English Cycles | Custom Bicycles

Posted by Rob on Sep 26, 2024

Abraham’s puppy gravel bike

This was a fun project! Abraham asked me to build a bike for his wife that would allow her to ride with their four small puppies. We settled on a flat-bar 650B gravel bike with a custom front basket rack and a special bag made by Andy at Lords Luggage. The removable bag fastens securely to the rack, and has anchors for attaching the dog’s harnesses to. There is also an optional rain screen that can...

Posted by Rob on Sep 14, 2024

Folding Gravel Concept in stainless steel

The first folding frame I developed for ease of airline travel was a mountain bike. Which worked great as proof of concept. From there I added pivots at the seatstays for an easier pack which became the first FRC (Folding Road Concept). The first folding frames I did with disc brakes used a taller dropout to allow the pivots to be above the chainstay mounted caliper so that the seatstays could still fold...

Posted by Rob on Sep 8, 2024

Jeffrey’s gravel truss bike

Jeffrey was interested in a build using the limited edition Cane Creek EE gravel brakes – this brake takes the great performance of the EE rim brake and widens the direct mount studs to clear tires up to around 45mm. To fit the brake, provide good tire clearance and keep a low crown height, I designed a truss fork that results in a lightweight, efficient triangulated structure for the fork. There are...

Posted by Rob on Sep 4, 2024

TT Mk3

It has been ten years since I designed and built the TT Mk2; since the pandemic I have mostly retired from racing, just doing a few local events and riding time trials on my road bike. But I do sometimes miss the pure speed of a TT bike! When Enve asked me if I might be interested in building a bike to showcase some new aero products they had, I took the bait. My design goals with this bike were to take...

Posted by Rob on Aug 3, 2024

Peter’s stainless V3 disc

Peter and I have been working on this project for some time! Firstly to gather all the parts, which include some more unusual components from various parts of the world. And then the chosen material/finish is quite an involved process: Firstly cutting/machining/pre-brazing the stainless steel tubes/sub-assemblies. Then these went out for polishing. The frame was then fully brazed up, with a dummy seattube...

Posted by Rob on Jul 20, 2024

Yaxi’s road bike

This is the matched pair for Bo’s road bike, but suited for Yaxi’s smaller stature with the adjusted fit and tubing selection. Keeping things up-to-date, the bike uses Enve‘s In-Route system with a Chris King Aeroset headset to run the brake hoses internally. This setup requires an oversize headtube – to reduce the weight a little here a carbon insert was added. The frame has a...

Posted by Rob on Jul 12, 2024

Bo’s road bike

Bo is very happy with his gravel bike – for this build he asked me to build him a road bike with the same fit, optimised for riding in the mountains. Keeping things up-to-date, the bike uses Enve‘s In-Route system with a Chris King Aeroset headset to run the brake hoses internally. This setup requires an oversize headtube – to reduce the weight a little here a carbon insert was added. The...

Posted by Rob on Jul 1, 2024

Chad’s Above Category road bike

Above Category is a high-end bike shop in Sausalito, California. They focus on bespoke builds, working with a selection of builders and frame suppliers. Chad is the owner, and he approached me to have a custom steel frame built for himself. The design brief was for a classic-riding rim-brake road bike, with an integrated seatmast and matching custom fork and stem. I quizzed Chad about his riding...