English Cycles | Custom Bicycles

Posted by Rob on Apr 21, 2019

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...

Posted by Rob on Apr 9, 2019

Stephen’s all-road bike

“I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave……” Stephen was looking for a build similar to my pink bike – matching the position and handling of his road bike, but with clearance for 35mm tires and fenders. To achieve this the frame has a curved seattube for rear wheel clearance, and modified s-bend chainstays for tire/chainring/rotor clearance. The integrated seatmast is...

Posted by Rob on Mar 30, 2019

10th anniversary limited edition

10 years! To celebrate ten years of building custom bikes, I am offering a limited run of a classic road build, with exclusive color-matched parts, as many made-in-the-USA components as possible, and a special paint scheme. This will be strictly limited to 10 bicycles, with delivery this year (currently the waiting list is out to 2021 for full custom builds). Each individually-numbered bike will have...

Posted by Rob on Mar 23, 2019

Andres’ aero road disc

Andres from Beyond Aero asked me to build him a road bike – which seemed a simple enough request until we got into the details! He wanted to use disc brakes and have everything as integrated and aero as possible. With this in mind, Andres sent me the fork, headset bearings and stem from a BMC, the combination of which allows for the brakes hoses to run completely internally. I then had to create a...

Posted by Rob on Mar 16, 2019

Rob’s plus bikepacker

I took my first bikepacking trip three years ago, riding from Sedona to Phoenix, including the 67 miles of singletrack of the black canyon trail. I rode my folding 29er (for ease of flying there and back), with borrowed bags. It was a great trip, and really informed me about what worked and what needed improvement; I started designing the ‘perfect’ bike in my head, but as ever with personal projects,...

Posted by Rob on Feb 4, 2019

Ali’s aero road bike

Ali asked me to build him an aero road bike, so the frame features a custom machined and formed ovalised headtube, custom externally butted oval seatmast, aero downtube and dropped seatstays. The aero fork is from 3T. The parts specification is super high end, from the SRM Origin crank to the Zipp NSW wheels, with THM Fibula brakes and Zipp cockpit. And then there is the paint….. Colorworks did a...

Posted by Rob on Jan 14, 2019

Paul’s endurance road bike

Paul liked the build I did for my TransAm bike, and asked me to build him something similar. We started with choosing the fork – the new 3T Fundi looked like a good option for an aero-disc fork, with the added advantage of having a very short axle-crown, which helps with extending the headtube, giving more framebag space. I was also (eventually!) able to get one in a 50mm rake to suit the geometry I...

Posted by Rob on Dec 27, 2018

Gary’s Project Right (#5)

The Project Right series has been going for a while now. The concept kicked off with inspiration from Fairwheel Bikes which resulted in the first one back in 2012. I then created a mountain bike version in 2015, followed by two more road bikes in 2016. These all used the same custom machined rear hub design, with a flipped over Lefty hub in the front. A couple of years ago I had a long discussion with...