Harvey’s Project Right 29
Harvey had in mind for me to build him a single speed 29er. When he came to visit for a fitting, he asked if it might be possible to do a mountain bike version of the Project Right road bike I built a few years ago. My initial answer was a ‘maybe’….. But a bit of consideration later, and having confirmed that Harvey didn’t mind having a wider q-factor crank, I was able to come up with a design.
The custom machined rear hub is the same design as used on the road bike, with a 20mm axle and bearings press fitted into the frame ‘dropout’. But for this project a disc brake was also required – it turned out the best place to mount the rotor was on the outside of the chainstay, directly behind the freewheel. The freewheel/rotor carrier is splined to attach to the axle, and a single 6mm bolt holds everything together.
I knew from doing the road bike that the tricky bit is maintaining tire clearance with the single oversize chainstay – to maintain stiffness I really didn’t want to have to form or bend this tube, but rather have a straight line from the BB shell to the ‘dropout’. With this build we wanted to have clearance to fit a 2.4″ tire. The solution was to use a fatbike crank with a 170mm spindle. For belt tensioning I needed to have an eccentric bottom bracket – not something that is very common for a 30mm crank spindle. Fortunately my neighbours at Co-Motion make their own EBB for this size spindle – I was able to take their unit and modify it to install in the custom machined 127mm wide BB shell.
The crank width gave the correct beltline to match the rear hub, and that wide BB shell gave plenty of room to join the chainstay whilst providing the required tire clearance. An additional brace between chainstay and BB adds triangulation – the rear end of this bike ended up with very good lateral stiffness. A regular post-mount on the seatstay worked fine for the rear caliper, with the hose running internally through the seatstay, across the integrated seatmast and then through the toptube.
The seatmast is custom butted and then sleeved at the toptube/seatstay junction for additional reinforcement.
To ensure the strength and stiffness of the front fork, it features a 1.5″ tapered steerer, with a segmented crown joined to a very oversize leg with a custom machined steel Lefty (Righty?) axle. This enables a standard Chris King Lefty hub to be used. But a standard brake caliper wasn’t going to mount well on the ‘wrong’ side. I removed the front tab from the XT caliper, and instead mounted it from the body bolt, which enabled it to tuck fairly tight up behind the leg. The hose runs internally inside the fork, steerer and stem before emerging with just a short exposed run to the brake lever.
To complete the all steel ensemble, there is a custom one-piece bar/stem.
Harvey came up with the paint design he wanted, which was superbly executed by Colorworks, with painted hubs, rims and cranks in addition to the frame/fork/bars.
The final complete weight is 21lbs, and photos are thanks to Tina Buescher.
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Contact English Cycles
Contact Via Email
Phone: 1-541-683-3556
Our sister business: Velo B and B
English Cycles is Rob English, 
winner of Best in Show at the 2013 North American Handmade Bike Show. Custom bicycles built in Eugene, Oregon, USA since 2009.
cool bike!! especially seen from the left side 😉
Where is possible buy The bike?
Hi, everything is fully custom built for each customer, please contact me through this website if you would like to discuss a build. Thanks, Rob.
This is freakin awesome, such brilliant engineering. Love all the little details.
Great engineering piece!
Are the wheels removable? It looks like you really don’t need to remove them ever 🙂
If you have, please post a picture of rear hub with wheel removed.
Thanks!
Hi Andrey,
Yes the wheels are removable. The rear hub and axle is one piece, so to remove the rear wheel the sprocket/rotor assembly must be removed, then the wheel/hub/axle can be slid out of the frame mounted bearings.
thanks, Rob.
I see. So, do you have any pictures of frame/bearing part with no axle?
Thanks.
Let’s see…. I think this is the best I have:
Hope that helps!
Rob.
I think I’ve got it. Thanks!
Amazing bike! So in love with the details! Does the owner have a website or Instagram to show more photos? Would like to see how it’s holding up. Curious, is it possible to modify a Lefty suspension fork to keep the same Righty design theme but have front suspension?
Just wanted to update everyone on the bike.
Had it for a couple of years now, and have been riding it all over the north shore (Vancouver, BC). Even had it up to Whistler. It’s an XC dream bike. Light, responsive, connected. With a little flair…
It climbs like a mountain goat. The single speed gearing isn’t nearly as restrictive as I thought – my riding mates all have much heavier bikes to pedal up hills. We all seem to end up at the top at the same time, though I have to plan ahead a bit more. Probably walked up 20m on my last trip out with friends (and that’s rare!), but my legs are to blame. No hiding behind granny gears. On the plus side I don’t have a heavy, noisy, failure prone drivetrain to worry about. The belt drive is magical. Instant power. Everyone comments on how quiet and connected the bike is. Never in the wrong gear!
I have it setup tubeless right now, and the big tires give enough “suspension” for XC trails.
The engineering on this thing is pretty incredible. Rob was concerned on the stresses off-road riding placed on this unique frame, but this thing has been solid throughout. I check the headset, BB regularly – absolutely no issues. The rear hub complex is a work of art. The entire bike is virtually maintenance free.
Couldn’t be happier. Thanks again Rob. Nice to see the growing line of English Project Right Bikes!
Harvey