Steven’s road disc build

Steven’s road disc build

Steven definitely needed a custom bike – with a 63cm toptube this is the longest frame I have built, combined with a short headtube for an aggressive position for a long limbed rider.

The oversize headtube fits a tapered steerer disc fork from Enve, joined by a Chris King headset. CK also provide the BB for the T47 shell, which allows room to run the rear brake hose and Di2 wires fully internally. The 12mm thru-axle of the front fork is matched in the back with Syntace X12 dropouts.

Carbon aero wheels are from Industry 9, there is a 3T cockpit and a complete Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset.

Paint is by Colorworks, and the complete bike weighs in at 18lbs.

I just got my secondride in today!  The bike is superb.  It’s really great – balanced, dialed in, comfortable, fast as it is aggressive, gorgeous to look at, all the above.  I enjoy every pedal stroke.  Your work is really art and science, and it’s very special.  Thank you for all the time and effort, and back and forth and thought that went in.

10 Comments

  1. indeed, a long one… still, same beauty into your creation 😉

  2. Long and low re-defined!

  3. i noticed that it was chosen the combination of very long top tube along with decent/normal stem length – which looks like about 120mm. i wonder why not slightly “shorter” 61cm top tube along with 2cm longer stem?
    best regards, Mircea

    • Hi Mircea,
      Because of the need for a custom frame, Steven hasn’t been able to really test his ‘ideal’ position, so we wanted to allow room for adjustment via the stem to go longer if required (I painted a second, longer/lower stem for him to experiment with). This is also why the 3T zero25 seatpost was chosen, to give maximum adjustment for the saddle setback.
      thanks,
      Rob.

      • Thank you, Rob!
        Got it, so that is his compact position or rearwards position (lets say); while having the option to go a bit more stretched (longer stem) or a bit more forwards (longer stem + zero offset seatpost). Interesting!
        Best regards,
        Mircea

  4. Your work is beautiful and are truly works of art. I’m curious about the rear brake hose routing through the BB junction. Do you have the hose supported in any way above the crank axle? I’ll be working on a disc build soon and want run everything internal if possible and for this reason will use a t47 BB. Thanks for your time.

    • Thanks! The sleeve that comes with the CK BB is stiff enough to keep the hose away from the axle, just requires a little care with the install to have everything fit nicely. Good luck with your build!
      Rob.

  5. Hi, Rob.big fan of your work.nice to see custom frame builders pushing the limits with steel.I was just thinking,like steel is amazing material (I ride steel,a stelbel custom).The mass manufactured industry has been taken over by carbon.so,will the same happen with the custom Industry?just curios to know.Where do see the steel custom industry after say 30-40 years.No offense.
    Thanks

    • Metal bikes are making a bit of a comeback, even with mass manufacturing it seems – big improvements in aluminium alloys and technology, plus a plethora of small brands filling niches with steel bikes. A few custom builders have switched from steel to carbon (Landshark and Argonaut come to mind), but there are still a number of advantages to a ferrous bike build. 30-40 years is too far to speculate, and likely beyond my career span. I am just grateful that people seem to like what I do, and I will continue to try to create innovative builds in steel – no plans to branch into other materials at the moment.
      thanks, Rob.

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