Christine’s winter bike

Christine’s winter bike

I built Christine a 650C road bike years ago, which she has used for multiple super-endurance events (deca-ironman – more than once!), plus of course all the training for them. She decided it was finally time to have a dedicated training/commuting bike built, and requested something along the lines of my winter bike.

The roads in New Zealand are pretty terrible with chipseal, so I suggested using high volume 650B tires for comfort and control. Astral rims were laced to a SON SL dynamo front hub, and an Alfine 8spd Di2 rear hub. For the front, I built a fork to match with the special dropouts that act as the power connector to the hub – no wires or connectors to mess with. At the back, to get a good beltline with the Di2 setup, the dropouts are offset 7mm to the right, with the wheel dished to suit. There is a custom socket at the dropout to provide a break in the chainstay for belt installation. An eccentric bottom bracket takes care of belt tensioning duties.

All the wiring is internal, for the both the lights and shifting, with the rear hydraulic hose internally routed through the downtube. The frame includes rear rack bosses, just in case, but Christine prefers bikepacking style bags – for this the mainframe has additional (internally brazed) bosses under the toptube, and Kaibab Customs created a custom bag to bolt in place.

The final complete weight with lights, fenders and pedals is 24lbs.

7 Comments

  1. No doubt Christine loves yellow. But what is Christine like; mellow yellow or loud yellow?
    You don’t mean 650b? 650c tyre choices a tad few?

    • I’ve since had a look at Christine’s earlier bike which indeed is probably 650c, my apologies. Noticed the seat-mast topper – good job!

  2. Why did you go for the 8spd and not the 11spd hub?

    • I have had too many failures and unreliability with the 11spd hub unfortunately. Whereas the 8spd is very dependable.

  3. Looks awesome!

  4. How do you adjust the belt tension?

    • There is an eccentric bottom bracket for tensioning the belt

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