Richard’s winter bike

Richard and I were teammates back in our university days – he is still based in the UK, and had me build him a mountain bike a few years ago. Now living in West Wales, his commute is hilly and often wet, so he decided it was time to replace his very old training bike with something more suitable. So we came up with a version of my winter bike to meet his needs. This is the fourth bike with this style of design that I have done – the other two being JV’s and Julian’s.

Richard decided to have a matched set with the paint, so Bob at custom powderworks applied the durable double coat sapphire blue, with the decals sealed under an additional clear topcoat. A new feature on this build is the integrated rack having a top made from stainless – and left unpainted; this way the pannier clips don’t have any paint to scratch. The frame is built to have the Syntace Hi-Flex seatpost at maximum extension, so it can have the most length to do it’s job of cutting out road vibration. The specification features the Shimano Alfine 11spd hub, controlled by Di2 with internal battery and wiring, and Shimano’s RS785 road hydraulic disc brakes. I added an extra junction box to the Di2 system so that both shifters (technically the Alfine only requires one) could be functional. The shifters were then hooked up to the PC to reprogram the buttons – Richard selected having both right buttons shifting up, and both left buttons shifting down. This way there is no searching for the buttons when wearing heavy winter gloves, just tap the lever anywhere to shift. The internal hub, disc brakes and of course the Gates belt drive – along with tubeless tires – means that this should be a very low maintenance machine for years to come.

There is an eccentric bottom bracket for tensioning the belt, then a custom machined socket joint at the dropout end of the driveside chainstay enables belt installation – there is a bolt accessed from the inside of the dropout.

Complete weight with pedals and Brooks saddle comes in at 25.5lbs. Now Richard just has to explain to the Welsh why he is riding around on a bike emblazoned with ‘English’!

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