English Cycles | Custom Bicycles

Posted by Rob on Nov 21, 2025

Daniel’s road bike

Daniel wanted an update for his very old trusty road bike. We went fully modern with carbon wheels, wireless shifting, hydraulic disc brakes and fully hidden brake hoses. The frame was designed to match his fit and provide geometry for confident descending. Whilst hidden hoses give a very sleek appearance, they can make traveling with the bike challenging. To provide a little accommodation for this, the...

Posted by Rob on Nov 9, 2025

Jules’ gravel bike

Jules wanted a super capable gravel bike, so we designed around 2.25″ tires. He already had a set of Onyx hubs, with boost (148mm) spaced rear and regular (100mm) front. So those were custom painted before being laced up to Light Bicycle rims. For the boost chainline but with a gravel size chainring I couldn’t find a direct mount option for the SRAM power meter. But was able to get it all to...

Posted by Rob on Oct 29, 2025

Keith’s belt drive road bike

Keith asked me to build him a road bike for his commute. The goal was low maintenance with a Gates belt drive, plus as light as possible. The bike has two modes – geared with an 11spd Shimano Alfine internally geared hub, and singlespeed with the alternate rear wheel. The bike has fully internally routed hoses and Di2 wires, using the Enve In-route fork and stem plus a Wolftooth headset. The 35mm...

Posted by Rob on Oct 18, 2025

Matt’s gravel bike

Matt decided upon a Firefly custom titanium/carbon fork to match his custom frame. This gave more control over the geometry with choice for the fork offset and length. The titanium theme is continued with the Cane Creek EE Wings crank and Bingham seatpost. The Campagnolo Ekar groupset has internal routing for the brake hoses and shift cable. Shown with 40mm road tires, there is clearance for bigger tires...

Posted by Rob on Oct 8, 2025

Marius’ stainless FRC singlespeed

Marius asked for a simple travel bike – a stainless steel frame means no paint to scratch, rim brakes mean no rotors to bend or hydraulics to worry about, and a belt-driven singlespeed keeps it clean and simple. The frame features Paragon sliding dropouts for tensioning the belt (these also enable swapping the insert for one with a derailleur hanger should gears be required in the future), and the...

Posted by Rob on Sep 25, 2025

Winter bike 2025

After 15 years of sterling service from my original Winter Bike, I decided to build a new version. The goals here were to maintain the functionality and low maintenance, but add some aerodynamic improvements (my commute is long and windy) and reduce the weight (also hilly). The frame features a custom externally butted toptube and seatmast, with a modified internal-wedge seatpost and integrated rear...

Posted by Rob on Sep 14, 2025

Armando’s aero all-road

Armando asked for some aero features to his frame, but with clearance for big tires – shown with 35mm here, 40s will fit. And so the first ‘aero all-road’ came to be! The seattube was custom externally butted, then ovalised, with a wheel cut-out to match the tire. There are two bosses inside the cut-out for fender attachment. The toptube features a taper oval shape from front to back, the...

Posted by Rob on Aug 31, 2025

Adriano’s stainless steel mountain bike

Adriano came to visit last year so that we could review his fit and discuss the build. We then went through several iterations of geometry and component spec to finally arrive with the finished machine. This is a modern long-and-slack hardtail – to the point that I had to modify my frame fixture to allow it to fit! Tubing is mostly from KVA, with dropouts from Paragon Machine Works. The wide format...