![]() I was fortunate to be able to work with Brian at Kaibab Customs for the bags – he is here in town so that made collaborating very easy, and he was willing to take my ideas and apply his expertise to create some awesome bags. Once the frame was built, it went off to Colorworks for some super bright orange paint and chrome logos. There are additional bosses under the toptube for a custom framebag to bolt in place. The rear dropouts are Syntace X12, machined down to match an Extralite thru-axle. The rest of the frame is fairly standard, with a mixture of True Temper S3 and Columbus Life tubing. A nose cone was fabricated to match the profile of the fork crown, and brazed to the front. The Parlee fork fits a Cane Creek 1-1/4” lower bearing, so I custom machined a lightweight headtube to directly fit this bearing, with a 44mm zero-stack race at the top. SRAM set me up with a complete Red eTap group, along with a couple of extra chains for training and racing. I have been running SRAM eTap on a couple of bikes for a year now, and am very happy with it – using it for this application allowed me to add Clic shifters on the aerobars so I can easily shift from there or the drops/hoods. The seatstays are dropped a little, which gives room for a third bottle cage on the back of the seattube. I went with a -17 degree stem to lengthen the headtube, and very little slope on the toptube – these two features give me more room inside the main triangle, since I will fit two large bottles and a frame bag there. I also stretched the front center and chainstays a little to lengthen the wheelbase, again for increased stability. I lowered the BB a little, which gains me a little stability since I don’t plan on aggressively pedaling around corners as I cross the country. Fortunately Ruckus Composites were able to add a hose exit at the crown to resolve this for me.įor the frame design, it is my standard road position, but the geometry has a few changes from my race bike. That is a routing method I have used a few times when building custom bikes, but for this application I didn’t think it was sensible not to have easy access to the stem and headset. And the hose routing was fully internal, up through the steerer tube. When the fork arrived, I discovered that the crown had an airfoil shape to mate up to the headtube. They were able to help me out, along with the caliper fairings for front and rear. ![]() But then I remembered that Parlee had introduced their new TT bike with disc brakes, so I gave them a call to see if I could get just the fork from them. There are not too many aftermarket aero forks available, let alone disc aero forks. I could build a steel one, but I could save a little weight by going with carbon. Having selected the brake type, I then needed a suitable fork. Schwalbe provided their Pro One 28C tubeless tires – they inflated and sealed easily with a handpump, a definite plus point! Secondly, wider (28mm) tires will give lower rolling resistance and better comfort, but need a much wider rim to not hinder the aerodynamics – as I was figuring this out, DT released their excellent new ERC 1100 Endurance wheel, and very kindly set me up with a set for the race. I went back and forth on rim brakes versus disc brakes for a while – eventually discs won out for a couple of reasons: Firstly, the rims will be carbon for the best aerodynamics/lightest weight, and if I am descending mountain roads in the dark and rain then I don’t want to be reliant on carbon rim braking. Plus be able to carry a minimal amount of gear. But what would a fast, ultra-light road touring bike look like? The end goal is efficient speed, so aerodynamics is important, but it also needs to be comfortable for very long days in the saddle. Of course I would need a bike – not a big problem there of course…. So this kind of brings all that together. I toured the Western Express version of the route back in 2003 – going back to ride it fast was for some reason appealing! I have a background in endurance mountain bike events, road racing and time trialing, as well as extended touring. I mulled it over for a while, eventually deciding it was the challenge I needed for the year I turned 40. My interest was piqued when I heard that there was now a race on the TransAm route. Two-and-a-half weeks until the race starts on June 3rd! A fair bit of background on the fabrication here (including photos) – scroll down for the finished bike pics! This all seemed like such a good idea a year ago……
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