Custom painted one-off Yeti SB4.5C super bike

To celebrate their 30th year, Yeti Cycles recently unveiled the strictly limited edition Sb6c, in the stunning Yeti blue and yellow colour scheme.

The team at UK distributors Silverfish are all complete bike freaks, but one in particular was slavering over the paint job – but it wasn’t quite the bike he wanted.

The SB4.5c is his kind of poison. So a completely custom one was the only way to go – check out this awesome Yeti VS Fat Creations…

At a glance, you could think it’s the much talked about SB6C 30year anniversary edition, unveiled at Eurobike earlier this year. But look twice and you’ll see this beast is a little different…

Yeti Cycles are one of the few mountain bike brands to have achieved cult status – and are the perfect example of a bike that people spend a lot of time and care building up.

UK importers Silverfish worked with custom painter Fat Creations on a newly released Switch Infinity equipped SB4.5C frame – with the aim of replicating the 30th year paint job seen on the SB6C. Fat Creations did a stunning job, and also colour matched the forks, and added detailing to the cranks and handlebars.

The SB6C features a graphic on the top tube saying ‘Faster Faster Faster’ – but this custom SB4.5C says ‘Faster Fat Bastard’ instead. Classic!

“As far as I’m concerned if you have a Yeti it needs to look right. There’s only one way it should look!

When they launched the 30year anniversary edition recently, it was only in the bigger travel SB6C – which isn’t the bike Darren wanted.

He saw me do another Yeti about 18months ago as a prize for an Enduro race I sponsored, and got in touch over it.

When he got in touch he was building a bike for an event and wanted it to be special – so went for the frame colourway, with matching fork, crank and bar detailing. He did the lot!”

Ali McLean, Fat Creations

Instead of having the classic Yeti doing a broad slide, this custom painted SB4.5C features the Clown Yeti, who was featured on the first 29er that Yeti released – the Big Top. A nice touch – and a serious bit of painting that took nearly 5 hours to complete!

Although the chainstay Yeti graphic didn’t take long to paint, it took the best part of 4hours to mask up.

“This bike took me somewhere between 45-50hours all in.

Unbelievably, the little Yeti on the back of the seat tube took about 4.5hrs of work! The Yeti on the chainstay/seat stay area took minutes to paint – although to get it stencilled up and make sure it was perfect took 3-4hours! Little details like that add masses of time to a job”

Ali McLean, Fat Creations

Custom painted Race Face Next SL carbon bars – how nice do they look! The Chris King headset is really the only choice for a Yeti, and blends in perfectly.

Race Face Next SL Carbon with direct mount Cinch ring, custom painted graphics and a KMC chain that just happens to be the perfect colour!

Custom painting is a seriously labour intensive job, and Ali runs the business with the help from his partner Bex, who works on the graphics. The artwork and logos can take hours, so this way Ali can spend more time perfecting the paint finish. Price wise, it’s not as expensive as you might think – and is definitely a labour of love:

“If you took off the two Yeti’s, and the flag – you’d be looking at about £375 for a paint job like this. Forks are about £150 – but if stripped before hand and supplied as lowers and uppers are approx £125.

When you start adding detail, it adds up as that stuff just takes a lot of time. The small Yeti on the chainstay would add about £25 to the job, and the crank detailing as seen here about £90.

The prep is the most time consuming single thing though, it takes about 6hrs to get a frame masked up and prepped”

Ali McLean, Fat Creations

Detailing and finish on this special project bike are absolutely stunning – the whole thing is immaculate.

It seems now that mountain bikes are reaching a level where on the large part are really quite good, many people are heading back towards the custom route. Ali has been working on some incredible bikes lately, like this one he did for Soho Bikes. We’ll be taking a look at the full process soon, on another very special bike he has planned after christmas.

Here’s the spec list for this Yeti SB4.5C VS Fat Creations: 

• Frame           Yeti SB4.5c Large
• Fork               Fox Float 34 boost (custom painted)
• Headset        Chris King Inset Tapered – Turquoise
• Bar                 Race Face Next SL Carbon 35mm (custom painted)
• Stem              Race Face Turbine 35mm
• Grips             Oury Lock-on (custom SDG Kashima gold collars)
• Seatpost       Rock Shox Reverb Stealth
• Saddle           SDG Duster P
• Brakes          Formula T1 Racing Ltd Ed
• Shifter          Sram XX1
• Wheels         e*thirteen TRSR Carbon (custom colour-matched graphics)
• Tyres             Onza Ibex
• Cranks          Race Face Next SL Carbon with direct mount Cinch ring  (custom painted)
• R Mech         Sram XX1
• Cassette       Sram XX1 11spd
• Chain            KMC Black and Turquoise

What do you think of the Yeti SB4.5C VS Fat Creations?

Would you consider a custom paint job?

Let us know in the comments below! 

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