I’m totally down to spoil my fiancée. She get’s some special attention. She spoils me, how could I not? She’s also a pretty legit rider. She’s ridden across the country East to West and North to South. More than I have. She’s not a shredder but game for almost any ride and she’s pedaling somewhere a few days every week. These days, she keeps beating me to the top of the hill. Awesome! She’s a tough cookie…mainly because she puts up with me.
We’re planning out a new drop bar bike for her. My typical tight tailored fit but she needed something more relevant to modern uses than her antique lugged steel Specialized Allez to work with for developing that fit. I need her to ride the fit as much as she can in a variety of terrain before I can start cutting tubes. This ensures that the bike works and can be set up wherever she’s looking to optimize performance. The bike will be a lighter version of the F-35 with a refined geometry for her needs (longer, less aggressive rides) and without the provision for a suspension fork. To do this, we dusted off the old Tron Light Cycle (2013). Since the frame is fairly close to her size in the more modern sense (650mm FC), it would be a good platform and provide the ability to ride a variety of terrain. This is crucial in any fit. Studio fit’s work great in studios. Tested fits work great in terrain.
Over the past few years, the Light Cycle frame had seen a good bit of riding and racing. It’s paint was skuffed and scratched. It was also getting long in the tooth with regard to geometry and some smaller details. I ground off a few braze-ons, fit up some new ones, cleaned up the dropper routing, and we gave the bike a new paint job. I had hacked in some routing for the KS LEV27.2 dropper post and that needed some love and some tie points. The bike had also been used with a double chainring and would probably now see just single ring. Also, zip-tie points for each line along the stay needed to be brought from the older two to modern three. No more housing stops under the top tube.
Only just recently are tires coming out that work well for this category. I have some of my heavy tires on the bike right now but I’ll be shopping around for something more suitable for her. The Maxxis Re-fuse 40/32mm tires that I have in place are capable and competent on any terrain from rough singletrack to smooth tarmac.
The old Stan’s Arch EX/Crest rims were switched to WTB KOM i25 rims the weekend after these shots were taken. Those are some pretty sweet hoops for this category these days. I even poached DT240s off of my flow bike to pimp the bike out more. After using the WTB rims in the past few years, trying to make sense of the Stan’s rims is hard. Just leftover from another time. Things are so much nicer now. Such a great footprint!
The 46cm Salsa Cowbell 2 handlebars is a contentious choice in my head. They feel a bit narrow for me and hopefully, they will work well for her. They’re currently one of the widest drop bars out there. For me, I’d like to try some 48cm versions.
Currently, the bike has 172.5mm wide-axle cranks in place. The final bike will see 170mm narrow-axle cranks. Running narrow cranks with big tires is key for the new bike.
Of course, one huge issue with this bike is the lame LEV27.2 dropper. The 100mm drop is pretty meaningless in the real world. It’s also so slow to be bothersome.The new bike will take a Reverb B1 150mm dropper. Thus most of the desire to move this bike forward to a new frame. That and more tire clearance, lower bb and rack mounts. There will be a few other nice touches as well.
The cables and housing have been left a little on the long side here. This setup will only be getting used for a couple of months and then parts get re-allocated as we build Windy’s new frame up.
Color: RAL 3001 Signal red w/ 20% satin clear coat. It really looks like tomato soup.
Dam. This is one sweet B-bike.
