Fairwheel Bikes’s Shimano Di2-equipped mountain bike was one of our highlights of Interbike. Despite appearances, the Rue Sports/USE/Edge Composites/Fibrelyte/etc bike was intended as a rider, and Jason from Fairwheel (who trades as “madcow” on forums) was straight out on it after the show.

“After several rides on it I absolutely fell in love with it,” says Jason, “so I decided to take it and do it again but with a bit more of a daily rider theme.”

Starting point was a 90mm travel MSC Koncept Carbon full suspension frame, which comes in at a startling 1.6kg including a RockShox Monarch shock. Up front there’s a Manitou MRD R7 fork. The rest of the spec comprises plenty of superlight niche stuff – lots of KCNC, Extralite and so on. The wheels include Soul Kozak hubs (that we don’t mind admitting we’ve never heard of) laced to Edge Composites carbon rims with Sapim CX-Ray spokes.

Then of course there’s that Shimano Di2 electronic transmission, which is part of the top-flight Dura-Ace road group but appears here in similar hacked-about form to the Interbike show bike. Apparently it’s been working just fine, with the main change to the transmission setup here being a switch to Extralite Gara 28/42 chainrings to give slightly lower gears. The rear cassette is a custom-assembled 11-32 10spd.

The end result is an 18.8lb bike that’s described as a “reliable daily rider”. And if you think that sounds light, the original plan was for the bike to be only just over 17lb – this is the “robust” version, with some of the more outré component choices left on the shelf.

More lightweight craziness at www.fairwheelbikes.com.