my opinion.

 

[smitty39]

Smitty, what wheels are you looking at?

Stans Crest or Arch built around decent hubs. Just waiting for a good clean used set to pop up on ebay or the Classifieds here.