New Bike Report

My NBD post was somewhat hampered by the borkedness of the STW image posting so I thought I'd have another go now it's fixed.

As it's a completely bespoke build I also thought people might find the process I went through interesting. 

I've always liked the idea of having a bike built for me. I've just turned 66, so I thought that I'd better get on with it or I wouldn't have any time left to enjoy it. I dropped into our local framebuilder and had a chat to see if they would be interested in doing the bike that I wanted, because I knew they didn't usually do things like that. They seemed keen, so the next step was to book a consultation. I turned up the next week with two of my current bikes, the Sanderson Soloist 853 and the Cannondale Scalpel HT.

  The Soloist is a 26er and is a lovely bike, but just feeling a bit dated. I explained that what I wanted was a singlespeed with the character of the Soloist but the handling of the Scalpel. In addition, I wanted to know if they could accommodate my other ideas - EBB (if possible the same as the Sanderson one), belt drive, convertible to Rohloff should I get too old to push a singlespeed, able to take a 100mm fork and a dropper if I wanted. We kicked a few ideas around and decided that the best way to get the Rohloff compatibility was to use Paragon swappable dropouts, which meant that the EBB wasn't necessary. Belt drive was fine, but it limited the choice of cranks and in the end we settled on Rotor, with the gearing to be equivalent to 2:1 on a 26er since that was what I was used to. Dropper compatibility and 100mm corrected fork no problem. I wanted Hope Pro 5 hubs with the rear being the SS/T version, with Crest rims, Hope headset and BB, Renthal stem and bars, Hope seatpost, and XTR Race brakes. Even I found the Enve fork a bit steep, but the Kinesis a bit agricultural, so we settled on the Whiskey as a compromise.

Over the next couple of weeks we exchanged emails during which the spec changed slightly due to availability issues and the final signed off spec had Thomson stem, Thomson seatpost, and Thomson Ti bars, and DT Swiss rims instead of the Crests. At this point, 22nd March, I put down a 50% deposit and began the wait, occupying myself with dreaming up a colour scheme.

The dropouts took a month to come from the US, Trump probably not helping, so the frame build didn't start until early May. On the 28th I got a call saying it was time to make my mind up about the paint. The Scalpel has a lovely blue metalflake with a bit of a flip fading to black at the rear dropouts. I chose to do a similar thing, but with a candy red fading to black, with gold logos. Over next few weeks I got a couple of teaser pics at various stages of the process, but it wasn't until the 16th July that I got a note saying it was finished. I couldn't pick it up until the 18th so we fixed a time and I spent the next 2 days in a constant state of excitement!

I arrived at the studio to pick it up. No one was around so I walked in and there it was, as in the builder's Instagram here:

View this post on Instagram

Absolutely beautiful, exactly as I'd asked, with the exception of Hope cranks, which I was happy with - the Rotors had proved too hard to get hold of. 

NBD pic when I got it home:

And here it is on the terrain it was designed for - Warwickshire bridleways

So, was it worth it? It is utterly gorgeous, rides fantastically well, is way lighter than I expected, and it is exactly what I wanted. The belt drive is spookily smooth and quiet. I couldn't have bought anything like this off the shelf. I'll post a winter update when we see how it copes with the mud!

Finally, huge thanks to Lee and the team at Meteor Works for making my dreams a reality. If you think you might like something bespoke it's definitely worth giving them a call.